124 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF scieNCE.—1917. 
I. InvRopuctIon. 
Tue British Association has on several occasions exerted a formative 
influence upon the teaching of science in secondary schools. At the 
Nottingham meeting in 1866 a Committee, consisting of Dean Farrar, 
Professor Huxley, Professor Tyndall, and Canon Wilson, with Mr. 
G. Griffith, the Assistant General Secretary of the Association, as Secre- 
tary, was appointed ‘ To consider the best means of promoting Scientific 
Education in Schools.’ The report presented in the following year 
related the experience gained at Rugby and Harrow, and described the 
position of science teaching at Oxford, Cambridge, and London, and 
in French and German Schools. Four years previously, in 1860, the 
report of the Royal Commission on the nine Public Schools—Eton, 
Harrow, Winchester, Shrewsbury, St. Paul’s, Westminster, Merchant 
Taylors’, Charterhouse, and Rugby—had been published. In this 
report the Commissioners recommended that all boys should receive 
instruction in some branch of natural science during at least a part 
of their school life; and that there should be two principal branches, 
one consisting of chemistry and physics, and the other of physiology 
and natural history. 
The science teaching contemplated in both these reports was that 
which should form part of the educational course of every boy in a 
secondary school; its intention was not to train physicists or chemists 
or to prepare for any other professional occupation, but to make science 
an essential subject in the curriculum and an effective instrument of 
mental development. Fifty years ago the advocates of scientific 
instruction in schools saw clearly that merely to provide information 
about natural objects and phenomena is of little use, and that a know- 
ledge of the true spirit of science can be obtained only by personal 
observation and experiment in the field or the laboratory. The follow- 
ing words from the report presented to the Council in 1867 might 
have been written to-day :— 
‘There is an important distinction between scientific information and 
scientific training ; in other words, between general literary acquaintance with 
scientific facts and the knowledge of methods that may be gained by studying 
the facts at first hand under the guidance of a competent teacher. Both of 
these are valuable; it is very desirable, for example, that boys should have 
some general information about the ordinary phenomena of Nature, such as 
the simple facts of Astronomy, of Geology, of Physical Geography, and of 
Elementary Physiology. On the other hand, the scientific habit of mind, 
which is the principal benefit resulting from scientific training, and which is 
of incalculable value whatever be the pursuits of after-life, can better be 
attained by a thorough knowledge of the facts and principles of one science 
than by a general acquaintance with what has been said or written about 
many. Both of these should co-exist, we think, at any school which professes 
to offer the highest liberal education: and at every school it will be easy to 
provide at least for giving some scientific information. : 
‘1. The subjects that we recommend for scientific information, as distin- 
guished from training, should comprehend a general description of the solar 
system; of the form and physical geography of the earth, and of such natural 
phenomena as tides, currents, winds, and the causes that influence 
climate; of the broad facts of geology; of elementary natural history, 
with especial reference to the useful plants and animals; and of the rudiments 
of physiology. This is a kind of information which requires less preparation 
