Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 54.djvu/553

Rh among those students who, having completed the full course of training for the associateship, desire to study for another year at the college. It is understood that the fourth year is to be employed in research in the subject of the associateship.

The gaining of one of the Remanet scholarships, not more than two on the average annually, referred to, furnishes really the only means by which deserving students are enabled to pursue research in the college; as, although a professor has the power to nominate a student to a free place in his laboratory, very few of the most deserving students are able to avail themselves of the privilege owing to want of means.

The department only very rarely sends students up as teachers in training for research work, but only those who intend making teaching their profession are eligible for these studentships.

I trust that at some future day, when we get our new buildings—it is impossible to do more than we do till we get them—more facilities for research may be provided, and even an extension of time allowed for it if necessary. I see no reason why some of the 1851 exhibition scholarships should not be awarded to students of this college, but to be eligible they must have published a research. Research should naturally form part of the work of the teachers in training who are not brought up here merely to effect an economy in the teaching staff.

Such, then, in brief, are some of our normal-school attributes. I think any one who knows the facts must acknowledge that the organization has justified itself not only by what it has done, but also by the outside activities it has set in motion. It is true that with regard to the system of examining school candidates by means of papers sent down from London, the department was anticipated by the College of Preceptors in 1853, and by Oxford and Cambridge in 1858; but the action of 1861, when science classes open to everybody, was copied by Oxford and Cambridge in 1869. The department's teachers got to work in 1860, but the so-called "University Extension Movement" dates only from 1873, and only quite recently have summer courses been started at Oxford and Cambridge.

The chemical and physical laboratories, small though they were in the department's schools, were in operation long before any practical work in these subjects was done either at Oxford or Cambridge. When the college laboratories began, about 1853, they existed practically alone. From one point of view we should rejoice that they are now third rate. I think it would be wrong of me not to call your attention to the tenacity, the foresight, the skill, the unswerving patience, exhibited by those upon whom has fallen the duty of sailing the good ship "Scientific Instruction," launched, as I have stated,