MEETINGS OF SOCIETIES. 355 
and the time when our available forest resources are approaching 
exhaustion will be too late for remedial measures.” 
The second subject dealt with was the establishment of 
science and technical schools. The author advocates the “creation 
of a new type of school, in which literary and general intellectual 
training will be entirely subordinated to a training in scientific 
principles, and their practical application to the arts. Such 
science and technical schools would be designed primarily for 
the instruction of artisans engaged in various capacities in the 
manufacturing industries and arts of the city or locality. The 
teaching would presuppose a fair elementary education ; and the 
course would embrace instruction in drawing and design, practi- 
cal chemistry, metallurgy, elementary mechanics and engineer- 
ing, the practical applications of electricity, and such other 
subjects as might be found necessary. The teaching of a trade 
or profession should be no part of the aim of these schools, 
though many in the Colony appear to think that that is one of 
their principal functions. This notion is founded on a complete 
misapprehension of the design of a science and technical school, 
which we must regard not as a substitute for the workshop or 
factory, but as a distinct addition or supplement to what must 
first be learned there. Its aim is thus not to impart at first hand 
a knowledge of the processes of an art or manufacture, but to 
lead artisans who have gained this knowledge in the workshop 
to understand fully the scientific principles involved, thus super- 
seding the rule-of-thumb processes of the past by an intelligent 
and accurate knowledge of the qualities and operation of the 
materials handled and acted on. Attendance at the school 
would as a rule be accompanied by daily practice of an art or 
trade at the workshop or factory, and familiarity with the practi- 
cal routine of the latter would be presupposed in all the teaching 
of these institutions. Thus only can be secured that alliance of 
scientific principles and practice that is so much and so widely 
desired in our day, and to secure it the workshop is as necessary 
as the science school, and the science school as necessary as the 
workshop. 
“As it is mainly for the instruction of foreman artisans and 
craftsmen that science and technical schools are needed, it ap- 
pears that the course of instruction might for the most part be 
of a somewhat elementary character. Persons desirous of gain- 
ing such a ipecial knowledge of any art or industry as to qualify 
them to undertake the direction of the operations of a manu- 
facturing firm would need to add to the comparatively simple 
education of the science school, the more exhaustive and special- 
ised courses of study to be had at the chemical and other classes 
of a highly equipped modern university, such as with our petty 
local jealousies, and apathy to general interests, we are not likely 
to have in New Zealand "for many years to come. Now it 
science and technical schools, such as I have indicated in rough 
outline, are to be established, it is clear that the duty must be 
uudertaken by the government. Here we have no rich public- 
