and later on, when the true nature of the object was recognized, to Kiel for general distribution. The star was photographed last night at Greenwich.

Its place for 1892'0 is 5h. 25m. 35. + 30° 21′. occur in the Bonn Maps.

It does not RALPH COPELAND. OBSERVATIONS OF MARS.-Publikationen des Astrophysikal ischen Observatoriums zu Potsdam, No. 28, contains the results of some observations of Mars, made by Dr. Lohse during the oppositions of 1883-84, 1886, and 1888. A series of measurements of the position-angle of the northern snow-cap has been made with the idea of accurately determining the direction of the polar axis of the planet. On February 8, 1884, the mean value obtained differed from Dr. Marth's ephemeris by o°216, being identical with that deduced from the corrected elements of the axis employed after 1884. In 1888 the distance of the centre of the northern snow-cap from the Pole was found to be 2° 39, and the mean correction of position-angle o° 896. Reproductions of thirty-six sketches of Mars made in 1884 and 1886 accompany the paper. These show the principal markings, but not the canals and minute details seen by that perspicacious astronomer Schiaparelli, although the instrument used was an 11-inch refractor. The sketches are combined to form a map, on which the position determined with special accuracy is indicated.

At the conjunction of Mars and Jupiter, in October 1883, a determination was made of the comparative intensities of the actinic rays emitted by the two planets. A series of photographs of these bodies was taken with exposures varying from one to twelve seconds, and these were compared with a scale derived from a series taken with an artificial source of light at various distances, and another derived from Vega. The actinic intensity of Jupiter's southern hemisphere was found to be 2176 times greater than that of the Martian surface, which, when the distances of the two planets from the sun are taken into account, gives 24'4: I as the relative albedos. The ratio of the amount of light emitted by the southern hemisphere of Jupiter to that emitted by the northern hemisphere was incidentally found to be as 1'192: 0'597.

SOLAR PROMINENCE PHOTOGRAPHY.-Some interesting recent results in the photography of solar prominences are stated by Prof G. E. Hale in the first number of Astronomy and AstroPhysics. In the first place, the line a little less refrangible than H, which Prof. Hale suggested was probably due to hydrogen, has been proved by M. Deslandres to have its origin in this element, by direct comparison with a Geissler tube. Prof. Young has also succeeded in photographing this line, which was first visually observed by him in 1880. With regard to the line at A 3888 73, which forms a double with the hydrogen line a (λ 3889 14) of the stellar series, Prof. Young has not found the duplicity which very often distinguishes the Kenwood Observatory photographs. The hydrogen line a occurs on eighteen plates, but it is only certainly single on two of them. And it is a sig. nificant fact that in one of these cases only the upper part of the prominence lines was photographed, the light from a short distance above the sun's limb being cut off by a diaphragm. There seems little doubt that the line is a true one, and not a false appearance brought about by the reversal of the hydrogen line on account of which it is apparently duplicated. Its origin, however, is unknown. Prof. Hale thinks that both H and K in prominences are due to calcium, the absence of the strong line at A 4226 3 being said to follow from its different appearance and behaviour in the arc, as compared with H and K. By a remarkable coincidence an eruption on July 9, 1891, was simultaneously photographed at Kenwood Observatory and visually observed by Herr Fenyi at Kalosca, Hungary. Copies are given of the drawing and photograph, and the general agreement in the form of the prominence is very striking.

RE-DISCOVERY OF BROOKS'S COMET (1890 II.).—A telegram from M. Perrotin to Prof. Krueger announces that Brooks's comet was found by M. Javelle, of Nice Observatory, on January 6 (Astr. Nach. 3074).

ELECTROTECHNICS.

I BEG to thank you for the great honour you have done me in electing me your President for this year-a year which the need for a new complete index of this Society's Journal marks Inaugural Address of Prof. W. E. Ayrton, F.R.S., President of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, delivered on January 28, 1892.

out as closing the second decade of its life; a year which sees the second thousand added to our roll of members; and a year which the Electrical Exhibition at the Crystal Palace distinguishes as inaugurating the second decade of electric lighting in Great Britain.

It has gradually become the custom for your incoming President to select, as the subject of his address, some investigation that has been engaging his attention. Following this custom, I purpose to-night to discuss an experiment in which, for the last nineteen years, I have taken some part--an experiment which, of all others, has been the one I have had most at heart-and that is, how best to train the young electrical engineer.

To some it may appear that I am treading on well-worn ground; but as the problem is one that is as yet by no means solved, and as it involves the preparation of the machine that is daily used alike by the dynamo constructor, the cable manufacturer, the central station engineer, and the lamp makerviz. the human machine-the problem of fashioning this tool so that it may possess sharpness, an even temper, moral strength, and a mental grain capable of taking a high polish, is one that, in truth, deeply concerns every member, every associate, every student of this Society.

It is only fifteen years ago since I wrote from Japan to my old and valued master, Dr. Hirst, then the Principal of the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, asking whether he thought that the time had come for starting in this country a course of applied physics somewhat on the lines of that given at the Imperial College of Engineering in Japan. He replied that England was not yet ripe for such an innovation-an opinion which appeared to be borne out by the fact that after the authorities at University College, London, had in 1878 actually advertised for applications for a new chair of "Technology," they decided that it would be premature to take the responsibility of creating such a Professorship.

But matters were advancing more rapidly than was imagined by collegiate bodies; for in that same year this most valuable report on technical education which I hold in my hand was issued by a Committee of the Livery Companies of London, based on the opinions expressed by Sir W. (now Lord) Armstrong, Mr. G. C. T. Bartley, Colonel (now General) Donelly, Captain (now Sir Douglas) Galton, Prof. Huxley, and Mr. (now Sir H. Truman) Wood. And although it is twelve years since this book was published, I can recommend it to your notice, for it supplies most interesting reading even at the present day.

Under the guidance of three joint honorary secretaries, Mr. John Watney, Mr. Sawyer, and Mr. (now Sir Owen) Roberts, the City and Guilds of London Institute for the Advancement of Technical Education started, with a name that was very long, but in a way that was very modest, to develop a "Trades School" in accordance with this report. They borrowed some rooms, but for use in the evening only, from the Middle Class Schools in Cowper Street, Finsbury, and decided to erect ultimately a chemical laboratory in that neighbourhood.

But neither the building of a physical nor even of a mechani cal laboratory formed any part of the scheme for this "Local Trades School." For at that time the teaching of the applications of physics to industry hardly existed, and certainly not its application to any electrical industry other than telegraphy. To make a start, however, in such teaching was most desirable, and therefore Dr. Wormell, the enlightened head master of the Cowper Street Schools, consented to give up the use of some rooms not merely during the evening, but also during the day, to enable Dr. Armstrong and myself to carry out our plan of fitting up students' laboratories with a small amount of apparatus kept permanently ready in position.

For the devotion of these rooms to the carrying out of this new experiment we must always feel grateful to Dr. Wormell, for it was necessarily accompanied by a reduction in the size of his school, and consequently by a pecuniary loss to himself.

The first laboratory course of the City and Guilds Institute was then advertised, and on January 9, 1880, three students presented themselves—a little boy, a gray-haired lame man, and a middle-aged workman with emphatic but hazy notions about the electric fluid.

In order to further utilize these rooms, the Institute sanctioned laboratory teaching during the day, and one of the cellars of the Cowper Street Schools was borrowed in order to fit up a gasengine, coned shafting, and a transmission dynamometer, obtained out of the funds of the Institute; an A Gramme dynamo

lent by Mr. Sennett, then one of the students; and two arc light dynamos for transmission of power experiments, lent by the Anglo-American Brush Corporation, whose cordial interest in the work of the City and Guilds Institute has been marked throughout. And as these dynamos were used, not for electric lighting, but as laboratory instruments for educational purposes, England can claim to have been one of the first in the field of teaching electrotechnics.

Rapidly grew these electrotechnical classes; soon the temporary laboratories in Cowper Street were overcrowded, espe cially as applied mathematics and mechanics, under Prof. Perry, were added to the subjects taught; the £3000 which had been set aside for the building of this "Local Trades School" grew into £35,000, thanks to the combined donations of the Drapers' Company and of the Institute, and in 1881 was laid the foundation-stone of the present Finsbury College.

During the many years that Prof. Perry and I were linked together, the work of either was the work of both; but now I wish to take this opportunity of acknowledging my personal debt of gratitude for the fund of suggestion which he put forth regarding the teaching of science through its practical applications the keynote of true technical education. The value of these suggestions you will fully appreciate, for they form the basis of those characteristic and attractive lectures familiar to so many of you who have been his pupils.

As we have seen, then, the present Finsbury College grew out of the "Local Trades School," and formed no part of the original scheme of the Institute. And it was because London was really in want of practical laboratory teaching about dynamos, motors, electric lamps, and engines, and because that want was supplied in a form suitable to the comprehension and to the pockets of workmen in the basement and cellars of the Cowper Street Schools, and last, but by no means least, because one of the Executive Committee of the Institute, Mr. Robins, strenuously exerted himself to further technical education in Finsbury, that the various electrical, physical, and mechanical laboratories now in Leonard Street, Finsbury, came into existence.

But the establishment of a Central Technical Institution "for training technical teachers, and providing instruction for advanced students in applied art and science," had been recommended in all the reports sent in to the Committee of the Livery Companies by the six authorities to whom I have referred. So that in the same year that the foundation stone of the Finsbury College was laid by the late Duke of Albany, that of the Central Technical Institution was laid by the Prince of Wales. And, if you will allow me to say so, the success of the latter institution has been no less marked than that of the former, for, in spite of the rather stiff entrance examination, the number of students who attend all four of the departments at the Central Institution is more than threefold what it was five years ago. In fact, in the mechanical and electrical engineering departments there are already about as many students under instruction as class room and laboratory accommodation will admit. Hence this year will see a considerable increase in the amount of apparatus and machinery, as well as in the space devoted to dynamos and motors, in Exhibition Road.

While, on the one hand, the rapid growth of the work of the Guilds Institute is no little due to the fact that the latter end of this century has ushered in the electric age of the world; the electrical industry of our country, on the other hand, is no little indebted to the aid so generously given by our City Companies to the teaching of electrotechnics. For the students who during the last eleven years have, for an almost nominal fee, worked in the electrical laboratories at Cowper Street, at the Finsbury College, and at the Central Institution, number several thousands, and nearly every electrical works, every place giving electrotechnical instruction throughout this country, employs some of them.

better and better ways of teaching the applications of science to industry.

And there need be no fear that with this freedom the teaching will become stereotyped, and gradually cease to deal with the living science of the factory, for, being bound by no code, we are able to vary our methods, our experiments, and our apparatus, according to the continually changing conditions of the profession. In order that the Guilds Institute should fulfil its aim, it is absolutely necessary that its teaching should keep pace with industrial progress. Now, even if it were possible for outside examiners, with fixed scholastic notions, to aid in securing this result, would not their efforts be superfluous? for are there not you, the employers of labour, to ultimately decide whether the human tool we fashion is, or is not, adapted to your require

ments?

Leaving now the consideration of the direct work of the City and Guilds Institute, including their extended system of technological examinations, at which last year 7322 candidates were examined in 53 different subjects at 245 different places in Great Britain and the colonies, the indirect results that have proceeded from the initiative of this Institute are even greater. For, while twelve years ago, education in applied science in this country was a tender little infant, requiring much watching and support, combined with constant encouragement, to-day Technical Education-with a capital T and a capital E, bear in mind is a stalwart athlete, the strong man on the political platform, exercising the minds of county councillors, and actually regarded as of more importance than the vested interests of the publican.

Until quite recently it was the technical education of the young engineer that had to be considered; but now the problem has become a far wider one, for the education of the British workman is being vigorously pushed forward, and I think that it has become incumbent on you-the representatives of the electrical profession-to express your decided opinion as to what this education of the electrical artisan ought to be.

The technical education snowball set in motion twelve years ago by the City Companies has been rolling-nay, bounding forward-so swiftly during the last year or two that probably some of you have hardly followed it in its rapid growth, both in size and speed. £30,000 has been spent on the Polytechnic in the Borough Road; the Charity Commissioners have already endowed this school with an income of £2500 a year, and it is hoped that before the building is opened, this income will have been doubled. £50,000 has been already promised for the Battersea Polytechnic, the Charity Commissioners having also undertaken to provide this technical school with an income of £2500 a year as soon as the subscription reaches £60,000; and for the establishment of a polytechnic in the City, £50,000 has been set aside out of the funds of the Charity Commissioners, as well as a yearly grant of £5350. Finally, not to speak of polytechnics in North, South, East, and West London, Mr. Quintin Hogg has himself spent £100,000 on the Regent Street Polytechnic, while the Drapers' Company have alone given £55,000 to the technical department of the People's Palace at Stepney, and endowed it with an income of 7000 a year. And, most recently of all, the Goldsmiths' Company have put on one side nearly a quarter of a million sterling for the land, the buildings, and for an endowment of £5000 a year in perpetuity, for their Technical and Recreative Institute recently opened at New Cross.

The following table gives an idea of the sort of sums that are being spent on polytechnic education in London, but it does not profess to give the entire amounts that have been devoted to capital expenditure and yearly maintenance, even for the six polytechnics named in the table :

CAPITAL EXPENDITURE.

Already subscribed

YEARLY ENDOWMENTS. Polytechnic, Borough Road. £30,000 | Charity Commissioners alone (Endowment expected to be doubled before opening.)

£2,500

Charity Commissioners alone to spend...

£379,500 |

£3,200

£32,500 Large as are these sums, they are, however, even small compared with the amount raised by Mr. Goschen's beer and spirit tax, which it has been decided shall be used for the public benefit, and not for the benefit of the publican. The counties and county boroughs of England now receive nearly threequarters of a million sterling per annum, of which the whole may be devoted to technical education. The majority of the counties and county boroughs propose to utilize this magnificent opportunity and devote to technical education the entire sum allocated to them, while the remainder use at least a part for this purpose. Middlesex and London, however, stand alone, and employ their whole yearly grant of £163,000 for the relief of the rates, on the plea that they consider that the City Companies are well able to look after the technical education of London.

Besides this spirit duty, 106 towns are levying rates in aid of technical education under the Technical Instruction Acts of 1889 and 1891, the number of these towns having increased by twenty in the last seven months, showing how rapidly is this desire for technical education spreading throughout Great Britain.

In addition to the sums contributed for technical education by the City Companies, collegiate bodies, and private persons who have the practical education of the nation at heart, the following represent, as far as I have been able to ascertain, the amounts that it has been already decided shall be actually spent, yearly, on technical education in England alone, exclusive of Scotland, Ireland, and Wales :

Received from the Customs and Excise duties... £500,000 Rates ... 18,046 Given by the Charity Commissioners 20,550

£538,596

The yearly amount that will be actually raised under the Technical Instruction Acts will be far larger than the 18,046 stated above, for this represents only the sum of the amounts raised in the very few towns who have already made returns. Hence the total sum to be spent in England alone on so-called technical education amounts to certainly over £600,000 per

annum.

As the teaching of electrical technology has been started, in some form or other, in nearly every important town in Great Britain, there is no occasion for me to advocate, as I did in this room ten years ago, that a student of electrical engineering should have an education in applied science; but what I desire to most strongly urge on you to-night is, that it is your bounden duty to see that some portion of the vast sum that is about to be spent on the education of the people is used to give such a training to your workmen as shall really benefit your industry. For otherwise there is a great fear that most of the money devoted to electrical teaching will either be frittered away on the natural loadstone, rubbed amber order of instruction so dear to

the hearts of the school-men, or on semi-popular lectures describing in a bewildering sketchy fashion the whole vast field of electrical engineering.

The workmen you employ are of two classes. In the one class is the man who is all day long, say, stamping out iron disks for armature cores, and the boy who, say, feeds the screwmaking machine with its proper meals of brass rod. For such work no technical education is necessary; the workers are mere adjuncts to the machines, to be dispensed with as the machines become more and more perfect. Hence, unless the machineminder has the ambition and the ability to rise to some less mechanical occupation, his activity, if any be left him after a hard day's work, had probably better be spent in effort of a lighter and more recreative character than would alone be necessary to make him a higher class of artisan.

For him the polytechnic variety course of instruction is an inestimable blessing, for he can do a little type-writing, learn violin-playing and modelling in clay, attend an ambulance class, recite a poem, and devote the remainder of his leisure to the piano, botany, sanitary science, reading books and learning how to keep them.

His general interests will be roused, the human side of his nature developed, and during the evening at any rate he may forget that he is the slave of the Gramme ring, or the slave of the electric lamp.

No wonder, then, that within two months of the opening of the Goldsmiths' Institute at New Cross 4000 members were enrolled.

But your workmen of the other class must, or at any rate ought to, think. Take, for example, the man engaged in wiring houses, whose work is continually changing, and offering small problems to be solved. Here, common sense-or uncommon sense, if you prefer it-is of great value, and the work, to be good, must be done by a man with a knowledge of principles, and not by a mere machine-minder.

Many joints-bad joints-wires laid in cement under mosaic, which cannot be replaced except at vast expense, even although the insulation has rotted away-parqueterie floors nailed to insulated wire-switchboards screwed on to damp walls-lampholders that only make contact when the lamps are twisted askew-high-class insulated mains terminating in snake-like coils of flexible wire running against metal in shop windows, under shop fronts-heavy Oriental metal lamps hanging from lightly insulated cord-all this would be avoided, if the workmen had been taught to use their brains as well as their hands.

Now, do you think that the teaching necessary for this purpose is likely to be given at the ordinary English polytechnic school? In the case of the Goldsmiths' Institute the electrotechnical department has been put under the charge of Messrs. Dykes and Thornton, two diploma students of the Central Institution; and the fact that these men are, in addition, both employed in Messrs. Siemens's works at Charlton leads one to hope that their teaching, at any rate, will breathe the spirit of the factory. And therefore, if ample funds be forthcoming for keeping the apparatus at New Cross always up to date, so that the meters, the models, the dynamos-not merely now at the start, but three years hence, six years hence-are truly representative of the industry, there will be a fair prospect that the electrical department of the Goldsmiths' Institute, although but a fraction of the whole undertaking, may really benefit the electrical workmen in the East End of London.

But my colleagues and I view with considerable apprehension the way in which the present wide demand for teachers in technical schools is being supplied. Several of our own students, for example, tempted by the comparatively high remuneration that is offered, have become teachers in technical schools immediately on leaving the Central Institution. In many respects they are undoubtedly well qualified; but if they had first spent some time in works before attempting to teach technical subjects, they would have better understood the wants of the persons whom they have undertaken to instruct.

No greater mistake can be made than to think that a student who has distinguished himself at a technical college can dispense with the training of the factory, unless it be the opposite mistake of imagining that the factory training is equivalent to or even something better than that given at a modern school of engineering.

It is the province of the manufacturer to turn out apparatus and machinery as quickly, cheaply, and as well made as is possible; it is the province of the technical teacher to prepare

the human tool for subsequent grinding and polishing in the works.

And this necessity for the teacher having himself passed through the shops has especial weight when we are dealing with the technical instruction of workmen, for in such a case there are three requirements absolutely necessary: first, knowing how to teach; second, possessing a fair knowledge of scientific principles; and thirdly-and this is, perhaps, the most important of all-knowing exactly what it is that the particular workman ought to learn in order to help him in his particular trade. Schoolmasters may have the first two requisites, and so may do valuable work in connection with the variety teaching at a polytechnic; but they are not in touch with the workshop, and therefore, no matter what may be their scholastic attainments, no matter what the extent of their experience in training the young, they are not the persons to give the real technical education to workmen.

In addition, then, to the polytechnics, we must have special schools for special industries, where workmen are taught the application of science to their special trades; and everything taught in such a school must be taught as bearing on the particular industry which the school is intended to benefit. A teacher of physics, for instance, must remember that he is not training physicists, but workmen whose use of physical principles will be bounded by their application to their special trade. For the great danger of such teachers is that, carried away with enthusiasm for their own subject, they will not subordinate it properly to the end in view, viz. helping the workman to know what will be useful to him in his work.

Indeed, as Prof. Huxley pointed out in his original report to the Livery Companies' Committee, "Success in any form of practical life is not an affair of mere knowledge. Even in the learned professions, knowledge per se is of less consequence than people are apt to suppose. A system of technical educa

tion may be so arranged as to help the scholar to use his intelligence, to acquire a fair store of elementary knowledge which shall be thorough as far as it goes, and to learn to employ his hands, while leaving him fresh, vigorous, and content, and such a system will render an invaluable service to all those who come under its influence.

"But if, on the other hand, education tends to the encouragement of bookishness, if it sets the goal of youthful ambition, not in knowing, but in being able to pass an examination, especially if it fosters the delusion that brain work is, in itself, a nobler or more respectable kind of occupation than handiwork, and leads to the sacrifice of health and strength in the pursuit of mere learning, then such a system may d incalculable harm, and lead to the rapid ruin of the industries it is intended to serve. And I venture to think that not merely at technical schools for workmen, but at technical colleges for engineers, it should be ever remembered that the main object of the training is not the cultivation of mental gymnastics, but to enable the student to acquire knowledge and habits which shall be professionally useful to him in after life.

,,

"Useful learning usefully taught " would be no bad motto for technical institutions, seeing that those who favour the compulsory teaching of Greek are apparently willing to accept the converse as the motto for the University. For example, Mr. Batcher, in his address delivered at the end of last session at University College, Bangor, said: "We may claim it as a distinction that in the seats of academic learning little or nothing useful is taught"; and in an article in last month's Fortnightly Review, congratulating Cambridge on its recent victory over the barbarian, Mr. Bury says quite candidly, Greek is useless; but its uselessness is the very strongest reason for its being a compulsory subject in the University course. And he adds, in italics,For the true function of a University is the teaching of useless learning."

A few of the County Councils have realized that the real teaching of the application of science to a special industry, which is what the British workman is so much in need of, cannot be given, as well as a host of other subjects, out of limited funds. For example, Bedfordshire has decided to spend its grant of £4343 mainly on agriculture, market gardening, the straw trade, domestic economy, and industries for women; Cambridgeshire and Cheshire devote themselves largely to the teaching of agricultural pursuits.

But other places aim at issuing vast comprehensive programmes and turning out yearly a mighty array of students, knowing, it may be, the something of everything, but who certainly will not

know the everything of something. For example, the Holland division of Lincolnshire has decided, out of only £2000 a year, to make grants for dairy schools, University extension and art schools, agricultural science, domestic economy, mechanics, commercial subjects, and ambulance teaching; while Bootle, with a yearly expenditure of only the same amount, maintains classes in five commercial subjects, in sixteen science and art subjects, in cookery, wood-working tools, as well as four courses of University extension lectures.

Because a certain building in Regent Street famed for its ghost and its diving bell was years ago named "The Polytechnic," the majority of the new technical institutions which are being established in London at such vast cost are also called "Polytechnics," and will, I fear, give only an English polytechnic course. Now, such recreative education, although admirable for those who seek relief from work in the use of their minds, is not generally sufficient for those of your workmen who use their minds in their daily occupation.

It ought, then, to be thoroughly recognized that there is an entirely new problem to be solved, and that the solution of this problem, in so far as it has been worked out at the Finsbury College and at other places giving practical teaching in the evening, must, in the language of the mathematician, be regarded simply as "the singular solution," and not the general solution, of the problem of technically educating the British workman.

Let us gratefully accept the English polytechnics, for they will undoubtedly confer benefit on our country, and all credit be to those who have so generously established them. But do not let us be misled by the similarity between their generic name and that of the German “polytechnicum" into fancying that the recreative courses of the one are equivalent to the serious education given by the other.

Like Oliver Twist, let us ask for more; for, on behalf of the large number of minds already employed in the electrical industry, and on behalf of the still larger number that will in the future be so employed, it is our duty to secure that ample provision be made in this country for the practical teaching of electrotechnics on a scale comparable with that afforded in the technical high schools of Germany and the institutes of technology of the United States.

On the screen you see projected a photograph of the facade of the Technical High School at Charlottenburg (Berlin), which appears extensive and grand; and yet, as you will see from the next photograph, it was only a small portion of the whole building that you were looking at on the first photograph. This is but one of the many technical high schools in different towns of Germany, and yet it covers an area more than five times as large as that occupied by the Central Technical Institution in Exhi bition Road, London, cost four times as much to erect, and has more than four times as much spent on its yearly maintenance.

The next photograph shows a building devoted wholly to the training of electrical engineers, being that of the Electrotechnical Institution Montefiore at Liége, which Prof. Gerard kindly took me over this last summer, and which has since been opened. When I tell you that there are rooms for small direct current dynamos, separate rooms for large direct-current dynamos, separate rooms for alternators, and that every three students have a separate little laboratory, with the necessary measuring instruments, all to themselves, your educational mouths will water, as mine did.

We now cross the Atlantic to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, which, as you see, consists of several distinct buildings, the centre one being that which contains the electrical laboratories. The dynamo room now seen on the screen has many small and large dynamos in it, and yet there is ample room to walk about, for this dynamo room occupies a space many times as large as that devoted to dynamos at the Central Technical Institution of London.

Prof. Cross was so good as to mention in a letter that was shown me some two years ago, that several of the devices that had been worked out for the electrical laboratories of the City and Guilds Institute had been reproduced at Massachusetts; but there is one device that Prof. Cross has succeeded in working out, and which I should be most glad to see copied by the City and Guilds Institute, and that is, having one assistant for every five students working in the physical laboratories.

Franklin Hall, presided over by Prof. Nichols, is devoted solely to the department of pure and applied physics at the Cornell University, Ithaca. You see how large this four-storied

building must be, for look how small the four-wheeled waggon standing in front of it appears.

The next three photographs show some of the provisions made for teaching electrotechnics in Franklin Hall; the electrical laboratory, under Prof. Moler; and the dynamo room, under Prof. Ryan, whose analyses of alternate-current curves are well known to you all.

I might show you photographs of the electrical laboratories in Prof. Weber's new building for physics at Zürich, on which £100,000 has been already expended. In fact, my choice of magnificent Continental and American laboratories has been so great that I have hardly known which to select as specimens.

But there is one thing I cannot show you-and it must remain for the exercise of your influence as representatives of the electrical profession to make that possible the British electrotechnical laboratories for education and research which are truly worthy of London, the capital of the world.

The training of such students as those at the Central Institution must, of course, differ essentially from that of the electrical artisan, not because we, or the students, expect that on entering a factory at the conclusion of their college course they will start, as a rule, much above the bottom of the ladder, but because they hope in time to be able to mount higher.

They are therefore taught, not merely to construct meters and motors, use dynamos and engines, build a chimney and lay a street main, but, as they are not to spend all their lives wiring houses or watching a central station voltmeter, they are well practised in calculating and designing, and they further obtain sufficient acquaintance with the methods of attacking new problems not to be daunted when they meet with them in after life. But so strong is becoming our belief in the value of science to the manufacturer, so anti-classical are some of us growing, that there is great risk that the literary side of the education of an electrical engineer will soon be wholly neglected. Now, important as it no doubt is for him to be quite at home with electrical apparatus and machinery, it is no less important, if he is to take advantage quickly of the progress made abroad, that he should be able to read a German or a French newspaper. do not merely mean that with a grammar and dictionary, and plenty of leisure, he should be able to translate the newspaper, sentence by sentence, like a schoolboy preparing to-morrow's lesson, but that he should have the power to glance down the columns, gather the gist of the articles, and quickly see whether there be anything new that especially concerns him.

I

How many electricians are there in this country who can, for example, take up the Zeitschrift für Instrumentenkunde or the Electrotechnische Zeitschrift, and look through their pages as they do those of the Electrician, Electrical Review, and the Electrical Engineer, during breakfast on Friday morning? There are, I know, a few-I wish I were one of them.

And yet examples are not wanting of the scientific isolation that is caused by not possessing that familiarity with foreign languages which is a characteristic of diplomatists and hotel waiters. Take, for instance, the fact that, whereas manganin was manufactured on a commercial scale in Germany, and German resistance coils have for the last three years been constructed of this material with a temperature coefficient of nearly zero, the very existence of this alloy was unknown to many English electrical instrument makers a few weeks ago; and even now most of them are still unacquainted with the composition of manganin, and its peculiar properties, as well as with the results of the extensive and striking experiments that have been carried out at the Reichsanstalt at Charlottenburg on the temperature coefficient and specific resistance of all sorts of manganin-copper-zinc-nickel-iron alloys.

This Physikalisch-Technischen Reichsanstalt, I may mention, is an establishment totally distinct from the Technical High School in Charlottenburg, some photographs of which I showed you this evening. The Reichsanstalt is not an institution with students, but a vast series of Imperial laboratories, presided over by Prof. von Helmholtz, solely used for carrying out researches in pure and technical physics. The investigations are conducted under the direction of Dr. Loewenherz, aided by 46 assistants.

We have no establishment in Great Britain at all comparable with this Reichsanstalt. The original work turned out there in electro-technics alone is considerable. Here are some of the published accounts of researches immediately bearing on your profession which Dr. St. Lindeck has been so kind as to send me: Hardening Steel Magnets,' Standard Resistance Coils

Surely it is part of the technical education of the electrical engineer to be taught how to read such pamphlets as these with comparative ease?

But as

A working knowledge of French and German can be obtained without the necessity of learning to express oneself fluently in epigrammatic French, or to imitate with facility the wordbuilding of a native German; and with such a working knowledge the average technical student may rest content. regards his own language he should aim at something higher, and therefore the electrical engineering students of our country should be, I urge, practised in writing-yes, and also speakingvigorous English.

Only the other day, Prof. Nichols, of the Cornell University, was deploring with me the rarity of finding a student of electrotechnics who could write a decent report. The experimental methods employed in the student's investigation might have been good, the mathematical analysis suitable, and the calculations exact; but the description of the apparatus and of the results obtained would be scattered pell-mell over the paper, as if the writer were quite ignorant of the fact that the style in which a dish is served up is nearly as important as the goodness of its ingredients.

Why do you suppose that Huxley's portrait has nearly as much prominence given it in the photographer's window as that of a duke or a ballet dancer? Quite as much because he knows how to express himself in terse and forcible English as on account of his wide scientific knowledge; because even when writing about dry bones the flow of his language clothes them with rounded forms.

But, you will ask, how are we to find the time for all this linguistic and literary polish? has the electrical student of to-day so many spare hours that fresh subjects of study must be sought for to fill up his leisure moments?

At present much time has to be wasted at technical and other colleges teaching students sixteen years or older elementary mathematics and science, which ought to have been mastered before that age. When the education of childhood is improved, when the higher education of women is properly carried out, there will be no need for male experts to trouble about genera! training, for then children will spend less time at school and learn more; boys and girls will, as a matter of course, acquire the foundation of modern languages and general education; and students at a college will be able to devote their whole time to the special training-scientific, manual, linguistic, and literary which pertains to the particular profession which their special tastes will generally have led them to select before the age of sixteen.

And just as methods of teaching applied science have been developed 'during the past few years, so I look forward to the growth of new methods of teaching what may be called applied literature. For it seems to me that there is a want of breadth in the view that because the study of Greek verse would he unprofitable for a student of electrotechnics, and because he has neither the taste nor the time to enter into the intricacies of etymology and grammar, therefore the study of modern languages and literature, even as directly applicable to his profession, should form no part of his regular training.

As well might it be thought (and I am sorry to say this view is not yet quite exploded) that because a student has neither the taste nor the time for the study of abstract mathematics, therefore he should be debarred from all work in a physical laboratory, Well, if it be generally accepted that although a young electrical engineer has no chance of becoming a Cayley or a Maxwell, still he ought to be taught such portions of mathematics and physics as will be directly useful to him in his profession, why should the certainty that he will neither become a Jebb nor a Dickens lead us to tolerate an inability on his part to speak fluently and write tersely his own language, surpassed only by his entire ignorance of every other?

Habits of scientific thought are highly necessary for electrical students; to be masters of their own language, and to know something of one or two others, are, I venture to think, no less so; but the main result to be achieved, the main object to be aimed at, with every system of education, is moral thoroughness. For until every workman, foreman, engineer, and manu