32 Canadian Record of Science. 



a common interest in the intellectual glories of their race, 

 and ought, in science at least, to constitute part and parcel 

 of a common empire, whose heart may beat in the small 

 islands of the Northern seas, but whose blood circulates in 

 all her limbs, carrying warmth to them and bringing back 

 vigour to us. . . . No doubt science, wbich is only a form 

 of truth, is one in all lands, bat still its unity of purpose and 

 fulfilment received an important practical expression by 

 our visit to Canada. This community of science will be 

 continued by the fact that we have invited Sir William 

 Dawson, of Montreal, to be our next President at Birming- 

 ham." 



The four next sections of the address are devoted to the 

 relations of Science to the State, to Secondary Education, 

 to the Universities, and to Industry. Into the details of Sir 

 Lyon Playfair's subject I have no intention of following 

 him : I shall merely select such remarks as have special bear- 

 ing upon the educational problem of Canada, — a problem 

 which she has hitherto attempted to solve by following in 

 the wake of the mother country and adopting, with little 

 alteration, a system commenced before science in the 

 modern sense was thought of, and continued because 

 education in Great Britain is still too much regarded as 

 the luxury of the few rather than a necessary training for 

 the many. 



''How is it," Sir Lyon Playfair asks, "that in our great 

 commercial centres, foreigners — German, Swiss, Dutch, and 

 even Greeks — push aside our English youth and take the 

 places of profit which belong to them by national' inherit- 

 ance ? How is it that in our colonies, like those in South 

 Africa, German enterprise is pushing aside English incapac- 

 ity ? How is it that we find whole branches of manufac- 

 tures, when they depend on scientific knowledge, passing 

 away from this country, in which they originated, in order 

 to engraft themselves abroad, although their decaying roots 

 remain at home. The answer to these questions is that our 

 systems of education are still too narrow for the increased 

 struggle of life." 



Too much attention is paid purely to Latin and Greek, 



