* * * *

THE SCHOOL OF PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY OF PARIS.

Recently we paid a visit to the New Municipal School of Physics and
Chemistry that the city of Paris founded in 1882, and that is now in
operation in the large building of the old Rollin College. This
establishment is one of those that supply a long-felt want of our
time, and we are happy to make it known to our readers. The object for
which it was designed was, in the intention of its founders, to give
young people who have just graduated from the higher primary schools
special instruction which shall be at once scientific and practical,
and which shall fit them to become engineers or superintendents in
laboratories connected with chemical and physical industries. To reach
such a result it has been necessary to give the teaching an
essentially practical character, by permitting the pupils to proceed
of themselves in manipulations in well fitted laboratories. It is upon
this important point that we shall now more particularly dwell; but,
before making known the general mode of teaching, we wish to quote a
few passages from the school's official programme:

"Many questions and problems, in physics as well as in chemistry,
find their solution only with the aid of mathematics and
mechanics. It therefore became necessary, through lectures
bearing upon the useful branches of mathematics, to supplement
the too limited ideas that pupils brought with them on entering
the school. Mathematics and mechanics are therefore taught here
at the same time with physics and chemistry, but they are merely
regarded in the light of auxiliaries to the latter.

"The studies extend over three years. Each of the three divisions
(1st, 2d, and 3d years) includes thirty pupils.

"During the three first semesters, pupils of the same grade
attend lectures and go through manipulations in chemistry,
physics, mathematics, and draughting in common.

"At the end of the third semester they are divided into 10
physical and 20 chemical students.

"From this moment, although certain courses still remain wholly
or partially common to the two categories of pupils (physical and
chemical), the same is no longer the case with regard to the
practical exercises, for the physical students thereafter
manipulate only in the physical laboratories, and the chemical
only in the chemical laboratories; moreover, the ma