NOVEMBER, 1950
To the Editor:
the purchase of the collection, and Dr. Kirwan was the negotiator. The collection was purchased by the I should like to congratulate you and Dr. Desmond Society a t an eventual cost of £1,350 and placed in the W i l y for the very interesting paper, "Irish Chemical Society's museum. In 1795 William Higgins was apPioneers of 150 Years Ago." I am sure both you and pointed professor of chemistry and mineralogy to the Dr. Reilly will forgive me if I correct a few statements Society. appearing in this article which might give readers an Referring to William Higgins, Dr. Reilly states that inaccurate impression of the work of Irish Societies, "one of the last acts of the Dublin Parliament before the particularly the Royal Dublin Society which for almost Act of Union was to appoint a number of professors to 220 years has contributed in no small measure to the the lately formed Dublin Society." Higgins was aphistory of Science in Ireland. pointed in 1795, exactly sixty-four years after the Dr. Reilly tells of the formation of the Dublm Philo- foundation of the Society in 1731, so t,heword "lately" in souhical Societv. and writes '%his Societv. the anteced- this sentence gives a wrong impression of the age of the en't of both thk' Academy and the R O ; ~Dublin Sc- Royal Dublin Society, which even at that period posciety, first met in 1785." This, of course, should read sessed a royal charter. 1684. Again Dr. Reilly writes "in 1787 when Kirwan Your readers may be interested in the following brief returned to Dublin the old Dublin Philosophical So- note on the Irish Societies mentioned by Dr. Reillg. ciety had given way to the Royal Irish Academy." On point of fact the Dublin Philosophical Society appears Dublin Philosophical Society, founded 1684, ceased 1706.(?) to have ceased in the early part of the century, probably Royal Dublm Society, founded 1731, still in enclosure; about 1707. It is difficult to find substantiation for Dr. %illy's Physico-Historical Society, founded 1744, ceased 1752. statement which a t least gives the impression that Royal Irish Academy, founded 1786, still in enclosure. Kirwan was responsible for the purchase of the Leskean collection of minerals. Actually a committee was appointed by the Royal Dublin Society in 1792 to treat for
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To the Editor: Those chemistry teachers who think that modern texts on principles of chemistry are responsible for the students' lack of knowledge might be interested in the following two quotations: 1. "Experimental and practical data occupy their place, but the philosophical principles of our science form the chief theme of the work." 2. "In order to secure as logical a treatment as possible it has been thought best not to give detailed descriptions of apparatus and specific directions for the preparation of substances, in the text proper. By avoiding these the attention can be better directed to the principles involved and a clearer conception of these principles will be formed, than when the attention is distracted by the reading of such details." The first quotation is from the preface to the 1891 edition of Mendeleev's "Principlas of Chemistry" (note the title). Anyone who examines this twovolume work will surely consider it a most discursive treatment of the subject. The amount of detail is bewildering; at one place, there are five pages containmg 12 limes of text and 254 lines of notes in fine print. No matter what Mendeleev says about prin-
JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL EDUCATION
ciples it is clear that the student will learn them only by painstaking study of a host of facts. The second quotation is taken from the preface to the 1889 edition of Remsen's "Inorganic Chemistry." This text comprises 853 pages of material which I think most of us would classify as descriptive. These two writers were eminent. My point is that while they praised principles they wrote texts that most students today couldn't read in a school year. The real trouble is, I think, that many writers and publishers send out texts that can compete in a big marketthey have to be mediocre. Alfred North Whitehead had this to say about the matter: "Whenever a textbook is written of real educational worth, you may be quite certain that some reviewer will say that it will be difficultto teach from it. Of course it will be difficult to teach from it. If it were easy, the book ought to be burned; for it cannot be educational. In education, as elsewhere, the broad primrose path leads to a nasty place."
