402 Transactions, —Müscellaneous, 
We may depend upon it that the movement io England is full of 
vitality, and will grow to large dimensions. England's industrial supre- 
macy depends upon her furnishing her artizans with a proper technical 
education, which they have hitherto lacked, and she cannot afford to let that 
education be either imperfect or confined within a limited circle of students. 
The Government have taken the matter in hand, and in 1880 appointed a 
Royal Commission, which I believe has not yet sent in its final report, **to 
enquire into the instruction of the industrial classes of certain foreign 
countries in technical and other subjects, for the purpose of comparison 
with that of corresponding classes of this country ; and into the influence 
of such instruction on manufacturing and other industries at home and 
abroad.” 
England, it must be remembered, although of all countries the most 
interested in the technical education of artizans, has been the last to take 
up the subject. echnical schools have existed in Germany for a long 
period ; indeed, the system recently inaugurated in England is, I believe, 
modelled upon the Bavarian system. France possesses several good 
technical schools, the principal one, viz., the School of Arts and Trades at 
Paris, having been founded so far back as 1857. Switzerland has also a 
fine Polytechnic School in Zurich, which in 1879 was attended by as many 
as 1,000 students. Sweden is also well supplied in this way, there being 
technical schools of various grades, so as to suit different classes of work- 
men, the course of instruction being expanded or contracted with the object 
of meeting the pecuniary means and leisure times at the disposal of the 
persons attending the classes. Even in Russia, which is commonly 
supposed to be backward in educational appliances, technical education 
has not been forgotten. There is a large technical school at Moscow, while 
in some of the Government factories classes have been formed ander the 
auspices of the Government for the purpose of furnishing technical instruc- 
tion to the artizans. The proprietors and directors of some of ihe larger 
factories on the Continent have opened technical classes for the benefit of 
the hands in their employ; in fact, throughout the Continent, wherever 
manufactures are carried on io any extent, means of some kind exist for 
giving to artizans and apprentices io trades a special training suited to 
their ordinary avocations, and calculated to enable ihem to perform their 
daily tasks with an amount of intelligence and skill which cannot be 
expected from workmen who have aot enjoyed the advantage of « technical 
education. 
The Continental Governments recognize what ihe New Zealand Govern- 
ment, fairly zealons as i has shown itself in ihe promotion of new 
industries, has overlooked, viz., that if manufacturing industries are to 
