hat they and their pupils have contrived to
find, or to make, time enough to carry out this object with a very
considerable degree of efficiency. That efficiency will, I doubt not, be
very much increased as the system becomes known and perfected, even with
the very limited leisure left to masters and teachers on week-days. And
this leads me to ask, Why should scientific teaching be limited to
week-days?

Ecclesiastically-minded persons are in the habit of calling things they
do not like by very hard names, and I should not wonder if they brand
the proposition I am about to make as blasphemous, and worse. But, not
minding this, I venture to ask, Would there really be anything wrong in
using part of Sunday for the purpose of instructing those who have no
other leisure, in a knowledge of the phenomena of Nature, and of man's
relation to nature?

I should like to see a scientific Sunday-school in every parish, not for
the purpose of superseding any existing means of teaching the people
the things that are for their good, but side by side with them. I cannot
but think that there is room for all of us to work in helping to bridge
over the great abyss of ignorance which lies at our feet.

And if any of the ecclesiastical persons to whom I have referred, object
that they find it derogatory to the honour of the God whom they worship,
to awaken the minds of the young to the infinite wonder and majesty of
the works which they proclaim His, and to teach them those laws which
must needs be His laws, and therefore of all things needful for man to
know--I can only recommend them to be let blood and put on low diet.
There must be something very wrong going on in the instrument of logic,
if it turns out such conclusions from such premisses.

FOOTNOTE:

[3] Mr. Quain's words (_Medical Times and Gazette_, February 20)
are:--"A few words as to our special Medical course of instruction and
the influence upon it of such changes in the elementary schools as I
have mentioned. The student now enters at once upon several
sciences--physics, chemistry, anatomy, physiology, botany, pharmacy,
therapeutics--all these, the facts and the language and the laws of
each, to be mastered in eighteen months. Up to the beginning of the
Medical course many have learned little. We cannot claim anything better
than the Examiner of the University of London and the Cambridge Lecturer
have reported for their Universities. Supposing that at school young
people