126 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF SCIENCE.—1917. 
that a training in scientific method could be obtained by attention to 
experimental lectures, and independent practical work in school labora- 
tories was scarcely contemplated. The apparatus used for lectures in 
physics was designed for demonstration purposes, and was not suitable 
for use by individual pupils even if its price did not render the purchase 
of sufficient sets for laboratory use prohibitive. It was Professor 
Worthington, whose death while a member of the present Committee is 
deeply deplored, who was chiefly responsible for the introduction of 
courses of practical work with simple apparatus in school physical labora- 
tories. His ‘ Physical Laboratory Practice,’ published in 1886, embodies 
the experimental course followed successfully at Clifton College, and 
afterwards introduced into many other secondary schools. Experience 
showed that quantitative results sufficiently accurate to suggest or 
confirm fundamental principles could be secured by the use of very 
simple apparatus, and that the work thus done by pupils individually 
created a far deeper impression than lectures alone could give. Re- 
ferring to the work at Clifton, Professor Worthington said > 
‘Tt is undertaken there, like all the scientific teaching, not with a view 
of training physicists, but with the object of evoking in the boys a genuine 
and generous interest in natural phenomena, and of training them to habits of 
patient and conscientious study; and those of us who have devoted themselves 
more particularly to the physical sciences are confident that the serious interest 
thus early aroused in a large number is the best guarantee of future excellence 
in the few who may afterwards become specialists.’ 
The teaching of practical chemistry at that time consisted chiefly of 
more ‘or less mechanical drill in the operations of qualitative analysis. 
The result was unsatisfactory, and the general adoption of science work 
in schools could not be justified by it. In 1884, at an International 
Conference on Education held in London, Professor H. E. Armstrong 
gave the outline of a more intelligent method of teaching chemistry in 
which the pupil is faced with problems to be solved experimentally by 
him. Three years later a Committee was appointed by the British 
Association for the purpose of inquiring into and reporting upon the 
methods of teaching chemistry in schools. This Committee presented 
a report at the Bath meeting in 1888, and suggested that ‘teachers 
stand very much in need of advice and assistance in preparing a 
modified scheme of teaching suitable for general adoption in schools.’ 
In response to this suggestion Professor Armstrong gave, in reports 
presented at the meetings of 1889 and 1890, details of practical courses 
of instruction deliberately intended to develop the faculties of indepen- 
dent inquiry, accurate observation, and intelligent reasoning. The 
‘heuristic’ methods which he advocated were ‘methods which in- 
volve our placing students so far as possible in the attitude of the dis- 
coverer—methods which involve their finding out instead of being 
merely told about things.’ 
The British Association schemes revolutionised the teaching of 
chemistry, and physics also to a large extert, in schools. The pre- 
scribed preparation of gases and the drill in qualitative analysis, which 
had constituted the practical work in school chemical laboratories, were 
superseded by inquiries into the composition of such common sub- 
stances as air and water, and no experiment was undertaken without 
