408 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION RB. 
Section B.—CHEMISTRY, 
PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION: 
Prorrsson W. P. Wynne, D.Sc., F.R.S. 
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 11. 
The President delivered the following Address :— 
Wuen the present position of education in Birmingham is considered, the trans- 
formation effected since the ‘seventies is little short of marvellous. Five-and- 
thirty years ago, when I became an evening student, classes conducted by the 
Midland Institute met the demand for Arts and Science subjects; now a 
University—venerable in comparison with all Civic Universities save the 
Victoria University of Manchester—exists to provide instruction in every 
branch of learning. The spacious building in which we meet—already too 
small for the demands made on it—is the lineal descendant of that part of the 
Midland Institute which formerly was used for evening class instruction in 
science, organised in connection with the Science and Art Department, and 
financed largely by the system of payment on results; this large lecture theatre 
replaces the small and inconvenient classroom in which the teaching of 
Chemistry and Physics under Mr. Woodward was carried on. Payment on 
results is obsolete, and the ‘May’ examinations on which it was based have 
almost disappeared, assessment by inspection now replacing both; nevertheless, 
it is more than doubtful whether any other system—in the circumstances of 
the time—could have spread so widely a knowledge of science among the people, 
or prepared the way for the Technical Instruction Act, and that appreciation 
of the value of scientific training for industrial pursuits which is exemplified 
by the provision through municipal agencies of Technical Schools in the 
industrial centres of this country. I sometimes think the Science and Art 
Department, and those great men, Sir John Donnelly and Professor Huxley, 
who did much to shape its attitnde towards science instruction in evening classes 
and in the Science Schools at South Kensington,’ have received something 
less than their share of credit for pioneering work which finds its fruition 
in well-equipped Institutions like this, and in the enhanced position which science 
holds to-day in the estimation of our countrymen. In those far-off times, 
before the foundation-stone of Mason College was laid, such evening classes in 
Birmingham provided the only means by which instruction in science, or 
scholarships to South Kensington, could be obtained. It is not unfitting, there- 
fore, that I—a product of the system—should acknowledge here the obligation 
1 These Schools in 1881 became the Normal School of Science, and in 1900 
the Royal College of Science, now incorporated in the Imperial College of 
Science and Technology. 
