78 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. VIII. No. 185. 



and Mr. Quirof Harlan, physicist, from the 

 United States Coast and Geodetic Survej'. 

 Norwegians experienced in Arctic work make 

 up the remainder of the party of ten. Mr. 

 Wellman proposes to reach the Pole by a sledg- 

 ing expedition over the pack ice. At Archangel 

 75 sledge dogs, procured in Siberia, will be 

 taken on board. At Cape Flora, on the south- 

 ern coast of Franz Josef Land, two or three men 

 will be left, while others will search for Andree 

 before the steamer returns in August. Half- 

 a-dozen of the party, with small canvas boats, 

 sledges and dogs, are to push on at once for the 

 northern parts of the archipelago, passing suc- 

 cessively the point reached by Mr. Jackson, the 

 spot where Dr. Nansen and Lieutenant Johan- 

 sen wintered, and Cape Fligely, lat. 82°, 

 reached by Payer in 1874. Somewhere beyond 

 82° they intend to build a hut to winter in, 

 shooting polar bear, seal and walrus for food. 

 Next spring they propose to set out on a sledge 

 journey toward the Pole. If the conditions are 

 unfavorable they will wait till the second 

 spring. They will have about 120 days in 

 which to reach the Pole, if possible, and return 

 to the land, requiring an average travel of nine 

 to ten statute miles per day. They take with 

 them a rubber pneumatic boat, which inflates 

 with a pump like a bicycle tire, and also a fold- 

 ing canvas boat, built on Mr. Wellman' s de- 

 signs, also sledges of metal, water-tight, so 

 built that they may turn over and over in 

 rough ice or float in the water without injury 

 to their contents. Each dog is to draw one 

 sledge, practically without assistance or driv- 

 ing by the men. 



At a meeting, on April 26th, of the select 

 committee of the British House of Commons, 

 on the Department of Science and Art, Sir 

 J. Norman Lockyer was the principal wit- 

 ness examined. He, as reported in the Lon- 

 don Times, spoke of the insufficiency of the 

 present collection of scientific objects, hav- 

 ing regard to the growing necessity of, and 

 demand for, scientific teaching. The Eoyal 

 College of Science, he pointed out, only taught 

 pure science. The various applications of sci- 

 ence to industry were not represented in their 

 teaching at all, and therefore it was not part of 

 their function to make recommendations with 



regard to this large area of possible museum 

 representation. He was perfectly aware that 

 there was scarcely any branch of applied sci- 

 ence which was not represented, more or less, 

 in the present collection, but what he said was 

 that the schemes of representation were very 

 dissimilar and must necessarily remain so. He 

 desired a considerable extension of the science 

 collection. To him it was unthinkable to sepa- 

 rate the schools from the museums. It was a 

 much better education for the student of science 

 to be turned into a laboratory, where he could 

 use the apparatus and see other people use it, 

 than to attend lectures. He had taken very 

 great interest in this matter, and some amount 

 of trouble, because it seemed to him that the 

 truth of what Professor Huxley used to preach 

 was coming home to them more and more every 

 day. That was that they were in front of an 

 industrial war, the result of which would be far 

 more serious to them than a mere national war. 

 In this industrial war it was no longer a ques- 

 tion of battleships and cruisers. It was a 

 question of schools. The schools were Ger- 

 many's battleships ; they in England had only 

 cruisers. So far as the British fleet was con- 

 cerned, it was supposed to be twice as strong 

 as the fleets of any two Powers. That might 

 be so, but educationally they were scarcely on 

 a level with Switzerland. They could not hope 

 to fight this struggle for existence unless they 

 had battleships, by which he meant thoroughly 

 developed scholastic institutions. 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL NEWS. 



EEPOBT OF THE COMMISSIONEE OF EDUCATION 

 FOB THE YEAR 1896-97. 



The first volume of the report of the Com- 

 missioner of Education for the year 1896-97 has 

 been published. The Commissioner, Dr. "W. T. 

 Harris, in his summary, states that 16,255,093 

 pupils were enrolled in the schools and colleges, 

 being an increase of 257,896 over the preceding 

 year. This increase was entirely in public in- 

 stitutions, there having been a decrease in the 

 total number attending private schools. The 

 Commissioner attributes this decrease to the con- 

 tinuance of what is called 'hard times,' but it 

 seems rather to be due to the improvement of 

 public institutions. Twenty years ago there 



