7 2 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



scientific training whatever. And such teachers are expected to 

 teach a dozen subjects each, and therefore have no time to make 

 good their defective preparation. Thus good teaching of science 

 can not be expected, for streams do not rise higher than their 

 sources. The only remedy for these conditions seems to lie in 

 the gradual education of the people. A series of object-lessons, 

 showing the difference between a good teacher and a poor one, is 

 the most effective means of causing good work to be appreciated. 



But taking things as they are, even with uneducated teachers 

 and teachers crowded for time, fairly good work may be done by 

 the use of good methods. A great deal will depend, not on the 

 kind of books you use, but on the kind of books you avoid. Most 

 of the current text-books of elementary zoology are simply per- 

 nicious so far as your purposes are concerned. Even if these 

 books were well digested and accurate in their statements of fact, 

 which is rarely the case, they are based on incorrect principles. 

 They are not elementary but fragmentary in their character. It 

 is a great mistake to suppose that, because a book is small and 

 says very little about each one of the animals of which it treats, it 

 is thereby rendered elementary. Fragments are not necessarily 

 elements. A fragment of rock is as hard to digest as a bowlder. 

 Elementary work in science should treat of but few things, but 

 the impressions it leaves with the child should be very clear ones. 

 The ideas derived from the common text-books are of the vaguest 

 possible character. These books are the parasites, not the allies, of 

 science. They bear the same relation to the progress of science 

 that barnacles bear to the progress of a ship. If you keep clear 

 of these, you can not go far astray. Let us recall the words of 

 Agassiz to the publisher who tried to induce him to write a school- 

 book on zoology : 



" I told him," he said, " that I was not the man to do that sort 

 of thing ; and I told him, too, that the less of that sort of thing 

 which is done the better. It is not school-books we want, but stu- 

 dents. The book of nature is always open, and all I can do or say 

 shall be to lead students to study that book, and not to pin their 

 faith to any other." And at another time he said, " If we study 

 Nature in books, when we go out of doors we can not find her." 



The essential of method is that we allow nothing to come be- 

 tween the student and the object which he studies. The book or 

 chart or lecture which can be used in place of the real thing is the 

 thing you should never use. Your students should see for them- 

 selves, and draw their own conclusions from what they see. When 

 they have a groundwork of their own observations, other facts 

 can be made known to them as a basis for advanced generaliza- 

 tions, for the right use of books is as important as their misuse is 

 pernicious ; but work of this sort belongs to the university rather 



