REPORT OF THE PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE. XXXlX 



Report of the Parliamentary Committee to the Meeting of the British 

 Association at Birmingham, September 1865. 



The Parliamentary Committe have the honour to report as follows :— 



By a Resolution passed at Bath your Committee were requested to press 

 on the Government the expediency of instituting a series of experiments oir 

 Foo- Signals, but on consulting some of the Members of the Committee 

 appointed for the purpose of making experiments on the transmission of 

 sound under water, your Committee were informed that no action on the part 

 of the Government was at present necessary. 



Your Committee brought under the notice of the Council the unsatisfactory 

 character of the provisions of the Public Schools Bill of last Session, so far as 

 they affected the interests of Science. 



Your Committee advocated such alterations therein as they believed would 

 be most likely to promote these interests ; and it was at the suggestion of one 

 of their members that Professors Sharpey, W. A. Miller, Huxley, and TynclaU 

 were applied to, and gave the admirable evidence on the extent to which 

 Physical Science might with advantage be introduced into the studies of our 

 great Public Schools, which will be foimd in the Appendix to the Report of 

 the Committee of the House of Lords on the Bill above referred to, and to 

 which the attention of all engaged in the instruction of youth may be usefully 

 directed. Some valuable remarks on the same subject by our President Elect 

 had been previously referred to in the course of the Debate ; and the evidence 

 of our President, Drs. Carpenter and Hooker, the Astronomer Royal, and 

 others, before the Public School Commissioners, furnishes an additional proof, 

 if any were wanting, of the zeal and energy with which the Cultivators of 

 Science continue to remonstrate against the system, which still unhappily 

 prevails in many of our Schools, of ignoring the claims of Science. 



Whottesley, Chairman. 

 31st August, 1865. 



