700 REPORT—1896. 
to be appreciated. His essay on the correlation of the physical forces had great 
influence in promoting that belief in the unity of the various branches of physics 
which is one of the characteristic features of modern natural philosophy. 
In the late Professor Stoletow, of Moscow, we have lost the author of a series 
of most interesting researches on the electrical properties of gases illuminated by 
ultra-violet light, researches which, from theirplace of publication, are, I am afraid, 
not so well known in this country as they deserve to be. 
As one who unfortunately of late years has had only too many opportunities of 
judging of the teaching of science in our public and secondary schools, I should 
like te bear testimony to the great improvement which has taken place in the 
teaching of physics in these schools during the past ten years. The standard at- 
tained in physics by the pupils of these schools is increasing year by year, and 
ereat credit is due to those by whose labours this improvement has been accom- 
plished. I hope I may not be considered ungrateful if I express the opinion that 
in the zeal and energy which is now spent in the teaching of physics in schools, 
there may lurk a temptation to make the pupils cover too much ground, You 
may by careful organisation and arrangement ensure that boys shall be taken over 
many branches of physics in the course of a short time; it is indeed not uncommon 
to find boys of 17 or 18 who have compassed almost the whole range of physical 
subjects, But although you may increase the rate at which information is ac- 
quired, you cannot increase in anything like the same proportion the rate at which 
the subject is assimilated, so as to become a means of strengthening the mind and 
a permanent mental endowment when the facts have long been forgotten. 
Physics can be taught so as to be a subject of the greatest possible educational 
value, but when it is so it is not so much because the student acquires a knowledge 
of a number of interesting and important facts, as by the mental training the study 
affords in, as Maxwell said, ‘bringing our theoretical knowledge to bear on the 
objects and the objects on our theoretical knowledge.’ I think this training can be 
got better by going very slowly through such a subject as mechanics, making the 
students try innumerable experiments of the simplest and, what is a matter of im- 
portance in school teaching, of the most inexpensive kind, but always endeavouring 
to arrive at numerical results, rather than by attempting to cover the whole range 
of mechanics, light, heat, sound, electricity, and magnetism. I confess I regret the 
presence in examinations intended for school boys of many of these subjects. 
I think, too, that in the teaching of physics at our universities there is perhaps 
a tendency to make the course too complex and too complete. I refer especially 
to the training of those students who intend to become physicists. I think that 
after a student has been trained to take accurate observations, to be alive to those 
pitfalls and errors to which all experiments are liable, mischief may in some cases 
be done if, with the view of learning a knowledge of methods, he is kept perform- 
ing elaborate experiments, the results of which are well known. It is not given to 
many to wear a load of learning lightly as a flower. With many students a load 
of learning, especially if it takes a long time to acquire, is apt to crush enthusiasm. 
Now, there is, I think, hardly any quality more essential to success in physical 
investigations than enthusiasm. Any investigation ia experimental physics 
requires a large expenditure of both time and patience; the apparatus seldom, 
if ever, begins by behaving as it ought; there are times when all the forces of 
nature, all the properties of matter, seem to be fighting against us: the instruments 
behave in the most capricious way, and we appreciate Coutts Trotter’s saying, that 
the doctrine of the constancy of nature could never have been discovered in a labora- 
tory. These difficulties have to be overcome, but it may take weeks or months to do 
so, and, unless the student is enthusiastic, he is apt to retire disheartened from the 
contest. Ithink, therefore, that the preservation of youthful enthusiasm is one of 
the most important points forconsideration in the training of physicists. In my 
opinion this can best be done by allowing the student, even before he is supposed 
to be acquainted with the whole of physics, to begin some original research of a 
simple kind under the guidance of a teacher who will encourage him and assist in 
the removal of difficulties. If the student once tastes the delights of the successful 
completion of an investigation, he 1s not likely to go back, and will be better 
