DISCUSSIONS 31 



or "it isn't," and most of us reply "it isn't" or "it is." There is not 

 much outcome to that sort of debate. 



As teachers we simply know better than to follow Mr. Hornaday's advice. 

 If we were historians we should say that the world knows better than to go 

 back to its tested and rejected methods. 



The librarian of this university, standing near an extremely absorbed stu- 

 dent in the reading room, heard this faithful student of zoology repeating 

 over and over again with utter concentration of mind and devotion of pur- 

 pose this startling sentence: "This is — the picture — of the — cross-section 

 of — an eel — this is — the picture — of the — cross-section of — an eel — this is 

 — the picture — of the — cross-section of — an eel." This student had 

 adopted and was exemplifying the Hornaday method of nature-stud v. 

 Needless to say this is not the method which is now or ever again will be 

 adopted by most nature-study students or teachers. 



It may be of some value and of some interest to read that the Ganges 

 does not rise, or does, if it does, in the Ural Mountains. It is certainlv of 

 much more interest, and we believe of much more profit, to know, by 

 discovering with our own eves, how a nameless creek (which is the type of 

 all the streams in the world) rises in nameless hills (which are counterparts 

 of all the mountains in the world) and flows and meanders and fights its wav 

 through soft loam and crumbling shale and ringing granite to its goal in the 

 lowlands. One is nature-study according to Hornaday, and the other is 

 nature-study according to most of the rest of us. 



But this begins to be discussion. It is not worth while. Whether Agas- 

 siz based the Agassiz method of studying nature from nature rather than from 

 books because he believed in that way or because he had no time for anv 

 other way, the verdict of the decades of trial of the Agassiz method is that it 

 is the best method so far presented to us. If Dr. Hornadav's method was 

 a new and untried one, it could not be so readily denied validitv. But it is 

 the old long-tried, fully-tested and unanimously-rejected one; hence we can 

 refer to it in declarative terms. It is the wrong way. 



Stanford University, Vernon L. KELLOGG. 



California. 



VIII 



In the Canadian Department in this issue of The Review there are other 

 discussions of Dr. Hornaday's paper. 



[Editorial Note.— Letters by President Eliot, Professor Eochhead and 

 several other well known writers will follow in the next number of The Review.] 



