Scientific Teaching.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 4911, 21 January 1889, Page 2

Scientific Teaching.

Sir John Lubbock, in distributing the prizes at the Leeds School of Science and Art recently, said that some people looked upon science ns something remote, unpractical, and transcendental. They forgot how much they owed to science because some of its wonderful gifts had become familiar parts of their everyday life. At the recent celebration of the sexcentenary of Peterhouse College, near the close of a long dinner, Sir Frederick Bramwell was called on some time after midnight to return thanks for applied science. He excused himself from making a long speech on the ground that though the subject was almost inexhaustible, the only illustration which struck him under the circumstances as appropriate was the application of a domestic lueifer to a bedroom candle. As a Swiss statesman recently said, “The whole qf our children will start in life burdened with poverty, but we are determined that they shall not be burdened with ignorance also.” It was not, however, the workmen only who required technical training, it was equally if not more necessary for the master also. They could not expect progress in art as in science, but it was remarkable that while artists had long recognised the necessity of studying anatomy, and there had been from the commencement a Professor of Anatomy in the Royal Academy, it was only of late years that any knowledge of botany or geology had been considered desirable, and even now their importance was by no means generally recognised. He had been ridiculed for suggesting that in the next generation artizans might be the great readers. But he stood to his guns, for the best books were the cheapest. They would not, he trusted, look upon examinations and prizes as the great object of their study. Their great object should be to make themselves more worthy and others more happy. They were laying up stores of happiness for the years when active life would be no longer possible. Their life was surrounded with mystery, their very world was a speck in the endless space, and not only the span of their own individual life, but that of the whole human race was as it were but a moment in the eternity of time. They could not imagine any origin, nor foresee the conclusion. But although they could not as yet perceive any line of research which could give them a clue to the solution, in another sense they might hold that every addition to their knowledge was one small step to great revelations.