METHODS OF INSTRUCTION IN MINERALOGY. 757 



logic defective, or that he had misunderstood anything in the lec- 

 tures) every effort was made to set him right. The examination was 

 really made a pleasant conversation between two friends, in which 

 one constantly endeavored to draw the other out, place him at his ease, 

 and enable him to tell what he knew. Methods of thought and work 

 were the great objects, far more than correctly naming the specimens. 

 In such an examination as this the student was obliged to depend upon 

 his merits. The teacher must have indeed been a poor one if he could 

 not in that hour find out, to a far greater extent than the student 

 dreamed or suspected, what he knew and what his methods of thought 

 and work were. Every effort was made to render the student an inde- 

 pendent thinker, to cultivate in him accuracy and quickness of observa- 

 tion and readiness of perception, to lead him to rely upon himself, to 

 weigh evidence, to reason closely, to form an opinion, and give his 

 reasons therefor to see, to be accurate, to reason, to judge, to decide. 

 The time was also improved as a means of getting hold of him and 

 establishing cordial relations with him ; as well as to turn him uncon- 

 sciously in the right direction, and to come into that close personal 

 contact which it is so difficult to bring about in a large university, but 

 which is so precious and valuable. Since these hourly examinations 

 were repeated with each pupil for each group, the chief drawback was 

 the tax upon the instructor's time and strength, as any one can readily 

 realize when he considers that this species of mental gymnastics was 

 kept up from six to ten hours a day, and that there were seven groups 

 requiring from twenty-six to thirty hours in each group. It is to be 

 borne in mind that this work was entirely voluntary on the instructor's 

 part, but it paid in the results to the students, and in many of them it 

 has influenced powerfully their after-life. 



The students attending the course comprised freshmen, sopho- 

 mores, juniors, seniors, graduates, specials, and scientific school stu- 

 dents a perfectly natural result from the extended elective system of 

 Harvard. I am free to confess that, for a course like the one above de- 

 scribed, I much prefer freshmen and sophomores to juniors and sen- 

 iors. The reason is not far to seek. The prime objects of such a 

 course are to cultivate observation and accuracy, train the powers of 

 reasoning and judgment, and above all to beget in the student inde- 

 pendence and freedom of thought. The previous training of the 

 upper-class men had usually been such as to cramp and weaken what- 

 ever faculties in these directions they might have originally possessed, 

 and hence it was exceedingly difficult to stimulate them to right meth- 

 ods of w T ork and thought. This was strikingly exemplified in the case 

 of those students who were thoroughly conversant with the blow-pipe, 

 from their previous study of chemistry. It was with the greatest diffi- 

 culty that they could be prevented from taking some one of the nu- 

 merous artificial blow-pipe keys for the determination of minerals, 

 shutting their eyes to all the physical characters, transforming them- 



