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FOR GENERAL READERS. 



Vol. I. — No. i8. (New Series:) 



FRIDAY, MAY 4th, if 



rWeekly, Price 3d. 

 L By Post. Sjd. 



Current Events 



Scientific Table Talk 



Moving the Brighton Beach Hotel 



(illus.') 



Foraminifera, — II. (illus.') 



The Wintering ofWater Weeds 



Ceneral Notes 



Optical Illusions (illus.) 



The City Artesian Weil-Boring 

 Absorbent Qualities of Charcoal 

 Natural History : 



The Angler Fish or Fishing Frog 

 (illus.) ... 



Fire Flies 



The Herring Fisheries 



CURRENT EVENTS. 



Secondary Education. — In supporting Mr. Acland's 

 motion in the House of Commons, to the effect that the 

 attention of the Government should be no longer limited 

 to primary education, Mr. John Morley made a very 

 telling speech. He based his remarks on three kinds of 

 authority, the man of science, the man of business, and 

 the man of letters. For the man of science he took 

 Professor Huxley, who had said ; " The organisation of 

 industrial and commercial education is not the least of 

 the great problems which await the future. That this 

 problem has to be solved under penalty of national ruin 

 proves to be no longer a mere alarmist fancy." That 

 was the opinion of the man of science. As the man of 

 business he quoted Mr. Swire-Smith, whose recent paper 

 on technical education we recently reported : " In a large 

 proportion of the northern manufacturing towns there 

 are no really secondary schools at all. Such middle-class 

 ■schools as exist are graded, not according to educational 

 standards, but according to the social grades of the 

 scholars ; the result being that instead of all the children, 

 as in every other country, receiving their elementary 

 education in the public schools, the larger ratepayers, 

 for fear of contact with those below, send their children 

 to private schools, where they obtain inferior elementary 

 instruction at a higher price, supplemented by extras 

 which in too many instances do not represent any solid 

 teaching." For the man of letters Mr. Morley quoted the 

 following pithy remarks of the late Mr. Matthew Arnold : 

 " Our middle classes are among the worst educated in 

 the world. The education of the mass of the middle 

 classes is vulgar and unsound. Our body of secondary 

 schools is the most imperfect and unserviceable in 

 civilised Europe. Our middle-class is the worst-schooled 

 in civilised Europe." 



Mr. Morley very truly remarked that, after this consen- 

 sus from so many different sources, we need no longer time 

 to convince ourselves of the existence of the want which 

 we have to remedy. The practical question is, what is to 

 be done ? It is no doubt eminently desirable that 

 means should be adopted for ascertaining what kind of 

 work a school is doing. It is true that many schools are 

 examined annually by the Oxford and Cambridge 

 Schools Examination Board, and that others adopt the 

 local examinations ; but it is notoriously the fact that 

 only picked scholars are sent up for these. To remedy 

 this and other defects, it is proposed to have a Minister 

 of Education, whose duty it would be to keep up a con- 

 stant pressure in the direction of instructed public 

 opinion, so as to focus the information on educational 

 subjects. It should also be his business to judge the 

 direction in which the educational indications of the time 

 are tending, and by degrees to force on those bodies 

 which do not take voluntary action, a modification of 

 their system in the desired direction. Many other ques- 

 tions naturally suggest themselves for consideration, and 

 not the least among them is some system for weeding 

 out incompetent teachers. Unfortunately, they are very 

 numerous, for at present any one who has made a failure 

 of life thinks himself fully competent to teach. 



Electric Lighting Fire Risks. — The Society of Tele- 

 graph Engineers and Electricians has just issued a very 

 useful set of rules and regulations for the prevention of 

 fire risks arising from the use of electricity for lighting 

 purposes. They are not intended to supersede the 

 detailed rules which fire offices may issue for their own 

 protection, but rather for the guidance of those who 

 possess or propose to have electric lighting apparatus. 

 As regards " conductors," they must have a sectional 

 rea and conductivity so proportioned to the work they 



