CORRESPONDING SOCIETIES. 391 
adequate sum to the trustees of local museums which are willing thus 
directly to help forward and expand the higher science teaching of our 
schools, corresponding control being, of course, in every case given for the 
proper disbursement of the assigned money. This work is at any rate 
as well worthy of such support as are free libraries, or municipal bands, 
or art-galleries, to which, of course, I have not the slightest objection. 
Summing up my points, I should like the great interest in Nature study 
which has lately sprung up to be linked definitely with the museums, that 
these may help the movement and in return be helped themselves ; that 
the provision made by curators should be wisely curtailed and definitely 
directed ; that the professional instinct and pride of the science teachers 
should be called upon to assist in a great work ; and that the success of 
the movement should not be imperilled by the premature uprising of the 
false economist, who has had no opportunity of seeing what other nations 
can do, and who wishes to appraise the value of any work by its immediate 
value in current coin. 
Mr. G. P. Hughes (Warwickshire Naturalists’ Club) said that the paper 
which had been read had come most opportunely in his case, for it dealt 
with a subject which had occupied his thoughts and attention for some 
time past. He dwelt on the importance of giving an interest to the 
younger generation in country places, and of getting the minds of the young 
people trained to the industrial interests which they must follow out in 
after life. If the children of the labouring classes were merely taught a 
few of the ordinary lessons of schools, then interest would not be directed 
towards what their future life is likely to be. Heheld that schoolmasters 
should have some acquaintance with scientific pursuits, and by the aid of 
museums, which in many parts of the country were dormant, these children 
might be brought gradually to take a much keener interest in their future 
life than they do at the present moment. 
The Rev. G. Capell remarked that he had been a school-manager for 
about thirty-four years, and had always felt that the difficulty was that 
no science was introduced by which the minds of the children could be 
trained and so fitted for the pursuits they were afterwards to enter into. 
He had been in a district in the North of France, and was immensely 
struck by the care taken by the French Government to train children in a 
knowledge of those pursuits which they were to follow in after life. There 
is a most elaborate system of teaching, including, in addition to scientific 
training, the practical use of the machinery which they will have to use 
in cultivating the land and in various other industries. In Germany it is 
the same. The children’s minds are trained practically and scientifically. 
That is what we want more of in England ; the practical and the scien- 
tific should go together. The difficulty is that schoolmasters have not 
been trained in that way themselves. The speaker thought that attention 
must be directed to this in future, and the museums would be wonderfully 
useful in helping masters in order that they might be better prepared to 
instruct the children. 
Mr. F. W. Rudler (Essex Field Club) explained that when in 1891 
the Museuins Association held its annual meeting in Cambridge, he 
ventured to refer to the difficulties incidental to museum-demonstration ; 
and he was glad to find that a method somewhat similar to that which he 
suggested had been successfully carried out at Leeds. He held that the 
demonstration should usually be given in a separate lecture-room, and be 
