to the cultivation of the imagina- tion.
This reminds me of ณ story which I am tempted to tell, though it will probably be more interesting to the Masters and other gentlemen here present, than to the ladies and the scholars. A Cambridge under- graduate, who was an enthusiast for literature, with much diffienlty persuaded a mathematical friend to read "Paradise Lost." When the book was returned, he expected his enthusiasm to be shared by his friend. But the latter said he could find very little in the work. There was one neat thing. The dimen- sions of Satan were given, and the time he took to fall from Heaven to Hell. It was thus possible to calculate the distance between the Celestial and Infernal regions, by simple substitution in the formula, 18-ft2.
Before I close my remarks I wish to emphasise a use of Ma- thematics other than that de.. rived from immediate practical anal eation. It is recognised to be the study which more than any other develops what I have elsewhere called the male element of the mind, that is the reasoning power.
I
wish also to add a word of practical advice to the boys and
a suggestion to the Bead Master. A blunder in J ma- thematical operation, absolutely vitiating, as it must do, the result obtained by a correct process, is the worst of faults, and is generally avoidable by checking. A mere going over a calculation a second time is not always or even generally the best way of checking. Some- times this can be done by reversing the process and generally by an operation of mental arithmetic. I suggest to the Head Master that when he finds a boy habitually blundering in his calculations he should make him show at the foot of each solution the method he has adopted to roughly check it.
In conclusion, I would explain chat I have chosen to give. to this College, as the most important educational establishment in this Colony, the prize for mathematics, because the mathematical prize was the ONC which, when I was at the Royal Military Academy, I was most de- sirous of winning, and the article I have selected as a prize is the near- est approach I could find here to that which was presented to me for mathematics twenty-five years ago, and which is now on my office table. I propose to give a similar prize for the same subject to this College every year while I remain at Hong- kong and I hope the Governor's prize for mathematics will be con- sidered worth working for.
(Applause.)
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