Sept. 10, 1885 | 
NATORE 
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was lost to sight during the revival of letters in the fifteenth and 
sixteenth centuries. Germany and France, which are now in 
such active competition in promoting science, have only publicly 
acknowledged its national importance in recent times. Even in 
the last century, though France had its Lavoisier and Germany 
its Leibnitz, their Governments did not know the value of 
science. When the former was condemned to death in the 
Reign of Terror, a petition was presented to the rulers that his 
life might be spared for a few weeks in order that he might 
complete some important experiments, but the reply was, ‘‘ The 
Republic has no need of savants.” Earlier in the century the 
much-praised Frederick William of Prussia shouted with a loud 
voice, during a graduation ceremony in the University of Frank- 
fort, ‘*An ounce of mother-wit is worth a ton of university 
wisdom.” Both France and Germany are now ashamed of these 
utterances of their rulers, and make energetic efforts to advance 
science with the aid of their national resources. More remark- 
able is it to see a young nation like the United States reserving 
150,000,000 acres of national lands for the promotion of scien- 
tific education. In some respects this young country is in advance 
of all European nations in joining science to its administrative 
offices. Its scientific publications, like the great palzeontclogical 
work embodying the researches of Prof. Marsh and his asso- 
ciates in the Geological Survey, are an example to other Govern- 
ments. The Minister of Agriculture is surrounded with a staff 
of botanists and chemists. The Home Secretary is aided by a 
special Scientific Commission to investigate the habits, migra- 
tions, and food of fishes, and the latter has at its disposal two 
specially-constructed steamers of large tonnage. The United 
States and Great Britain promote fisheries on distinct systems. 
In this country we are perpetually issuing expensive Commis- 
sions to visit the coasts in order to ascertain the experiences of 
fishermen. I have acted as chairman of one of these Royal 
Commissions, and found that the fishermen, having only a 
knowledge of a small area, gave the most contradictory and un- 
satisfactory evidence. In America the questions are put to 
Nature, and not to fishermen. Exact and searching investiga- 
tions are made into the life-history of the fishes, into the tem- 
perature of the sea in which they live and spawn, into the 
nature of their food, and into the habits of their natural ene- 
mies. For this purpose the Government give the co-operation 
of the navy, and provide the Commission with a special corps 
of skilled naturalists, some of whom go out with the steamships 
and others work in the biological laboratories at Wood’s Holl, 
Massachusetts, or at Washington. The different universities 
send their best naturalists to aid in these investigations, which 
are under the direction of Mr. Baird, of the Smithsonian Insti- 
tution. The annual cost of the Federal Commission is about 
40,000/., while the separate States spend about 20,000/. in local 
efforts. The practical results flowing from these scientific in- 
vestigations have been important. The inland waters and rivers 
have been stocked with fish of the best and most suitable kinds. 
Even the great ocean which washes the coasts of the United 
States is beginning to be affected by the knowledge thus ac- 
quired, and a sensible result is already produced upon the most 
important of its fisheries. The United Kingdom largely depends 
upon its fisheries, but as yet our own Government have scarcely 
realised the value of such scientific investigations as those pur- 
sued with success by the United ‘States. Less systematically, 
but with great benefit to science, our own Government has used 
the surveying expeditions, and sometimes has equipped special 
expeditions to promote natural history and solar physics. Some 
of the latter, like the voyage of the Challenger, have added 
largely to the store of knowledge ; while the former, though 
not primarily intended for scientific research, have had an in- 
direct result of infinite value by becoming training-schools for 
such investigators as Edward Forbes, Darwin, Hooker, Huxley, 
Wyville Thomson, and others. 
In the United Kingdom we are just beginning to understand 
the wisdom of Washington’s farewell address to his country- 
men when he said ; “‘ Promote as an object of primary import- 
ance institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In 
proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public 
opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.” 
It was only in 1870 that our Parliament established a system of 
national primary education. Secondary education is chaotic, 
and remains unconnected with the State, while the higher educa- 
tion of the universities is only brought at distant intervals under 
the view of the State. All great countries except England have 
Ministers of Education, but this country has only Ministers who 
are the managers of primary schools. We are inferior even to 
smaller countries in the absence of organised State supervision 
of education. Greece, Portugal, Egypt, and Japan have distinct 
Ministers of Education, and so also among our Colonies have 
Victoria and New Zealand. Gradually England is gathering 
materials for the establishment of an efficient Education Minister. 
The Department of Science and Art is doing excellent work in 
diffusing a taste for elementary science among the working 
classes. There are now about 78,000 persons who annually 
come under the influence of its science classes, while a small 
number of about 200, many of them teachers, receive thorough 
instruction in science at the excellent school in South Kens- 
ington, of which Prof. Huxley is the Dean. I do not dwell on 
the work of this Government department, because my object is 
chiefly to point out how it is that science lags in its progress in 
the United Kingdom owing to the deficient interest taken in it 
by the middle and upper classes. The working classes are 
being roused from their indifference. They show this by their 
selection of scientific men as candidates at the next election. 
Among these are Profs. Stuart, Roscoe, Maskelyne, and Ricker. 
It has its significance that such a humble representative of 
science as myself received invitations from working-class con- 
stituencies in more than a dozen of the leading manufacturing 
towns. In the next Parliament I do not doubt that a Minister 
of Education will be’created as fa nucleus around which the 
various educational materials may crystallise in a definite form. 
Ill. Sczence and Secondary Education.—Various Royal Com- 
missions have made inquiries and issued recommendations in 
regard to our public and endowed schools. The Commissions 
of 1861, 1864, 1868, and 1873 have expressed the strongest dis- 
approval of the condition of our schools, and, so far as science is 
concerned, their state is much the same as when the Duke of 
Devonshire’s Commission in 1873 reported in the following 
words :—‘* Considering the increasing importance of science to the 
material interests of the country, we cannot but regard its almost 
total exclusion from the training of the upper and middle classes as 
little less than a national misfortune.” No doubt there are excep- 
tional cases and some brilliant examples of improvement since 
these words were written, but generally throughout the country 
teaching in science is a name rather than a reality. The 
Technical Commission which reported last year can only point 
to three schools in Great Britain in which science is fully and 
adequately taught. While the Commission gives us the conso- 
lation that England is still in advance as an industrial nation, it 
warns us that foreign nations, which were not long ago far 
behind, are now making more rapid progress than this country, 
and will soon pass it in the race of competition unless we give 
increased attention to science in public education. A few of the 
large towns, notably Manchester, Bradford, Huddersfield, and 
Birmingham, are doing so. The working classes are now re- 
ceiving better instruction in science than the middle classes. 
The competition of actual life asserts its own conditions, for the 
children of the latter find increasing difficulty in obtaining em- 
ployment. The cause of this lies in the fact that the schools for 
the middle classes have not yet adapted themselves to the needs 
of modern life. It is true that many of the endowed schools 
have been put under new schemes, but as there is no public 
supervision or inspection of them, we have no knowledge as to 
whether they have prospered or slipped back. Many corporate 
schools have arisen, some of them, like Clifton, Cheltenham. 
and Marlborough Colleges, doing excellent educational work, 
though as regards all of them the public have no rights and can- 
not enforce guarantees for efficiency. A return just issued, on 
the motion of Sir John Lubbock, shows a lamentable deficiency 
in science teaching in a great proportion of the endowed schools. 
While twelve to sixteen hours a week are devoted to classics. 
two to three hours are considered ample for science in a large 
proportion of the schools. In Scotland there are only six 
schools in the Return which give more than two hours to science 
weekly, while in many schools its teaching is wholly omitted. 
Every other part of the kingdom stands in a better position than 
Scotland in relation to the science of its endowed schools. The 
old traditions of education stick as firmly to schools as a limpet 
does to a rock; though I do the limpet injustice, for it does 
make excursions to seek pastures new. Are we to give up in 
despair because _an exclusive system of classical education has 
resisted the assaults of such cultivated authors as Milton, 
Montaigne, Cowley, and Locke? There was once an en- 
lightened Emperor of China, Chi Hwangti, who knew that his 
country was kept back by its exclusive devotion to the classics 
