544 REPORTS ON THE STATE OP SCIENCE, 



excitement and the same interest belong to new observations iu auj and every 

 branch of science. 



In fact, I often feel that the sort of book which is really wanted at the present 

 day is a simple untechnical account of the living work by the worker himself. No 

 matter how abstruse or advanced a research may be, there is always something in 

 it which is of surpassing interest if understood, and this can surely be expressed . 

 simply and made intelligible without any detailed knowledge of the science in all its 

 bearings. After all, the methods and results of science can just as well be taught by 

 examples drawn from the new work which marks the advancing wave of progress 

 as by what has gone before ; and the new thing is always the most interesting. 



I am aware that to many it will seem that popularisation of the newest thing 

 in science is being overdone at the present time, and that we hear too much of 

 radio-activity, wireless telegraphy, and the rest. I am suggesting, however, that 

 not only the brilliant discoveries, which most easily attract the pubhc through the 

 Press and fire the popular imagination, should be taken up by the Local Societies, 

 but that the more ordinary work of everyday science, equally necessary and per- 

 haps equally momentous in its consequences, which is at present buried in the 

 proceedings of one sort of society, should be made a real and living thing by the 

 humbler societies of another sort. 



I am aware, too, that for educational purposes it is not prudent to introduce 

 children to the newest and imperfectly understood results of modern science until 

 the soil has been prepared by the study of the more mature and better considered 

 work which has gone before ; but for the moment I am pleading the cause not of 

 school children, but of intelligent amateurs, many of them persons of exceptional 

 intelligence, some of them persons of considerable scientific attainments and know- 

 ledge ; before whom both the present achievements of scientific discoverers and 

 the humbler work that is being done by scientific students, whether professional 

 or amateur, may well be laid without all the preliminary training that affords 

 educational exercise to the child at school. 



Up to the present, however, I have left out of sight the really great educa- 

 tional advantage that science possesses over all other subjects, namely this : That 

 science is not only talk and thought, but action ; that there is always ready to 

 hand, not only something new to be described or narrated, but something new to 

 be actually done by both teacher and pupil. Either some natural object or 

 occurrence to be seen that has never been seen before, or some experiment to be made 

 that has never been made before. It is this which tires the enthusiasm and stirs the 

 imagination, and makes scientific research so enthralling ; and the educational work 

 which the Local Societies can best perform, because they are dealing not with 

 children but with men and women, is the encouragement and direction of 

 original research. A good deal is already done by some of them; but on the 

 whole how little compared with what might be done by some co-operation 

 between scientific workers and the societies, and some organisation of the societies 

 themselves. Education requires teaclier and pupil ; it would not be enough in 

 general that the members of a society should be interested by the address of a 

 specialist and then be left to their own devices to imitate his work and endeavour 

 to research for themselves. This would only, in general, lead to discouragement, 

 if not to disaster. After he has stimulated their interest, they need his guidance 

 and advice. Let him then address them, with the object not of advertising his 

 own researches, but of enlisting the services of fellow-workers. I believe that 

 many a scientific investigator could attract an army of wilhng workers through the 

 Local Societies if he were given the opportunity of interesting them in his own 

 researches, of suggesting to them lines of simple investigation which they could 

 profitably pursue, and ol continuing to guide them by advice and criticism. Some- 

 thing of the sort is occasionally done in the study of the local fiora and fauna. 

 That it is not done mere widely and in other branches of science is due to the 

 prevalent and growing idea that none can take up any original work without the 

 preliminary of an orthodox scientific training. This I believe to be a great 

 mistake when the teacher is concerned with intelligent people who are no longer 

 • children, and who come to him with the desire for work. 



