of increase of temperature is rapid. In the case of Dukinfield it is inferred that, owing to the high inclination of the strata, some of the heat travels along the planes of bedding, and escapes along the outcrop with greater rapidity than it would if it were obliged to travel solely across the strata themselves.

It has been suggested that in the case of Dukinfield Colliery the escape of the underground heat may have been facilitated by the formation of vapour at certain depths, the vapour making its escape along the planes of bedding by the aid of the fissures and porosity of some of the rocks. It is questionable, however, whether the elastic force of the vapour would be sufficient, at the comparatively low temperature of the strata, to overcome the enormous pressure to which it would be subjected at depths much below the surface.

VI. MR. BRUCE'S MINES REGULATION BILL. MODERN legislation in this country in reference to industrial employments tends more and more to impose on the Government the duty of caring for the health and safety, and at least the elementary education, of those who, owing either to weakness or to ignorance, are unable to care for themselves.

In our Factory Enactments, foreign countries have followed gradually in our footsteps; in the regulations affecting the mining population, on the other hand, we shall probably never attain the completeness of supervision, be it for good or for evil, which prevails in States such as France, Belgium, and Prussia, where the minerals are the property of the nation.

Mr. Bruce's Bill for the Regulation and Inspection of Mines, a réchauffé of his Bill of last Session, consolidates the existing laws; but is in other, respects as modest a measure as the opponents of Government interference could desire.

It continues to forbid females to work in mines, and, at the urgent request of the operatives, limits, though not to the full extent of their desires, the time during which youths from twelve to sixteen years of age may be employed below ground. Recognizing the failure, in the case of young children working in mines, of the attempt made to combine work and elementary instruction, it forbids entirely their employment underground before the age of twelve. It places women, young persons, and children employed on the surface under the provisions, as regards the hours of labour and education, of The Workshops Regulation Act of 1867,' which, however, owing to its administration being in the hands of local

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 genus only, and the “rule of thumb," as we have hitherto done, but judiciously impart sciente met wetion to minds of ordinary capacity as well as to others.

The education necessary for a workmar cannot be competer supplied either in a school alone or in a workshop alone. The dutice and pursuits of a school are incompatible with those of a manufactory, and it is not possible that a workshop shotil List be a whool 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 suficiently good elementary secular education; and as long as the elementary education in this country remains in its present extremely imperfeet state, it is impossible for this nation adequately to advance in scientific knowledge, or keep pace with the progress of foreign intellect,

In

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. 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,