594 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



these in after-years fail to grow up strong and healthy men? and, if 

 so, is paterfamilias sure that their " simple," i. e., monotonous and 

 meagre mode of feeding during their years of most active growth had 

 naught to do with their failure ? 



Just as any system of teaching is a real success in proportion as it 

 adapts itself to the peculiar needs not of those who are quick and 

 willing, but of those who are slow or averse to learn so any scale of 

 diet approaches perfection in exact proportion to the provision made, 

 not merely for the average standard of taste and appetite, but for all 

 reasonable deviations therefrom. The daily meals of a school may be 

 abundant and of good quality, still, if they be not more varied than to 

 my certain knowledge they often are, many a boy and girl must fail 

 day after day to get those particular elements of nutrition which they 

 specially require. The result with such boys and girls is that even in 

 the midst of plenty they remain permanently underfed and imperfectly 

 nourished, thus retarding, if not arresting, the due growth and de- 

 velopment of their bodies, and strongly favoring the development of 

 any inherited or other constitutional unsoundness lurking within them. 

 Food Journal. 



-*- 



SCIENTIFIC DABBLERS. 



By F. "W. CLARKE. 



THERE is, perhaps, no more amusing trait in human nature than 

 that which leads people to criticise subjects about which they 

 know nothing. And it seems to be a trait common to all minds, but 

 differing much in intensity. Education roots it out to a considerable 

 extent, but never quite obliterates it. The more ignorant the critic, 

 the more confident are his assertions. 



Four departments of knowledge are especially infested by these 

 critical parasites, namely : physical science, metaphysics, politics, and 

 theology. Persons wholly ignorant of political economy discuss taxa- 

 tion, capital, the rights of property, and similar questions, in the most 

 solemn and owl-like manner ; others, who know so little of natural his- 

 tory as to be almost unable to tell a grasshopper from a gorilla, will 

 point out Darwin's errors most lucidly ; and men who have the vaguest 

 ideas as to the meanings of the polysyllables which they habitually 

 use, expound, with wonderful clearness, the nature of infinity, and in. 

 vent new theories of the universe for every day in the week. 



At the present time, natural science is a favorite field for the gam- 

 bols of these wiseacres. And, strange as it would seem, at first sight, 

 their energies are usually directed to the highest and most difficult sub- 

 jects. The sciolist rarely wastes his thoughts upon simple matters. And 



