As President of the Ethnological Society, he delivered an inaugural address “On the Ethnology and Archeology of India,” on March 9, and another “On the Ethnology and Archeology of North America,” on April 13.  As president of the Society, moreover, he urged upon the Government the advisability of forming a systematic series of photographs of the various races comprehended in the British Empire, and was officially called upon to offer suggestions for carrying out the project.  This appears to be an amplification of Sir Joseph Fayrer’s plan in 1866, with respect to all the tribes of India (see Appendix 1.)

On April 7 he delivered his “Scientific Education:  Notes of an After-Dinner Speech” before the Philomathic Society at Liverpool ("Collected Essays” 3 3), one part of which deals with the attitude of the clergy towards physical science, and expresses the necessary antagonism between science and Roman Catholic doctrine which appears more forcibly in one of his speeches at the School Board in 1871.

In this and other educational addresses, he had suggested that one of the best ways of imparting to children a preliminary knowledge of the phenomena of nature would be a course of what the Germans call “Erdkunde,” or general information about the world we live in.  It should reach from our simplest everyday observations to wide generalisations of physical science; and should supply a background for the study of history.  To this he gave the name “Physiography,” a name which he believed to be original, until in 1877 his attention was called to the fact that a “Physiographie” had been published in Paris thirty years before.

The idea was no new one with him.  Part of his preliminary lectures at the School of Mines had been devoted to something of the kind for the last dozen years; he had served on the Committee of the British Association, appointed in 1866 as the result of a paper by the present Dean Farrar, then a Harrow master, “On the Teaching of Science in the Public Schools,” to report upon the whole question.  Moreover, in consultation with Dr. Tyndall, he had drawn up a scheme in the winter 1868-69, for the science teaching in the International College, on the Council of which they both were.

Seven yearly grades were arranged in this scheme, proceeding from the simplest account of the phenomena of nature taught chiefly by object lessons, largely through the elements of Physics and Botany, Chemistry and Human Physiology—­all illustrated with practical demonstrations—­to more advanced work in these subjects, as well as in Social Science, which embraced not only the theory of commerce and government, but the Natural History of Man up to the point at which Ethnology and Archeology touch history.

It is interesting to note that the framers of this report thought it necessary to point out that one master could not teach all these subjects.