58 



Anniversary Meeting. 



[Nov. 30, 



The Institution founded in 1851, under the title of the Government 

 School of Mines and Metropolitan School of Science applied to 

 Mining and the Arts, for the instruction of students in those branches 

 of Science which are indispensable to the Miner, the Metallurgist, 

 the Geologist, and the Industrial Chemist, has this year been organised 

 afresh, and, under its new title of the Normal School of Science and 

 Royal School of Mines, adds to its former functions the training of 

 teachers for the Elementary Science Classes under the Science and 

 Art Department, the multiplication of which, in recent years, is a 

 significant indication of the rapid spread of scientific instruction 

 throughout the country. 



The accommodation requisite for practical teaching being inadequate 

 in all cases and totally wanting in respect of many of the classes, in 

 the Museum of Practical Geology in Jermyn Street, and in the Royal 

 College of Chemistry in Oxford Street, all the instruction, except that 

 in Mining, has been transferred to the Science Schools at South 

 Kensington. The staff of Professors and Lecturers has been in- 

 creased, and provision has been made for the teaching of various 

 important subjects, such as Mathematics, Drawing, Botany, and the 

 Principles of Agriculture, which were either omitted, or insufficiently 

 represented, in the original programme of the school. 



Under its new organisation, the Normal School of Science and 

 Royal School of Mines will not merely supply from among its 

 associates persons highly qualified to apply the principles of science 

 to the Mining, Metallurgical, Chemical, and Agricultural industries of 

 the country, and properly trained science teachers. ; but, through the 

 exhibitions attached to the yearly examinations of the Science and 

 Art Department, it will place within reach of promising young 

 students in all parts of the country, whose means do not enable them 

 to obtain the benefits of a University education, such a training as will 

 enable them to ti.vn their natural abilities to account for the advance- 

 ment of science and the improvement of its applications to industry. 

 Under the latter point of view, the instruction given in the Normal 

 School of Science will lead up to the special technical training of the 

 Central Institute of the Guilds of the City of London. 



Under the auspices of the City and Guilds of London Institute, 

 further progress has been made during the past year in the promotion 

 of Technical Education. It will be remembered that the work at pre- 

 sent undertaken by the Institute embraces the establishment of a 

 Technical Science School in Finsbury, a Technical Art School in 

 Keimiugton, a Central Institution or Higher Technical College in 

 Kensington, the subsidising of existing institutions, affording facilities 

 for Technical Instruction and the encouragement of existing classes 

 in the manufacturing centres by the grants paid to teachers on the 

 results of the Technological Examinations. 



