TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION B. 949 
The reform most urgently needed, in which, as members of the community, not 
“merely as chemists, we are all most interested, is the introduction of some system 
~which will ensure a proper training for teachers. Engineers, lawyers, medical men, 
pharmacists, have severally associated themselves to found institutions which 
-require those who desire to join the profession to obtain a certain qualification ; 
even chemists are seeking to do this through the Institute of Chemistry. But 
-schoolmasters, although members of what is probably the most responsible, onerous, 
useful, and honourable of any of the professions, have as yet neither made, nor 
shown any inclination to make, a united effort to ensure that all those who join 
their profession shall be properly qualified. Surely the time has come when the 
-subject must receive full public attention; the country cannot much longer remain 
content that the education of all but those of its sons and daughters who come 
within the province of the School Board should be carried on without any guarantee 
that it is being properly conducted. 
Glaring as are the faults in the existing school system, and although it rests 
with the universities and other teaching and examining bodies—if the public do 
not intervene—to prescribe a proper course of instruction for potential school- 
masters and to enforce a rational system of training all the mental faculties, we 
science teachers may meanwhile do much by introducing more perfect methods into 
our own system of teaching. The students attending our courses belong to various 
classes: some will become chemists, aud require the highest and most complete 
training ; others will be teachers in colleges or schools; many will occupy them- 
Selves as consulting chemists or analysts; many others will have to take charge 
of manufacturing operations in which a knowledge of chemistry is of more or less 
direct importance and value; not a few will become medical men; and a large 
proportion, let us hope, will be those who have no direct use for chemistry, 
although the knowledge will be of great service to them in many ways: among 
such we may include architects and builders, engineers, farmers, and even country 
gentlemen. Have we sufficiently considered the several requirements of all these 
various classes? I submit, with all due deference, that we have not! Our attention 
has been too exclusively directed to the training up of the future analyst; the 
instruction has been of too technical a character. 
I know it is rank heresy to say so, but I maintain that in future far less time 
must be devoted to the teaching of ordinary qualitative and quantitative analysis, 
and that technical instruction as now given in these subjects must find its place 
later in the course. Our main object in the first instance must be to fully develop 
the intellectual faculties of our students; to encourage their aspirations by incul- 
cating broad and liberal views of our science, not an infinite number of petty 
‘details. We must not merely teach them the principles and main facts of our 
Science, but we must show them how the knowledge of those facts and principles 
has been gained; and they must be so drilled as to have complete command of their 
knowledge. The great majority will not be required to perform ordinary analyses, 
either qualitative or quantitative; it will be sufficient for them to have gained such 
an amount of practical experience that they thoroughly understand the principles 
of analysis ; that they shall have learnt to appreciate the sacredness of accuracy ; 
and that they shall have acquired sufficient manipulative skill to be able when 
occasion requires to carry into execution the analytical process which their text- 
‘books tell them is applicable, and even, if necessary, to modify the process to suit 
circumstances. 
Chemistry is no longer a purely descriptive science. The study of carbon 
compounds and Mendeljeff’s generalisation have produced a complete revolution ! 
‘The faults in our present system are precisely those which have characterised the 
teaching of geography and history, and which are now becoming so generally 
recognised and condemned ; in fact, no better statement of the manner in which I 
conceive chemistry should be taught could be given than by broadly applying to 
the teaching of chemistry what was said by Professor Seeley, at the International 
a ene on Education last year, in an important paper on the teaching of 
istory. 
The necessity for some change must, I venture to think, be patent to all thought- 
