SCIENCE AND COMMERCE.

Press, Volume LII, Issue 8994, 5 January 1895, Page 3

SCIENCE AND COMMERCE.

In an address delivered by Sir F. Bramwell on science to the successful students at the Westminster Technical Institute, he observed that when he was a boy his master taught him all he could teach, and that embodied a good deal of practical work, without much theory. The fact was that theory was not taught by his master, because he had no theory to teach. What they had secured in the institutions of the present day was not only a substitute for what was imparted in bygone days, but included a great deal of information which could not formerly be obtained. They now saw why they did certain things, and why certain results followed. Formerly, they only did what they were taught, because their forefathers had done the same things for generations. He advised his hearers not to despise the beginnings of science, trivial though they might seem at first. They should remember that it was not so rery long ago when a man In an Italian city found that, by a certain arrangeraent,ot metal platee.he icpuld cause a;frog^leg^qijrfcfcstJPeopte then said, Mlt might be v wonderful; i>nt' what waa the good of it?" Well, the good of it had since been amply demonstrated, and one of the illustrations of what might be trot from a new scientific fact was to be found in the incandescent electric light. Let them consider a recent case—namely, the discovery made by Professor Deirar in the production of very low temperatures. If he were asked what was the commercial good of liquid air, he could only reply-that he could not say at present. Twenty-years ago he could not have said what would be the commercial use of liquid carbolic acid; but at the present day a large trade was done in chat article. They might depend upon it that hardly anything could be discovered—unless it were the satellites of Mars—that would not have some value in. the ordinary purposes of life.