bodies, is a dead letter. Otherwise than under this Act, it makes no provision whatever for the education of the mining population.

Should Mr. Forster's Education Bill become law in its present form, which leaves each district to judge whether parents shall or shall not be compelled to send their children to school, then the children in the mining districts of the North and of Cornwall will probably learn the elements of reading, writing, and arithmetic. We wish we could expect as much with regard to Staffordshire. The Revised Code must, however, be re-revised before even the former will, as a matter of course, have the opportunity of learning something of the laws of nature on which their safety depends.

As to the persons responsible for the conduct of such hazardous works, to require of them the rudiments not of a scientific but of the most ordinary literary instruction would, according to Mr. Bruce (perhaps rightly for some few years to come, and in certain localities), disqualify unfairly, and without benefit to the community, men who may be competent, though illiterate. We hope that the example set by those West countrymen, who, in addition to their hard day's labour underground, attend the science classes of the Miners' Association of Cornwall and Devon with assiduity and success may, after a time, be followed elsewhere.

The duty of "producing an amount of ventilation in collieries, adequate to dilute and render harmless noxious gases to such an extent that the working-places and roads shall be in a fit state for working and passing," is enforced more peremptorily under the bill than according to the existing law, inasmuch as the proof of its fulfilment is, in the event of an accident, to rest with the owner, instead of being taken for granted unless disproved. Strangely enough both the masters and the miners object to this condition as too stringent. Another provision which renders owners and agents, like the men, liable to imprisonment for breach of rules is more likely to pass, although the objection has been raised that it might lead to the incarceration of the Secretary for the Colonies. Why he should not be imprisoned, if he were to entrust the management of his mines to incompetent managers, does not appear very clearly. We suspect that the locking up of Monsieur Flachat, the Chief Engineer of the Chemin de l'Ouest, after a great railway accident in France, has contributed in no slight degree to the safety of railway passengers in that country.

No change is to be made in the system of colliery inspection, for two reasons: It is supposed, first, that to inspect every mine carefully and at short intervals would require 200 competent officials. This is an evident exaggeration, and one which it is scarcely to be expected that the present body of inspectors will take much trouble to dissipate. At any rate, when it appears that the number of mines of South Staffordshire and Worcestershire VOL. VII.

(Mr. Baker's district) is returned at 550, and on comparing it with the returns of the Keeper of Mining Records, we find that more than two hundred of that number have ceased working (many of them for six or seven years and longer), this aspect of the question would appear to require further investigation.

The second objection, if valid, would be more formidable. It is argued that the responsibility of the actual managers of collieries would be diminished if a more close and systematic supervision by government inspectors were attempted. Doubtless it would be a mistake to exonerate an incompetent manager on the certificate of an equally incompetent government official. This is not what is wanted, but that the inspectors should have such a knowledge of the condition, as to discipline and safety, of every mine in their district as a personal inspection can alone afford. Where this is honestly attempted, as in Mr. Brough's (the South-western) district (and we mention Mr. Brough's case as an example and not as a solitary instance), the solicitation and advice of a man of large experience and of sound acquirements would tend to bring the practice of inferior managers up to the best standard of their own and other localities.

We are not so sanguine as to suppose that any degree or quality of inspection will prevent a recurrence of lamentable catastrophes. With the increase in depth of our coal mines the frequency of the sudden and dangerous outbursts of gas necessarily increases; against them no management of details is of much avail without the faculty of increasing the supply of air almost indefinitely, now happily afforded by the exhausting fans of Lemielle, Guibal, and others, which are rapidly coming into use in the North of England and in South Wales. Another source of constant danger is the recklessness of the mining population, which will only be removed by such a change in their habits as time and education can alone produce.

But with all this a more vigilant supervision by the representatives of the central authority cannot fail to increase the good order and safety of collieries as it has done that of factories. It appears to us that the country cannot rest satisfied with the present pseudoinspection, or rather post-mortem revision, serving, as it does in nearly every instance, to show merely that the inspector had no knowledge whatever of the condition in any respects of the pit in which the fatal accident arose.

VII. ON PRACTICAL SCIENTIFIC INSTRUCTION.

By GEORGE GORE, F.R.S.

THE remarks in the following paper are directed more particularly to education in physical and chemical science, not because there are no other sciences to which they would apply, but because those are the sciences selected as illustrations of scientific education.

It is generally considered that of late years a more rapid progress has been made in trades and manufactures in America and in some of the countries of Europe, more particularly in Prussia, than in this country, and that this is chiefly due, not only to the existence of compulsory elementary education in some of those countries, but also largely to the more general diffusion of scientific knowledge amongst foreign workmen and directors of workmen. So far has this opinion spread amongst those who are best informed upon the subject, especially since the Paris Exhibition of 1867, that it is thought unless great efforts are made in this country to ensure a general and wide-spread knowledge of science, the prosperity of our manufactures must speedily decline.

To avert such a calamity "technical education" has been proposed, and much has been said as to the means of supplying it. "Technical education," in the fuller sense of the words, consists of two things, viz. education in a school and instruction in a manufactory; but in the narrower sense it means the practical knowledge and experience acquired during apprenticeship in a workshop.

The object of "technical education" is essentially practical—it is to make each pupil, whether intending to be a master or a workman, better able to fulfil the duties of the special occupation in which he is to be engaged; for instance, to make a worker in brass a better brass-worker; an iron-smelter a more skilful smelter; an electroplater a better plater; a farmer a better farmer, &c. ; and the means proposed for doing this is by a suitable course of scientific and technical culture at an early age. Ordinary school education is supposed by some persons to be only intended to impart such a general discipline of the mind as will fit a man for every employment, without fitting him specially for anything. Technical education, on the other hand, is more for the purpose of fitting a man for a special pursuit.

Some persons say technical skill is a quality which cannot be imparted, it is a gift of Nature. There is no man so great a genius that education will not improve him; skill in art does not come wholly of itself, any more than knowledge of science does. Under the present system multitudes of workmen of ordinary capacity in this country fail to learn because they have no proper teach

ing; we must not, therefore, trust to genius only, and the "rule of thumb," as we have hitherto done, but judiciously impart scientific instruction to minds of ordinary capacity as well as to others.

The education necessary for a workman cannot be completely supplied either in a school alone or in a workshop alone. The duties and pursuits of a school are incompatible with those of a manufactory, and it is not possible that a workshop should also be a school of science. In an ordinary school, boys should be taught the general scientific facts and principles upon which trades and manufactures are based; and in the manufactory they should learn the practical directions for working in their trades, and acquire experience in manipulation.

It is manifest that no scientific education, whether technical or otherwise, can be imparted except upon the basis of a sufficiently good elementary secular education; and as long as the elementary education in this country remains in its present extremely imperfect state, it is impossible for this nation adequately to advance in scientific knowledge, or keep pace with the progress of foreign intellect.

It may be asked,-At what point is the school education to stop and the workshop education to begin? This admits of a sufficient although not a precise answer: in a general way school education would cease where manufacturing manipulations commence, but this would vary with the kind of school. The relations of science to trade would be carried to a farther stage of development in a " trade school" than in a school of a different kind; and in courses of lessons or lectures on technology, than in ordinary scientific instruction; they would also usually receive further development in schools in a manufacturing district than in those of other places. In a usual way the technical portion of ordinary school education would include illustrations of the principles and facts of science by descriptions of manufacturing processes, by models and diagrams of apparatus used in manufactures, and by specimens of manufactured products in their different stages of development. It would also, in some schools, include a limited amount of practice in chemical analysis, but would not include actual manipulations by the pupils in manufacturing arts. In "trade schools" technical education might be carried to a greater extent: the pupils would be taught some of the practical working directions of various trades, the handling of ordinary tools, and the modes of manipulation of various substances, and thus such schools would form an intermediate stage between ordinary schools and the workshop. Experience in the production of manufactured articles for sale will probably always be obtained in a manufactory alone.

As I shall have occasion to use the words "science" and "art," I will first state what I mean by them :-A science consists of laws,

principles, and facts; an art consists of technical directions and manipulations; and the latter is in all cases based upon the former, although in some instances the connection between them may not be well understood. Thus we have the science of electricity, and the arts of electric telegraphy and of electro-plating based upon it; and the sciences of heat and chemistry, with the arts of ventilation, photography, soap-making, iron-smelting, &c., depending upon them. In science, the great aim is truth and accuracy; in art and manufacture the chief object is to produce the best practical result at the lowest possible cost.

Every special art or manufacture consists essentially of some particular process, or series of operations, generally reduced to the greatest degree of simplicity in order to lessen the cost of production. In each different trade or manufacture a knowledge of the process is implicitly embodied in a number of instructions and details with which each workman is supposed to be fully and familiarly acquainted. Each manufacture is an art, the methods of which are based upon definite scientific facts and principles. What an English manufacturer generally expects of a workman is not a knowledge of the science or sciences upon which his manufacture is based, but a knowledge of those empirical methods, and ready practical experience in their use. In accordance with this expectation an English workman usually possesses a knowledge of the empirical methods or directions of his trade, but rarely understands their scientific basis: for example, a brass dipper knows that the methods for cleaning a figured piece of brass is to dip it into aqua-fortis, but does not understand the general chemical relations of acids and metals, or the special chemical effects of aqua-fortis on brass. The empirical methods of his trade, without which a workman could not work at all, have of necessity always been taught him, but a knowledge of their scientific basis, which would enable him to work to the greatest advantage, has been greatly neglected.

In some cases this blind following of methods, sometimes called "the rule of thumb," is sufficient, though very imperfectly so, for the manufacturer's purpose, which is to make the production of his goods as much as possible a matter of routine; but in most trades the following of empirical rules alone very frequently does not lead to the desired perfect result, the articles produced are imperfect, and then it is that a knowledge of science is necessary to enable the manufacturer or his men to avert or correct the evil. In such cases under present arrangements the manufacturer frequently finds fault with the materials supplied to him, or he sometimes applies to a scientific man for advice. In many cases, also, the following of those rules does not lead in the best way to the desired result, the materials, time, or labour are not used in the most advantageous manner, and the cost of the finished article is thereby made too great.