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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XII. No. 304. 



the hydrogen evolved when an acid acts 

 upon them. 



Many other exercises of a similar nature 

 will readily suggest themselves, and in ar- 

 ranging the course every effort should be 

 made to induce the student to consult orig- 

 inal papers and to avoid as far as possible 

 any tendency to mere mechanical work. 



The exact nature of such a course must, 

 however, necessarily be left very much in 

 the hands of the teacher, and the details 

 will no doubt require much consideration ; 

 but I feel sure that a course of practical in- 

 organic chemistry, could be constructed 

 which, while teaching all the important 

 facts which it is necessary for the student 

 to know, will, at the same time, constantly 

 tend to develop his faculty of original 

 thought. 



Supposing such a course were adopted 

 (and the experiment is well worth trying), 

 there still remains the problem of how the 

 student who has had this kind of training 

 is to be examined. 



With regard to his theoretical work there 

 would be no difficulty, as the examination 

 could be conducted on much the same lines 

 as at the present time. In the case of the 

 practical examination I have long felt that 

 the only satisfactory method of arriving at 

 the value of a student's practical knowledge 

 is by the inspection of the work which he 

 has done during the whole of his course of 

 study, and not by depending on the results 

 of one or two days' set examination. I 

 think that most examiners will agree with 

 me that the present system of examination 

 in practical chemistry is highly unsatisfac- 

 tory. This is perhaps not so apparent in 

 the case of the qualitative analysis of the 

 usual simple salt or mixture ; but when the 

 student has to do a quantitative exercise, 

 or when a problem is set, the results sent in 

 are frequently no indication of the value of 

 the student's practical work. Leaving out 

 of the question the possibility of the stu- 



dent being in indifferent health during the 

 short period of the practical examination, 

 it not infrequently happens that he, in his 

 excitement, has the misfortune to upset a 

 beaker when his quantitative determina- 

 tion is nearly finished, and as a result he 

 loses far more marks than he should do for 

 so simple an accident. 



Again, in attacking a problem he has 

 usually only time to try one method of so- 

 lution, and if this does not yield satisfac- 

 tory results he again loses marks ; whereas 

 in the ordinary course of his practical work, 

 if he were to find that the first method was 

 faulty he would try other methods until he 

 ultimately arrived at the desired result. 



It is difficult to see why such an unsatis- 

 factory sj'stem as this might not be replaced 

 by one of inspection, which I think could 

 easily be so arranged as to work well. 



A student taking, say, a three years' 

 course for the degree of Bachelor of Science 

 might be required to keep very careful 

 notes of all the practical work which he 

 does during this course, and in order to 

 avoid fraud his notebook could from, time 

 to time be initialed by the professor or 

 demonstrator in charge of the laboratory. 

 An inspection of these notebooks could then 

 be made at suitable times by the examiners 

 for the degree, by which means a very good 

 idea would be obtained of the scope of the 

 work which the student had been engaged 

 in, and if thought necessary a few questions 

 could easily be asked in regard to the work 

 so presented. Should the examiners wish 

 to further test the candidate by giving him 

 an examination, I submit that it would be 

 much better to set him some exercise of the 

 nature of a simple original investigation, 

 and to allow him two or three weeks to 

 carry this out, than to depend on the hur- 

 ried work of two or three days. 



The object which I had in view in writ- 

 ing this address was to call attention to the 

 fact that our present system of training in 



