The British Association for the Advancement of Science met on
Wednesday in Aberdeen. The speech of the President for the year, Sir Lyon Playfair, upon which we have commented elsewhere, was in the main an euloginm on Science as the grand factor in material civilisation, and a prayer that it should be more richly endowed, especially by the State. Without larger grants, the President argued, Science could not flourish. The teaching of physics should be made a solid part of secondary education, as, till that was done, the rich and the middle.classes would never take it up. Germany and France are constantly increasing the State provision for science, the grants in Alsace being especially liberal; and, con- sequently, the Germans are in many departments of commerce beating Englishmen out of the field. Employers, we may remark, say that Germans succeed because they take low wages as clerks, are carefully attentive as masters to small profits, and talk two or three languages instead of one. Sir Lyon Playfair, however, attributes it all to science, and believes that the beet training is that of the laboratory, which he conceives ought to be provided by the State. He did not, however, explain why the State, which scarcely meddles with secondary education, should single oat physics for protection, or why the people themselves, who are so liberal to every other form of tuition, do not found colleges for scientific training in greater numbers. He only accepted the fact, and demanded that the State should be wiser than the people.
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