ADVICE TO STUDENTS.

Colonist, Volume LI, Issue 12484, 10 March 1909, Page 3

ADVICE TO STUDENTS.

Sir W. H. Preece, the distinguished telegraph engineer, has' been, giving some sound advice to students. It is this:. That if a lad wishes to succeed in this world he must satisfy himself as to. the one thing in which he is going to make hismark, and not go fooling and meddling . about with many things. Sir William's first scientific lesson came to him when he was eight. He was walking with his father on the .banks of the river at his native place, Carnarvon, when they heard the sound of a blast in the slate quarries in the mountains eight miles away, and he asked his parent how it was that they could hear sound from such a distance. "Look, here, my boy," said Mr Preece, "see how the water is disturbed,'' and he threw a stone into the river. /'See how I have excited the waves in it, and how these waves progress in circles with definite velocity. Put your hand into the water, and you will feel the waves break against it, as I. do now," and he suited the action to the word. "The air, although you cannot see it, is as material as the water. You feel it in every puff of wind, and see it in every bending bough. Waves pf air have been excited by the explosion of gunpowder in the quarry, and they have speeded her, broken inside your ear, and have given you that sensation which we call sound." Sir .William was the first man to speak to Queen Victoria over the telephone. When the phonograph came into existence, Sir William exhibited it at a meeting of the Royal Society in London, and one well-known '- ecclesiastic present turned to a friend and exclaimed/^ 'l emphatically say it; is disgraceful that theltoyal Society should allow ventriloquists inhere!''