=Teaching the Teachers.=--The following suggestive paragraph is taken from the inaugural address of William Henry Preece, president of the British Institution of Civil Engineers: "Our educational methods have begun at the wrong end. We ought to teach the masters first and then the men. Moreover, we have to teach the teachers and those who have control of the purse-strings. The County Councils of England are scarcely qualified as yet to discharge the very serious duty of properly dealing with a question so few of them understand--though many of them have tackled the matter manfully, especially the London County Council, through its Technical Education Board, on which a large proportion of co-opted experts have seats, who, by supporting existing institutions, have contributed toward the supply of teachers. But how are we to approach the masters? A fault once discovered is halfway to repair. It is difficult to remove the scales from the eyes of the man who has been successful in business and knows not of his blindness; but the coming generation will be more enlightened, and the future masters better educated. We are suffering from a lack of competent teachers. A teacher who has had no training in the practical world is worse than useless, for he imparts ideas derived from his inner consciousness or from the false teaching of his own abstract professor, which lead to mischief. In my own experience I have met with very serious inconveniences from this cause. The ideal professor of pure abstract science is a very charming personage, but he is a very arrogant and dogmatic individual, and, being a sort of little monarch in his own laboratory and lecture room, surrounded by devoted subjects, his word is law, and he regards the world at large, especially the practical world, as outside his domain and beneath his notice. He is generally behind the age. These are not the men for technical institutes. Such teachers should possess the diploma of this institution."