sense and in all its branches, but founded on the cultured mind which only general study can give. All over the Empire this truth is penetrating its rulers, just as it has done in Germany, and is rapidly doing in the United States. Canada possesses at least one University which, in certain of its faculties, puts most of ours to shame. Australia and New Zealand have long since turned their attention to the development of University teaching in their great cities. India and South Africa are at this moment agitating for improved institutions of a University type. Not long ago there was held in London a remarkable conference of representatives of the Universities of the Empire. In the speeches there were many expressions of a desire for something like federation of the teaching power of the highest schools of the various dominions of the Crown.
The idea may well bear fruit. In mining and metallurgy and in engineering there are branches of applied science which may best be studied in the neighbourhood where the science is applied. The industrial development of Canada, for instance, has enabled the McGill University at Montreal to specialize in certain branches of this kind of teaching, with advantages that are almost unique, and already young men are going over from the Mother Country to get the benefit of these advantages. On the other hand, the attempt is in progress to create in London, the heart of the Empire in the organization of its industry as well as of its Government, a new school where the highest training may be given in the science and art of obtaining the precious metals from the mines where they lie hid—not too soon, those may think who have read Mr. Birchenough's recent report on the industries of the Transvaal, and his description of the tendency of the Americans and Germans, whose superior training has led to their employment in the gold-mines, to purchase their machinery in the countries from which they came. That we, the foremost nation in the world in the production of gold and silver, should hitherto
