52 00ENI8H SOIENTIFIO SOCIETIES. 



arm of the sea. This might have been surmised before, yet as 

 the record of actual operations, which in themselves were the 

 result of theory and geological reasoning, the results were 

 worthy of notice. 



Mr. Thubstan C. Peter, of Redruth, representing the Royal 

 Institution of Cornwall, contributed a very interesting paper on 

 the St. Just-in-Penwith Church, which will be found printed 

 with illustrations in subsequent pages of this Journal. 



Mr. A. NswiiAND Deakin, B.A., of Falmouth, for the Eoyal 

 Cornwall Polytechnic Society, read a paper on " Some Dangers 

 of Modern Education." The chief of them he considered to be 

 the utilitarian view of education (and consequent early speciali- 

 sation), cheap literature, the tendency to do everything for the 

 child, the pernicious influence and abuse of scholarships, a.nd 

 the danger connected with athletics. In regard to the first of 

 these, the utilitarian view of education, he thought parents too 

 often looked upon a boy's early years purely as a preparatory 

 school for teaching him how to secure a good position in after 

 life and to make money. Hence undue importance was attached 

 to such subjects as book-keeping and shorthand to the neglect 

 of Latin, French, mathematics, and science, which are far 

 superior in mental training, and had a more lasting influence 

 on character. It was, however, not so much what was taught 

 which mattered as the way in which it was done. The essence 

 and excellence of the public school system, which had developed 

 so rapidly in modern times, was personal contact between master 

 and boy. Grreat men were made not by clear conceptions of 

 the integral calculus, or a perfect knowledge of Latin or Greek 

 accidence, but by the influence and example of good and great 

 men. In connection with cheap literature, he condemned the 

 sensational story and the majority of the cheap illustrated papers. 

 The leading papers of the west were to be commended for sup- 

 pressing realistic details of crime. It was the tendency of 

 modern education to remove all difficulties from the boy's path, 

 whereas the real object of education was to develop a boy's 

 character, and to teach him habits of mind which will serve him 

 in future life. There could be no strength without strain, and 

 no achievement without effort. With regard to scholarships, it 

 was no doubt an excellent thing for the talented but poor boy to 



