October 24, 1902.] 



SCIENCE. 



659 



teachers from Dublin, Belfast, St. Andrews, 

 Edinburgh, Oxford, Cambridge and Lon- 

 don, a discussion as to the possibilities and 

 future of commercial education had to be 

 closured when the luncheon hour was far 

 passed. As is always the case, the few 

 papers which were of definite value for the 

 clearing up of disputed points in theory 

 attracted little attention. Among these 

 were Professor Morison's demonstration 

 that the prices of cereals measured in silver 

 in India had fluctuated at least as much as 

 English gold prices through the nineteenth 

 century, and Professor Chapman's careful 

 analysis of the possibilities and use of 

 sliding scales and other means of regulating 

 wages in relation to profits and of minimi- 

 zing their fluctuations. There were very 

 few statistical papers. The practical work 

 of the section is for the present concen- 

 trated in the investigation, which now 

 enters on its third year, of its committee on 

 the 'Economic Effect of Legislation Regu- 

 lating Women's Labor.' A long interim 

 report was presented, and two careful 

 papers were contributed on the recent his- 

 tory of administration. It seems probable 

 that the committee will accumulate a large 

 amount of first-hand evidence ; and it is so 

 constituted that all phases of opinion are 

 represented. On the whole, the section 

 shows signs of renewed vitality; the plat- 

 form and the room were generally well- 

 filled, the discussions were well sustained, 

 though not informing, and the communica- 

 tions showed careful and well-reasoned 

 work. 



The subjects which occupied most of the 

 time of the Section G (Engineering) wei'e 

 'education' and 'power.' The president. 

 Professor John Perry, professor of me- 

 chanics in the Science School at South 

 Kensington, has actively demanded for 

 some years past that the methods of teach- 

 ing young engineers should be improved. 

 Mathematics has been the point on which 



he has been most urgent ; and a committee 

 was appointed, with Professor Forsyth as 

 chairman, on his initiative, to consider how 

 mathematics can be better taught. This 

 year the address from the presidential 

 chair dealt with the subject of an engi- 

 neer's education more generally, and in- 

 sisted particularly on the continual use of 

 experiment by the student himself as dis- 

 tinguished from oral lecture or demonstra- 

 tion by the professor. Professor Perry's 

 address was subsequently made the subject 

 of discussion at a joint meeting of the 

 Engineering and Educational sections, 

 under the presidency of Professor Arm- 

 strong, in which several well-known scien- 

 tific men and engineers took part. In a 

 highly suggestive paper in this section Mr. 

 W. Taylor raised the question of what he 

 termed 'the science of the work-shop.' It 

 is the application of scientific knowledge 

 of the properties of matter to work-shop 

 processes, and the examination of the many 

 curious and important problems raised by 

 them. Instruction in this branch of science 

 is necessary for the mechanical engineer 

 and the artisan, in just the same way that 

 mathematics and dynamics are for the civil 

 engineer or the electrician. The questions 

 which have to be dealt with are in many 

 cases minute and abstruse, information on 

 them is scarce, and they do not form part 

 of any generally useful educational subject. 

 It is evident, however, that accurate knowl- 

 edge on such subjects as the properties of 

 cutting tools, of lubrication, of the thermal 

 treatment of steel, and the numberless other 

 processes carried on in our workshops, too 

 often only by rule of thumb, is of first-rate 

 importance to mechanical industries. In 

 the subject of power important papers were 

 read on gas-engines, on the combustion of 

 coal, and on the standing question of water- 

 tube boilers. Most of the considerations 

 were of a highly technical kind; but two 

 broad facts were clearly brought out— viz.. 



