764 



SCIENCE. 



[X.S. Vol. XVI. No. 411. 



who digs up plants to see how they are 

 getting on. But in my experience the 

 Anglo-Saxon boy can stand a verjf great 

 deal of mismanagement without permanent 

 hurt, and it can do no kind of boy any 

 very great harm to try him on engineering 

 for a while. Even R. L. Stevenson, whose 

 father seems to have been very persistent 

 indeed in trying to make an engineer of 

 him against his will, does not seem, to a 

 philistine like myself, to have been really 

 hurt as a literary man through his attend- 

 ance on Fleeming Jenkins's course at Edin- 

 burgh—on the contrary, indeed. It may 

 be prejudice, but I have always felt that 

 there is no great public person of whom I 

 have ever read who would not have bene- 

 fited by the early training which is suitable 

 for an engineer. I am glad to see that 

 Mr. Wells, w:hose literary fame, great as 

 it is, is still on the increase, distinguishes 

 the salt of the earth or saviors of society 

 from the degraded, useless, luxurious, 

 pleasure-loving people doomed to the abyss 

 by their having had the training of en- 

 gineers and by their possessing the engi- 

 neer's methods cf thinking. 



It may be that there are some boys of 

 great genius to whom all physical science 

 or application of science is hateful. I have 

 been told that this is so, and if so I still 

 think that only gross mismanagement of 

 a youthful nature can have produced such 

 detestation. For such curious persons en- 

 gineering experience is, of course, quite 

 unsuitable. I call them 'curious' because 

 every child's education in very early years 

 is one in the methods of the study of 

 physical science ; it is nature 's own method 

 of training, which proceeds successfully 

 until it is interfered with by ignorant 

 teachers who check all power of observa- 

 tion, and the natural desire of every boy 

 to find out things for himself. If he asks 

 a question, he is snubbed; if he observes 

 nature as a loving student, be is said to 



be lazy and a dunce, and is punished as 

 being neglectful of school work. Unpro- 

 vided with apparatus, he makes experi- 

 ments in his own way, and he is said to 

 be destructive and full of mischief. But 

 however inuch we try to make the wild ass 

 submit to bonds and the unicorn to abide 

 by the crib, however bullied and beaten into 

 the average schoolboy type, I cannot im- 

 agine any healthy boy suffering afterwards 

 from part of a course of study suitable 

 for engineers, for all such study must fol- 

 low nature 's own system of observation and 

 experiment. Well, whether or not a mis- 

 take has been made, I shall assume the boy 

 to be likely to love engineering, and .we 

 have to consider how he ought to be pre- 

 pared for his profession. 



I want to say at the outset that I usually 

 care only to speak of the average boy, the 

 boy usually said to be stupid, ninety-five 

 per cent, of all boys. Of the boy said to 

 be exceptionally clever I need not speak 

 much. Even if he is pitchforked into 

 works immediately on leaving a bad school, 

 it will not be long before he chooses his 

 own course of study and follows it, what- 

 ever course may have been laid down for 

 him by others. I recollect that when in 

 1863 I attended an evening class held in 

 the Model School, Belfast, under the Sci- 

 ence and Art Department, on practical 

 geometry and mechanical drawing, there 

 was a young man attending it who is now 

 well known as the Eight Plonorable Wil- 

 liam J. Pirrie. He had found out for him- 

 self that he needed a certain kind of knowl- 

 edge'if he was to escape from mere rule-of- 

 thumb methods in shipbuilding work; it 

 could at that time be obtained nowhere in 

 the north of Ireland except at that class, 

 and of course he attended the class. For 

 forty-two years the Science and Art De- 

 partment, which has recently doubled its 

 already great efficiency, has been giving 

 chances of this kind to every clever young 



