Physics. By Frederick Slate. (Macmillan and Co. 68.)—This is one
of the many excellent text-books which we owe to the intel- le3tual activity of teachers on the other side of the Atlantic. We cannot examine it in detail, but we may refer to the suggestions which Professor Slate makes as to the use of experiment in the teaching of physics. He says, in effect, to the teacher, Do not use experiments as illustrations to your lecture, but, as far as possible, let your pupils learn by experiments. Science really begins with the individual; when it has been greatly developed in any direc- tion, it will often be the case that the process is reversed. The teacher finds it easier to enunciate laws, and show his pupils how to prove them, than to guide them into the finding out of these laws for themselves. It is not difficult to bring together the materials for many instructive experiments, though some must always have to be taken on trust, that very interesting one, for example, which shows the variation of gravitation in the same object at the equator and at Paris or London.
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