382 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
instruction in all branches of art, decorative and pictorial, and in 
twenty-three science subjects. 
At works such as Sir William Armstrong’s, at Elswick; Sir 
Joseph Whitworth’s; the Great Western Railway Works, at 
Swindon ; the London and North Western Railway Works, at 
Crewe ; and many similar establishments where large bodies of 
men are employed on high-class mechanical labour, the Science and 
Art Classes are doing an untold good, and are all that could be 
desired. 
Generally, at places like Elswick and Swindon, mechanical train- 
ing is taught by men perfectly conversant with the materials 
represented and dealt with, and the results of these masters’ efforts 
are entirely beyond the ordinary science masters in the same 
direction, and simply because the former have been technically 
educated, and can from experience and knowledge draw out the 
reflective powers of the pupils. I know of no better training for 
developing the early reflective powers than drawing as a science, 
and especially now since graphical methods have been invented for 
performing—or rather arriving at—results only accessible before by 
the higher mathematical processes. 
I am confident, however, that in allowing any teacher who has 
merely gone through the text-book to take such a subject as 
building construction up and teach pupils, with no further experi- 
ence, evil is being done. 
The examinations of the City and Guilds of London Institute, 
for the advancement of technical education, are intended to step | 
beyond the general of the science and art schools, and launch into 
the particular—the technological of twenty-six callings. 
These, with the efforts of the School Boards to teach needle- 
work and cooking, are the only means available for the spread of 
technical knowledge ; but too much attention is given to examina- 
tion, and too little to instruction, in those technical subjects, 
Teaching a boy to work at a craft requires as much skill and care 
as instilling the elementary subjects into his head; and, unlike 
the latter, one teacher cannot handle with the same facility a large 
number of pupils. Instruction in handicraft must be individual. 
At present next to nothing is done; at least, if done, it is done 
entirely from the good feeling of the men. A youth is pitch- 
forked into our large engine works for five years, two of which 
are spent in drudgery, from no desire of the employer probably, 
