Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/59

Rh large manufacturing districts arc remarkable expressions from them that science must be promoted. Including the colleges of a high class, such as University College and King's College in London, and the three Queen's Colleges in Ireland, the aggregate attendance of students in colleges without university rank is between nine and ten thousand, while that of the universities is fifteen thousand. No doubt some of the provincial colleges require considerable improvement in their teaching methods; sometimes they unwisely aim at a full university curriculum when it would be better for them to act as faculties. Still they are all growing in the spirit of self-help, and some of them are destined, like Owens College, to develop into universities. This is not a subject of alarm to lovers of education, while it is one of hope and encouragement to the great centers of industry. There are too few autonomous universities in England in proportion to its population. While Scotland, with a population of 3,750,000, has four universities with 6,500 students, England, with twenty-six million people, has only the same number of teaching universities with six thousand students. Unless English colleges have such ambition, they may be turned into mere mills to grind out material for examinations and competitions. Higher colleges should always hold before their students that knowledge, for its own sake, is the only object worthy of reverence. Beyond college-life there is a land of research flowing with milk and honey for those who know how to cultivate it. Colleges should at least show a Pisgah view of this land of promise, which stretches far beyond the Jordan of examinations and competitions.



HE eye is the most wonderful organ existing in the higher forms of animal life. It is the window of the brain; through it, the creature obtains knowledge of that which lies beyond the reach of its other senses.

But there is really nothing very mysterious about the structure of the eye when considered as an optical instrument. It is simply a tiny chamber, with one little window through which light passes, making a reversed picture upon the wall beyond. The same effect may be obtained by a lens so fixed in the window of a darkened room that the only light from without must pass through it. As in the illustration we present herewith, the picture of the scene without, the peasant-girl afoot, the rustic laborer, the thatched cottage—all appear on the screen in the dark chamber, but reversed in position.

The same effect is produced by the eye. The eyeball is a little