50 REPORT—1868. 
As a means of intellectual training, mathematics or classics were generally em- 
ployed, and were greatly in favour; but there was this main distinction between 
mathematics and practical laboratory work—in mathematics the exact data were 
all given, in practical chemistry they were not. Thus a student in the laboratory 
ought to have correct reasoning inculcated, or, as Professor Faraday called it, 
judgment, independent thought on facts, habits of observation, and patience—“ to 
learn to labour and to wait.” It is because schoolmasters had hitherto seldom 
seen a corresponding benefit accrue either to themselves or the boys for the 
expense and frequent annoyance caused by the so-called teaching of practical che- 
mistry, that this branch of study isin such ill odour, Chemistry could not be 
taught in the same cut-and-dried manner as arithmetic &c. It required patience, 
carefulness, thought, judgment, accuracy, and could not be hurried. Practical ° 
science was not the accumulation of mere facts, but required the assistance of the 
eye and touch. From experience the author could bear witness to the fact that 
masters, university men, who had wished to learn chemistry so as to be able to 
teach it to boys, were always in a hurry, and could not wait to properly perform 
their experiments, imagining that there was some royal road to the result. A 
student when in the laboratory should be made to perform each experiment 
thoroughly. After the usual experiment (to make hydrogen, for example) had 
been performed, he should be made to take an atomic proportion of zinc, say 650 
grains, and dissolve it, collect all the hydrogen from it, and measure it, evaporate 
the solution of zinc, and estimate the quantity of sulphate formed. This could not 
be done at one lesson. On the next occasion he would have his mind brought back 
to the subject of hydrogen while commencing a new experiment. By the end of 
the third lesson he would probably have the first experiment finished, the second 
to continue, and be ready to commence a third. But if from carelessness &c. ho 
did not bring the first experiment to a satisfactory conclusion, he should be made 
to repeat it until he did. Thus he would for his own sake learn to be careful and 
patient. It may be objected that a great loss of time takes place in this way. Buta 
fortnight spent in the proper performance of such an experiment, if it be only even- 
tually well done, is not time! lost or wasted. At present, boys nominally learn 
chemistry; but they do so without learning the great lessons that a proper study 
of chemistry ought to teach. The author proposed, in order to meet the difficulty 
of the study taking up so much time, that all large schools of, say, 150 boys should 
have their own laboratory and a resident master thoroughly capable of managing 
and teaching boys science. That all boys of fourteen and upwards should give up 
three days in the week, for at least six months, to the laboratory. For small sehools 
there should be a united ancillary establishment in each neighbourhood, for the 
express purpose of giving boys this practical laboratory education. A proper science 
teacher ought to be a man of university education, and a thorough practical mani- 
pulator. Men would devote themselves to this work if there was a prospect 
of their earning a livelihood, At the universities natural science was looked down 
upon and not encouraged. Talk of studying science for the love of her, very few 
would, and very few could, make the necessary sacrifices, as long as all the money 
and all the university honours were reserved for classics and mathematics, Thus 
there was little inducement for the student to study natural science. A man 
could not be fitted to become a teacher of practical chemistry by reading alone, not 
by six months’ practical laboratory work; the preparation required several years. 
Heads of schools had no difficulty in getting first-class university men for £300 a 
year; but these could not teach in the laboratory. Chemical science had never yet 
had a fair chance as a means of education; nor had schoolmasters generally correct 
ideas of what the science was capable of doing, 
