Amoc°tu,riSarm'j    British  Pharmaceutical  Conference.  537 
Bishop  Berkeley's  almost  forgotten  laudation  of  the  virtues  of  tar  was  a  true 
prophecy.    The  extent  to  which  this  w7onderful  industry  has  developed  is 
illustrated  by  the  fact  that  the  value  of  the  coal-tar  colors  produced  in  the 
year  1878  amounted  to  uo  less  than  three  millions  sterling.    Of  that  quantity 
two-thirds  was  produced  in  Germany,  and  though  almost  the  whole  of  the  raw 
material  has  been  supplied  from  England,  while  the  markets  for  the  finished 
products  are  chiefly  Bradford  and  Manchester,  the  superior  science  of  German 
chemists  has  enabled  the  manufacturers  of  that  country  to  establish  a  virtual 
monopoly  of  this  industry,  just  as  the  English  market  in  chemicals  of  all 
kinds  is  being  taken  possession  of  by  German  producers.    Although  this 
striking  illustration  of  the  way  in  which  certain  branches  of  British  manufac- 
turing industries  have  been  placed  at  a  disadvantage  and  forced  into  the 
background  points  to  a  deficiency  which  is  only  beginning  to  be  recognized,  it 
was  pleasant  to  hear  Mr.  Stanford  state  that  during  the  period  now  referred  to 
there  has  been  greater  progress  in  the  matter  of  education.    There  would  be 
real  ground  for  regarding  that  progress  with  satisfaction  if  it  were  the  case 
that  it  had  extended  over  the  entire  field  of  educational  work.    But  the  pro- 
gress made  has  been  almost  exclusively  confined  to  the  primary  education 
under  school  boards,  and  its  beneficial  effects,  great  as  they  will  no  doubt 
prove  to  be,  have  been  restricted  to  the  working  classes.    In  all  that  relates  to 
secondary,  technical  and  university  education,  the  progress  in  Great  Britain 
has  been  towards  a  condition  of  relative  barbarism.    While  Germany,  with  its 
twenty-three  universities  and  various  other  means  of  promoting  the  cultivation 
of  science  so  as  to  make  it  useful  and  a  matter  of  familiar  every-day  apprecia- 
tion by  the  public,  is  now  enjoying  in  all  branches  of  industry  the  well-earned 
fruits  of  patient  labor  during  the  past  century,  Great  Britain  has  only  eight 
universities  deserving  of  the  title,  and  of  those  four  belong  to  Scotland,  the 
entire  population  of  which  is  not  equal  to  London  alone.    It  is  to  the  educa- 
tional poverty  of  this  country  in  these  directions  that  we  must  look  for  an 
explanation  of  the  fact  that  we  are  being  outstripped  by  competitors  who 
actually  did  not  enter  upon  the  field  of  industrial  enterprise  until  a  few  years 
before  the  British  Pharmaceutical  Conference  was  founded.    Thanks  are  due 
to  Mr.  Stanford  for  having  in  his  address  so  prominently  directed  attention  to 
the  prevailing,  deficiencies  in  regard  to  secondary  and  scientific  education,  and 
to  the  urgent  necessity  for  their  being  efficiently  remedied.    At  this  point  of 
the  retrospect  a  question  naturally  arises  as  to  what  has  been  done  to  advance 
pharmaceutical  education,  and  though  Mr.  Stanford  generously  expresses  the 
opinion  that  it  has  kept  pace  with  progress  in  other  directions,  the  facts  which 
he  mentions  are  decidedly  not  in  accord  with  the  opinion  he  put  forward.  On 
the  contrary,  the  statements  contained  in  the  recent  report  made  by  Dr. 
Stevenson,  as  the  Government  Visitor  of  Examinations,  are  directly  opposed 
to  the  opinion  that  there  has  been  much  real  advance  in  pharmaceutical  edu- 
cation.   What  has  been  done  is  the  result  of  individual  effort  and  voluntary 
action.    It  has  been  hitherto  altogether  insufficient  to  leaven  the  mass  of  the 
pharmaceutical  body  or  to  justify  the  assumption  that  we  have  at  the  present 
time  anything  approaching  to  an  adequate  system  of  pharmaceutical  education. 
In  this  respect  there  has  been  but  little  advance  beyond  the  position  that 
obtained  when  the  British  Pharmaceutical  Conference  met  at  Edinburgh  in 
1871.    On  that  occasion  it  was  well  pointed  out  by  a  shrewd  Scottish  member 
