Notes and Comments. 345 



A boy's education. 

 The most amazing of the typical courses is that drawn up 

 by the Professor of Education in the University of London, 

 and intended as suitable for boys between twelve and sixteen. 

 In five hours per week a boy is expected to gain ' a real, if 

 rudimentary, acquaintance with the true character of scientific 

 enquiry ' as exemplified in the sciences of Biology, Astronomy, 

 General Physics, Heat and Chemistry — (Geology and Mechanics 

 are allotted to other lesson periods). By fourteen, he appears 

 to reach the matriculation stage in several of the subjects ; 

 by sixteen he has covered what looks like a Bachelor of Science 

 Course, skimming lightly through such investigations as the 

 theory of organic evolution, harmonic vibration of a compound 

 pendulum, colours of thin films, polarisation, radio-activity, 

 modern explosives, proximate constituents of food, chemical 

 industries and processes. It may be suggested that it would 

 not matter if the scheme were even extended, as, long before 

 he reached the end of it, the boy would be dead. It has been 

 said that to work this scheme out by heuristic methods would 

 require a hundred years. 



OTHER SCHEMES. 



In the scheme for Oundle School, the value of workshop 

 practice is dwelt upon ; the headmaster of Shepton Mallet 

 Grammar School correlates his science with the industries of 

 the school district, but considers that lessons out of doors 

 waste much valuable time, which is surely not unavoidable. 

 The Courses for girls present no new features. Prof. Armstrong 

 has a paper on Practical Food Studies, which is not new. 



THE INTERGLACIAL PROBLEM. 



In Scientia, (Bologna), Mr. W. B. Wright says : ' The epidemic 

 of wild theorising which followed close upon the first great strides 

 in the study of glacial geology gave place towards the close of 

 the last century to a severely critical attitude, salutary, no doubt, 

 but unstimulating. To the workers in this period of scepticism, 

 all honour is due, for they carried forward with admirable 

 judgment the work of clearing the ground upon which a 

 saner edifice of thought might be built. As a result of their 

 careful sifting of materials, it is now becoming increasingly 

 possible to construct from the facts certain will founded 

 generalisations, which indicate the directions in which progress 

 may be made. Any advance of this kind would have been 

 very difficult without the preliminary critical work of Lamplugh 

 and Kendall in England, Geinitz in Germany, Hoist in Sweden, 

 and Wright and Upham in America. We are now in a position 

 to put aside the complicated and artificial systems of the earlier 

 interglacialists, and enquire without prejudice how far we are 

 entitled to go in deducing the occurrence of milder epochs during 

 the glacial period.' 



1917 Nov. 1. 



