804 Transactions.— Miscellaneous. 
striking any plane surface at a fair right angle, but exhibiting infinitely 
more irregularity in its course than even a body of water; how easily that 
may be deflected it is needless to state, the fact is obvious to any one 
who has watched the current of a tide or river. This attribute of water is, 
à fortiori, that of the more elastic fluid—air—and hence it is that I think 
it open to grave doubt whether, even if we grant that the wind may move 
at the immense velocity asserted, it really exerts that dynamical pressure, 
on a given plane area, which, ceteris paribus, we should be led from 
such velocity to predicate. 
This paper already has exceeded due limit as to length, and I must 
defer the further investigation of the subject to a second paper. 
Art. XXVIIL.— Elements of Mathematics. By James Apaus, B.A. 
[Read before the Auckland Institute, 4th September, 1876.] 
Wuen Peter the Great determined to rouse his subjects to the active life 
and business habits of the people of England and Prussia, he began by 
removing impediments. He wished his people to become skilful workmen 
and mechanics ; and it was evident that the Russian of his time, with his 
long flowing robe and his pendulous beard, could not work at the forge or 
the bench. To remedy this, Peter stationed men at the city gates, each 
armed with a pair of shears, who cut off the long skirts and sacred beard 
of all those who passed through the gates. 
This was the first step in giving them a mechanical education, and the 
effect he produced, in raising his people to the level of other European 
nations, has always been a subject of admiration. 
A similar course was adopted, in the matter of education, after the 
French Revolution; when the School Commissioners dismissed, in a 
summary manner, the teachers of the schools and colleges, and flung after 
them, so to speak, the golden legends, controversial treatises, Aristotle’s 
Ethies, and Euclid’s Elements; not that they felt no reverence for these 
books, but because a new era had arrived, when practical knowledge had 
taken the place of speculative, and when it was of paramount inportance 
that the students should reach, by the shortest and plainest route, the 
wide range of learning that was now for the first time opened to the 
human mind. 
The object of education to their mind was to study the nature of things, 
with the view of adding to the comfort and happiness of man, and not to 
learn to dispute in the argumentative manner of ancient philosophers. 
