JN POPULAR SCIENCE LECTURES. 341 



land, interest is as keen as ever, while it is well maintained in the 

 smaller manufacturing towns. In these towns too, especially in many 

 of those of the former class, the interest developed by the lectures 

 appears to be particularly intense in raising the thoughts of the 

 audiences above their immediate surroundings, and in opening up visions 

 of new aspects of nature hitherto unsuspected. In many cases, the 

 lecturer will be invited to accompany members of his audience to their 

 homes, and the discussion of the lecture will be continued as far into 

 the night as human nature allows, while the same lecture, delivered 

 at a large town on the moi'e beaten track, may moi-e likely be received 

 with merely polite attention and tliere will generally be less impressive 

 evidence of interest in. the subject of the lecture being maintained beyond 

 its conclusion. 



The experience of the Gilchrist Lectures has been mainly derived 

 from England and Wales. Some courses have been arranged in Ireland 

 and in Scotland. A few applications are still received from Ireland, but 

 there has been no demand for lectures in Scotland in recent years. No 

 steps have been taken to publish the readiness of the trustees to consider 

 applications for grants, the reputation of the lectures themselves having 

 hitherto proved, sufficient each year ]>efore the war to cause far more 

 towns to ask for lectures than it has been possible to include in the 

 succeeding winter's programme. 



A note of warning should, I think, be added with regard to the possi- 

 bility of popular lectures doing occasional harm by developing a taste 

 for them that may be inimical to more serious work. My attention was 

 directed to this point some years ago by the secretaries of the Oxford 

 and Cambridge University Extension Boards, both of whom instanced 

 cases where, as they alleged, Gilchrist Lectures had had an injurious 

 effect upon their own classes. I was at first very reluctant to accept 

 this conclusion, but later experience has convinced me that it may not 

 have been without foundation. In a few cases witliin my own experi- 

 ence, where I have urged the importance of establishing classes, either 

 in connection with the University Extension movement or classes of a 

 similar character, in sequence with courses of Gilchrist Lectures, I 

 have been met with remarks to the effect that ' The Gilchrist Lectures 

 have been so successful that our audiences very much prefer courses 

 of unconnected lectures on similar lines,' and I have not always been 

 successful in overcoming these difficulties. A large number of courses 

 of disconnected lectures, varied by jDerformances of popular entertainers, 

 are given every winter throughout the country. They are, no doubt, 

 useful as recreative entertainments and as counteractions to undesirable 

 attractions, but their educational influence would appear to be small, 

 and they may do occasional harm in discouraging educational endeavour 

 that might lead to higher achievement. These considerations have been 

 recognised by the trustees, who now insist in most instances on imposing 

 conditions as to work of higher educational value being oi'ganised as 

 the outcome of a course of lectures. 



The main conclusions to which the experience supplied by the 

 Gilchinst Tx^ctures would appear to point are consequently: — 



1. .\lthough tlic demand for popular lectures among the working- 



