2. You were likewise instructed in mathematics at school?A. Yes. Q. Had you any occasion to observe at school that there was one class of minds which had a great aptitude for mathematics, another for the physical sciences, and another for the classics; so that there were three different types of mental intelligence?A. Yes.

2. Do you not consider, that it is an injury to a boy who may have a turn for the sciences of observation, or for other natural sciences, that he has no instruction in them whatever up to the time he is eighteen-up to the time of his going to the University?-A. I feel that very strongly. I am quite satisfied that there is such a class of minds. I see it in the candidates for our degrees in sciences. Though the degrees have only been instituted two or three years, yet I am quite certain, from what I have seen of those who have become candidates for them, that there is a very decided aptitude for physical sciences; and that those generally are persons who have a distaste for classics. I may say, with regard to myself, that I never had any taste for classics. I went through a very long course of classical training; and I feel very strongly indeed the value of the discipline which it gave me : but I never, as a boy, had any taste for classics (though now I can come back and read a classical author with pleasure), because I was weary of the drudgery of the ordinary routine of instruction (to which I had been subjected from an unusually early age), whilst at sixteen my mind was not sufficiently advanced in that direction to appreciate the higher beauties of a classical author. For instance, I could then read the "Prometheus;" but I did not understand its argument.

2. It would be an injury to the mental capital of a nation, so to say, to give no instruction to boys in the physical sciences up to eighteen?-A. I should certainly consider that it leaves that branch of the mental faculties, which every individual has in a certain degree, uncultivated, and would leave without cultivation those powers which certain individuals have in a very remarkable degree.

2. Is it not the case, that there are some boys at school who have only a slight aptitude for classical studies, who have an aptitude for the sciences of observation and the experimental sciences? -A. I am quite certain of that. I have five sons; and, in their education, I endeavour to train what I perceive to be the special aptitude of each. Thus, my eldest son has shown a decided aptitude for the physical and chemical sciences: he has taken his Bachelor of Arts degree in the University, and has now taken that of Bachelor of Science. He took the Bachelor of Arts degree, because, at that time, there was no degree in science; he went through the classical training required for it, but his whole bent is for the exact sciences. On the other hand, my second son has as strong a turn for literary culture as my eldest son has for scientific, and I have encouraged that just as I would the scientific culture

taking care, however, in each case, that the other subjects were not neglected.

2. I think you mentioned that you considered that the study of physical science at an early age was conducive to the cultivation of the intellectual faculties as well as of the senses?—A. I think so, decidedly, if it is rightly taught. I think very much depends upon the teacher.

2. Do you think that the mind, ordinarily speaking, is as apt for the exercise of its faculties upon the subjects of natural science as upon grammar and mathematical subjects at the early period of life?—A. I should say, more so; that it is more easy to fix a child's attention upon something which it sees than upon an abstraction.

2. Do you think that in that point of view, in fact, it is so far a subject better calculated to call out a healthy action of the reasoning powers than the more abstract subjects of grammar and mathematics?—A. I think it is at the early period. I think that a lad of from ten to twelve years of age is better fitted to be led to observe and reason upon what he observes in objective phenomena than he is to reason upon abstractions. I think that, from say twelve years of age, the powers may be healthfully exercised upon abstractions; but, as far as I can judge, a child in learning a language learns by rote purely, or almost purely, up to say twelve years of age; but after that he begins, if he is well taught, to understand the rationale (so to speak) of the rules; but it is a mere matter of memory with him up to that time.

2. In fact, you doubt whether, in the cultivation of language the reasoning powers are much exercised at all at that time?—A. Yes.

2. Have you been sufficiently in company with youths emerging from childhood to say whether there is, in your opinion, at all a natural curiosity which arises at that time for the observation and comprehension of the phenomena of nature?-A. I should say there is. I have seen a great deal of youths of different ages in the course of my life. I have been always interested in education, and have seen and known a great deal of what takes place in education among the humbler classes; and amongst them there is most decidedly a readiness of observation, and a readiness of power of apprehension and of reasoning upon phenomena of nature, which shows that that must be universal.

2. Have you observed, that, besides that power, there is a curiosity with regard to the phenomena, and an interest in that sense with regard to the phenomena of the outward world?-A. I think there is, if it is not repressed. My opinion is, that the tendency of public-school education is to repress all that curiosity,— to withdraw the attention so completely from those subjects that it has no development.

2. With regard to the study of language, I think you said, that you had had some opportunity of observing that youths who began later could make so much progress, owing to the different state of

their faculties then, as that they could recover the amount that had been lost to the study of language by deferring it? A. Yes: providing always that their mental habits have been properly trained; that the power of sustained attention, for instance, has been exercised in other ways.

2. With regard to their bearing on literary studies, do you think that the mixture of the physical sciences with the literary studies would be a mixture which would be conducive of benefit to both, or otherwise?—A. I think decidedly conducive of benefit, because I cannot think that any mental training can be really adequate which is one-sided; and, again, all experience shows that a change of study from one subject to another is advantageous in this way,that it is a positive refreshment to the mind. I believe, that a lad who has been exercised a certain number of hours in the study of language, or in the study of mathematics, would enjoy going to the study of physical science. If it is properly handled, by a good teacher, he would enjoy that as much as he would enjoy going into some desultory course of reading for recreation.

2. In fact, the exchange would produce very much less physical exhaustion than the continuance of the same study for the same number of hours? A. Yes: I feel sure of that. I may mention, that there is at present going on a good deal of inquiry in regard to the number of hours which can be healthfully employed in study by the class of children who attend the National and British schools; and it is a subject in which I have taken a great deal of interest. I have happened to come in contact with a good many individuals who are working out experiments in different ways; and there is a very general conviction amongst the better and more intelligent class of masters in those schools, that four hours a day is as much as can be healthfully employed in purely intellectual acquirements by children of that class. Now, I believe that the allowance which is healthful for children of that class may be, perhaps, double for those of an educated class.

Q. At what age?—A. Say from eight to twelve; but the prevalence of this conviction shows, that the masters, practically, do not find that the children learn more who are at school for six or seven hours than those who are at school only from three and a half to four hours. Q. Do you think that you would find a different, that is, a larger measure of hours suitable to health, if there was this difference in studies at different times of the day?—A. Yes: I feel sure of it. 2. I suppose you say that as a physiologist? . . . A. Yes; I am speaking as a physiologist decidedly. I am quite satisfied of it as a fact in our mental constitution.

2. You said just now, that you thought there were instances of boys taking up the study of classics late, and, if they were properly trained in other ways, making up for the lost time by the superiority of their power of application and of learning. Do you think that that might be the case also in the study of physical science; that a boy taking to study physical science late might make up for lost

time by beginning at an age at which his powers were more developed?-A. I have no doubt that he might make up for lost time: but I think that the natural period for commencing the study of physical science is at an earlier age, because I think any right system of education will take up the faculties in the order of their development; and it is quite certain, that the observing faculties are developed before the reasoning powers. An infant, during the first year of its life, is educating its observing faculties in a way we really scarcely give it credit for; and the training of the observing faculties, by attention to the phenomena of nature, both in physical and in natural science, seems to me to be the natural application of time at the age of say from eight to twelve.

2. You supported your argument by the case of a boy who had studied French as an introduction to the study of Latin and Greek, and had not suffered in his classical studies by deferring them : would you not think, that a boy would suffer in the study of languages by wholly giving his early years to the study of physical science, and not taking up language at all till he got to the age, say of twelve?-A. Yes, I think he would. I think that neglecting the study of language altogether would be a very undesirable thing; but what I mean is this: I should prefer to see the faculties which are concerned in the cultivation of physical science trained at the earlier period, because I believe that is the natural period in which the observing faculties and the elementary reasoning processes may be best cultivated, and the period at which the mind is not prepared for the more advanced culture of language.

2. But is it not the period at which it is also prepared for the commencement of the culture of language?—A. Certainly; but, then, I think all that the culture of language may give at that period may be given in a smaller number of hours than are usually devoted to it.

2. A question was asked as to the possibility of a boy, well cultivated in classics, making up afterwards for deficiency in the natural sciences. Would there not be a distinction between the sciences of observation and the sciences of experiment? Is it likely that a grown-up person, or a boy beyond a certain age, would make up for the neglect of the faculty of observation?—A. I think not so well. If I am allowed to do so, I may mention my own experience in the matter. My greatest difficulty in the pursuit of systematic zoology and botany has arisen, I am quite satisfied, from the circumstance, that I was not early trained in those sciences. I can recognise a flower or an animal when I see them, and I can remember their names. I have no difficulty as to verbal memory; but I have a difficulty in connecting the two things, the flower or the animal and the name; and I believe, that, if I had had an early training in the habit of systematic nomenclature, I should not have experienced that difficulty in later life.

2. Is it not, to a certain extent, the case with regard to the faculty of observation, as with regard to aptness for rapid calcu

lation in arithmetic, that the habit should be acquired early ?—A. Yes I am very strongly of that opinion; and I know that it is very easily acquired under proper training. The late Professor Henslow studied the method of teaching natural science, I believe, as carefully as any one; and he was wonderfully successful in training that order of faculties.

2. Is it the result of your experience, that, by the exclusion of the physical sciences and of the methods of investigation employed in their study, the mind does not receive as good a training as it might do?-A. I have been acquainted with several gentlemen who have passed with distinction through a course of public school and University training, and who have confessed to me with regret their inaptitude to understand any scientific subject whatever,— their want, not only of the knowledge, but of the mental aptitude.

2. That is to say, that you consider that the physical sciences and methods of investigation call forth different faculties of the mind from those which are developed by the studies of mathematics and classics?—A. Yes: I think so very decidedly.

Q. And that, therefore, by neglecting the physical sciences, those faculties lie dormant if they existed?-A. Yes.

EVIDENCE OF SIR CHARLES LYELL.

Q. As we know your attention has long been turned to this subject, I would beg to ask you, as the result of your observation and experience, what you consider to be the position of physical science and natural history in this country, as far as regards our educational system ?--A. I think it is hardly too strong a term to say, that they have been ignored. There has been a move of late in the Universities to restore them somewhat to that place which they formerly held, when the sciences were much less advanced, but when, in proportion to what was then known, they held a very fair position; and within the last two hundred years I consider them to have been deprived of the proper position which they once held. The public schools being modelled in a great measure on the system of the Universities, they have, in like manner, entirely neglected them, even in those schools where they are educated sometimes up to the age of seventeen or eighteen. I think, therefore, that in that period of the progress of the nation, when these branches have been acquiring more and more importance, both theoretically and practically, that has been precisely the time when they have been more and more excluded from the teaching of the higher classes of this country.

Q. To what would you attribute the neglect of these studies that has been shown at the schools in particular?-A. I think that the schools being preparatory, in a great measure, to the Universities, they frame their system in regard to those subjects which are to obtain the chief rewards, prizes, and honours at the University. Although a large proportion of the boys at our larger schools do