790 
in the Swiss cantons. In Zurich a communal school 
is described the building for which cost sixty-six 
pounds per pupil, —five times the much-complained 
of London average. There are no fees, and ninety- 
seven and a half per cent of all the children of school 
age are said to attend schools of this type. The aver- 
age attendance is returned as ninety-five,—a re- 
markable contrast to the seventy-two per cent which 
was the average in England and Wales a year ago; 
and no proposal for the reduction of school expendi- 
ture can find a hearing as an election cry in Switzer- 
land. Without a mine, a canal, or a navigable river, 
Switzerland carries on extensive cotton and silk weav- 
ing, paper-making, and calico-printing works; and 
the report grows quite enthusiastic on the aniline- 
color works of Basle, an abundant supply of skilful 
chemists being thoroughly trained in such institutions 
as the Polytechnicum at Zurich, or the Bernoullianum 
at Basle. The report shows that the higher educational 
institutions are as various in the different countries 
as they are generous and complete in most. In the 
German empire there are twenty-four universities. 
The buildings for the Strasburg university are now 
nearly complete, and are to cost six hundred thou- 
sand pounds. The department of botany has had a 
sum of twenty thousand pounds devoted to it; that 
of physics, thirty thousand pounds; and that of chem- 
istry, thirty-five thousand pounds. The votes for 
Maintenance are similarly ample. ‘The rivalry be- 
tween the universities and the polytechnic schools is 
wholesome, if costly. New buildings are now being 
completed at Charlottenberg, in which the work of 
the old technical high school of Berlin will be carried 
on. There are many intermediate schools between the 
primary schools and the universities and polytechnic 
schools. The ‘ Fortbildungsschulen’ of Germany are 
very beneficial institutions. ‘‘ The work of the primary 
day schools is carried on in evening classes with a 
direct and practical bearing on the occupations upon 
which the pupils have entered. But in every coun- 
try, and notably in France and Belgium, there are 
night classes provided for the instruction of the in- 
dustrial classes in drawing and modelling, directly 
applied to decorative art, as well as in popular sci- 
ence and general knowledge. ‘Then, again, there 
are schools still more specialized for instruction in 
weaving, in practical mining, in dyeing, and in de- 
signing for every conceivable kind of artistic manu- 
facture. This teaching is often gratuitous; but, 
where fees are exacted, they are always small; and 
there is everywhere prevailing a system of bourses 
and scholarships by which meritorious pupils are 
enabled to carry on their studies. The state, the 
province, and the commune bear the charges in 
their allotted proportions.’? The use of museums 
and art-galleries, open on Sunday for the benefit of 
designers, is much dwelt on by the commissioners, 
who embody a recommendation of Sunday opening in 
their report. 
Mr Samuelson and his colleagues travelled at their 
Own expense, and have spared no exertion to place 
their facts before the public in a complete and useful 
manner. 
SCIENCE. 
34 
[Vou. IIL, No. 78. 
THE AGE OF STEEL. 
The creators of the age of steel (on Sir Henry Besse- 
mer, Sir C. W. Siemens, Sir Joseph Whitworth, 
Sir John Brown, Mr S. T. Thomas, and Mr. G. 
J. Snelus). By W. T. Jeans. New York, 
Charles Scribner’s sons, 1884. 314p. 8°. 
In this little collection of biography, the au- 
thor has given a very interesting, and we may 
presume thoroughly authentic, account of the 
lives and the achievements of the great engi- 
neers who have during the past generation, 
1850 to 1880, become famous as the ‘ creators” 
of the age of steel.’ 
The list given by Mr. Jeans includes 
Messrs. Bessemer, Siemens, Whitworth, 
Brown, Thomas, and Snelus, but omits Mr. 
Mushet (in regard to whose claims a somewhat 
sharp controversy is now going on in the Eng- 
lish periodicals), and makes no mention of 
two great American claimants for hardly less 
honor than is indisputably due to Bessemer 
himself, — Mr. Kelly, the contemporaneous 
inventor of the pneumatic process; and Mr. 
Holley, the great engineer, who by his won- 
derful ingenuity in the development of the 
details of the mechanical processes involved, 
and by his exceptional genius for designing 
automatic and efficient machinery, brought up 
the productiveness of our American establish- 
ments to double and treble that of those of 
European construction, and, in some cases, to 
several times the magnitude of output for which 
they were originally calculated. 
The sketch of Sir Henry Bessemer is par- 
ticularly full and satisfactory ; and the author 
evidently feels unlimited admiration for the 
man, as well as for his work. He outlines 
the career of the exiled Anthony Bessemer, 
the father of Sir Henry, whose expulsion from 
France gave to Great Britain a family of» 
whose achievements the world has learned to 
speak as those of its greatest benefactors. 
The father was no less ingenious than the son, 
and was famous, in his day, for his success in 
the arts of the gold-refiner and of type en- 
graving and founding. 
The son, now Sir Henry Bessemer, was born 
in England in 18138, and at a very early age 
exhibited his predilection for mechanics, and 
especially for its more artistic branches. He 
became a modeller, a designer, and an en- 
graver, and invented new processes for use in 
the stamp-office, that were admired both for 
their singular ingenuity and for their efficiency. 
Losing the hoped-for reward for these inven- 
tions through those delays and those soulless 
methods characteristic of government offices, 
Py}! 
Bees 
