NOVEMBEK 14, 1902.] 



SCIENCE. 



767 



was so much benefit for the average stu- 

 dent whose early education had almost 

 unfitted him for engineering studies. To 

 worji quantitatively with apparatus is good 

 for all students, but it is absolutely neces- 

 sary for the average student, and, as I said 

 before, there was no apparatus. Also the 

 average student cannot learn from lectures 

 merely, but needs constant tutorial teach- 

 ing, and the professor had no assistant. 



Anybody who wants to know what kind 

 of engineering school there ought to be in 

 such a college as this can see excellent 

 specimens (sometimes several in one town) 

 in Glasgow, Birmingham, Liverpool, Lon- 

 don, Manchester, Leeds, Bristol, Notting- 

 ham, Bdinbi;rgh and other great cities. 

 There the fortunate manufacturers have 

 given many hundreds of thousands of 

 pounds for instruction in applied science 

 (engineering). In America the equipment 

 of such schools is much more thorough, and 

 there are large staffs of teachers, for for- 

 tunate Americans have contributed tens 

 of millions of pounds for this kind of 

 assistance to the rising generation. Ger- 

 many and Switzerland compete with Amer- 

 ica in such preparation for supremacy in 

 manufacture and engineering, and nearly 

 every country in the world is more and 

 more recognizing its importance as they 

 see the great inventions of Englishmen 

 like Faraday and Perkin and Hughes and 

 Swan developed almost altogether in those 

 countries which believe in education. Even 

 one hundred thousand pounds would pro- 

 vide Queen's College, Belfast, with the 

 equipment of an engineering school worthy 

 of its traditions and position, and Belfast 

 is a city in which many large business for- 

 tunes have been made. 



It is interesting to note that the present 

 arrangements of the Royal University of 

 Ireland, with which this college is affiliated, 

 are such that most of the successful gradu- 

 ates in engineering of Queen's University 



would now be debarred from taking the 

 degree. Even in London University, Latin 

 is not a compulsory subject for degrees in 

 science ; Ireland has taken a step backwards 

 towards the Middle Ages at the very time 

 when other countries are stepping forward. 



Well-equipped schools of applied sci- 

 ence are getting to be numerous, but I am 

 sorry to say that only a few of the men who 

 leave them every year are really likely to 

 become good engineers. The most impor- 

 tant reason for this is that the students 

 who enter them come usually from the 

 public schools; they cannot write English; 

 they know nothing of English sub.iects; 

 they do not care to read anything except 

 the sporting ne-ws in the daily papers ; they 

 cannot compute ; they know nothing of 

 natural science; in fact, they are quite 

 deficient in that kind of general education 

 which every man ought to have. 



I am not sure that such ignorant boys 

 would not benefit more by entering works 

 at once than by entering a great engineer- 

 ing school. They cannot follow the college 

 courses of instruction at all, in spite of 

 having passed the entrance examination 

 by cramming. Whereas after a while they 

 do begin to understand what goes on in a 

 workshop ; and if they have the true engi- 

 neer 's spirit, their workshop observation 

 will greatly correct the faults due to stupid 

 school work.* 



Perhaps I had better state plainly my 

 views as to what general education is best 

 for the average English boy. The public 

 schools of England teach English through 

 Latin, a survival of the time when only 

 special boys were taught at all, and when 

 there was only one language in which 

 people wrote. Now the average boy is also 



* When I was young I remember that there 

 were many agricultural colleges in Ireland; they 

 have all but one been failures. Why? Because 

 the entering pupils were not prepared by early 

 education to understand the instruction; this had: 

 done as much as possible to unfit them. 



