712 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Baltimore are Prof. Huxley's few words of advice on "buildings." 

 "Get an honest bricklayer, and make him build you just such rooms 

 as yoji really want, leaving ample space for extension." When 



"you have endowed all the professors you need, and built all the laboratories 

 that are wanted, and have the best museum and the finest library that can be 

 imagined ; then, if you have a few hundred thousand dollars you don't know 

 what to do with, send for an architect, and tell him to put up a fagade. If 

 American is similar to English experience, any other course will probably lead 

 you into having some stately structure, good for your architect's fame, but not 

 in the least what you want.'' 



The South Kensington lecture contains some strong pleading for 

 the study of Biology, as a subject of deep importance to the com- 

 munity. Among other illustrations of its importance it is urged that 

 thereby alone are men able to form something like a rational concep- 

 tion of what constitutes valuable criticism of the teachings of biolo- 

 gists. " Brilliant articles " are from time to time written by " paper- 

 philosophers " devoid of even the elements of biological knowledge, 

 and the teachings of biologists are demolished, while the weather- 

 cock heads among us are. Prof. Huxley tells us, much exercised by the 

 "winds of doctrine" let loose in the said articles. Turning, however, 

 to his favorite storehouse of metaphor, he finds that the brilliancy of 

 the writers "is like the light given out by the crackling of thorns 

 under a pot, of which Solomon speaks." Solomon makes use of the- 

 image for purposes of comparison, but Prof. Huxley politely abstains 

 from proceeding further into detail. 



The study of Biology which is here advocated is practical study 

 of the actual phenomena presented by plants and animals. 



"Nobody will ever know anything about biology, except in a dilettante 'paper- 

 philosopher ' way, who contents himself with reading books on botany, zoology, 

 and the like ; and the reason of this is simple and easy to understand. It is that 

 all language is merely symbohcal of the things of which it treats ; the more 

 complicated the things, the more bare is the symbol, and the more its verbal 

 definition requires to be supplemented by the information derived directly from 

 the handling, and the seeing, and the touching, of the thing symbolized that is 

 really what is at the bottom of the whole matter. , . . You may read any 

 quantity of books, and you may be almost as ignorant as you were at starting, 

 if you don't have, at the back of your minds, the change for words in definite 

 images which can only be acquired through the operation of your observing 

 faculties on the phenomena of Nature." 



The rationale of the demand ior practical teaching in all branches of 

 science a demand to which it is exceedingly difficult to get those 

 who have the direction of educational institutions in this country to 

 accede has never been stated with more simple force than in the 

 above extract. 



Like all his writings, this last volume by Prof. Huxley presents 



