Lectures addressed to teachers on preparation for obtaining science certificates and the method of teaching a science class. Lect

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Page 12 - What a curious and interesting subject for contemplation ! In the remains of an extinct animal world, England is to find the means of increasing her wealth in agricultural produce, as she has already found the great support of her manufacturing industry in fossil fuel, — the preserved matter of primeval forests, — the remains of a vegetable world.
Page 3 - Arranged to meet the requirements of the Syllabus of the Science and Art Department of the Committee of Council on Education, South Kensington.
Page 12 - Chinchona bark, or of tea and coffee, exert upon the living body, but we are perfectly in the dark as to the way in which they act upon the animal economy. But if we meet with a series of similar substances in several animal fluids, eg, urea and creatine almost constantly present in urine, glycocoll generally, and cystine occasionally, excreted in the same liquid, and if we find that all these substances exhibit in their chemical relations a close analogy with quinine and theine, we begin to feel...
Page 8 - The evolution in different localities of inflammable gases, from the ground, had been noticed from time immemorial, and the connexion of these gases with deposits of coal had been recognised as early as the middle of the seventeenth century.* Years however elapsed before correct views of the nature of these gases were established by experiment. In 1739, coal was for the first time subjected to distillation by Dr. Clayton, Dean of Kildare, who thus succeeded in imitating artificially the formation...
Page 13 - Medicine some years ago found itself in a predicament very similar to that of agriculture at the same period ; its resources appeared to be in a state of exhaustion ; the rich capital of facts accumulated in the department of organic morphology by the industry of the anatomist, and by the acumen of the physiologist, could not yield its full fruits until an equivalent of knowledge had been drawn from the study of bio-chemical phenomena. This state of things, however, is rapidly changing ; associated...
Page 13 - ... beyond the grasp of inquiry. The special zeal with which the field of organic chemistry has been cultivated during the last thirty years, the simple and accurate methods which we now possess for determining the composition of organic products, the amount of analysis actually performed, and, more than all, the still untiring energy of the numerous...
Page 12 - ... by pharmaceutical agents in the state of our organism, there occurs a corresponding change in its composition, resulting from their reaction on one or more of its constituents. But of these transformations, which doubtless could be expressed in numbers as definitely as can our laboratory processes, how few are we in a condition to explain ; in how few instances has the physician even a vague conception of the mode in which any medicine performs its office...
Page 11 - But the philosophy of botany cannot be really understood without an acquaintance with a considerable portion at least of the details of systematic botany. On these grounds, I should much desire to see botany, or some other branch of natural history, or natural history in general, introduced as a common element into our higher education, and recommended to the study of those who desire to have any clear view of the nature of the progressive sciences, since it is, in fact, the key and groundwork of...
Page 3 - ... far as we know, ever think of inquiring into the causes of these things. It is otherwise with man. The presence of natural objects, the occurrence of natural events, the varied appearances of the universe in which he dwells, penetrate beyond his organs of sense, and appeal to an inner power of which the senses are the mere instruments and excitants. No fact is to him either final or original. He cannot limit himself to the contemplation of it alone, but endeavors to ascertain its position in...
Page 13 - The needle sets horizontal. Move it towards the north end of the magnet ; the south end of the needle dips, the dip augmenting as you approach the north pole, over which the needle, if free to move, will set itself exactly vertical.