EDITOR'S TABLE. 



245 



good local collection should represent, 

 in its specimens, the zoology, botany, 

 and geology of the district. It should 

 be arranged with a view to teaching, 

 and, instead of being crowded with a 

 multiplicity of objects, should consist 

 of carefully-selected, well-arranged, and 

 clearly-labelled types of the classes, 

 orders, families, and leading genera of 

 animals and plants, extant in the region, 

 and gathered in their fossil vestiges, 

 from its geological formations, which 

 are at the same time represented by 

 classified minerals. 



The plan now suggested, by which 

 it would become the official duty of col- 

 lege authorities to bring together the 

 products of a region, so that they would 

 be accessible to everybody in quest of 

 this kind of information, and at the 

 same time tributary to the purposes of 

 science, would give us museums worthy 

 of the name, and secure the proper ob- 

 jects of their establishment. 



In every aspect, therefore, the pro- 

 ject of establishing so close a connec- 

 tion between State geological explora- 

 tions and our higher educational insti- 

 tutions is to be cordially commended ; 

 and it is not the least of its advantages 

 that it coincides with the great ten- 

 dencies of educational reform, and offers 

 an efficient method of carrying it for- 

 ward. 



SCIENTIFIC TUEORIZING. 



In our correspondence for this 

 month will be found a letter from a 

 distinguished American physiologist, 

 approving the position taken by Mr. 

 Godwin in his speech at the Tyndall 

 dinner, as "a protest, not against sci- 

 ence, but in its behalf, and against the 

 damaging influence of pretended fol- 

 lowers or mistaken friends ; " and this 

 view expresses, we are assured, the con- 

 viction of many professionally scientific 

 men of the present time. 



"We have no desire to prolong con- 

 troversy, but, with all respect to the 



professional authorities, we must con- 

 tinue to. think that the efforts to limit 

 and confine scientific investigation in 

 the present age are not in the interest 

 of true science ; nor can we see how 

 they differ from attempts to obstruct 

 the advance of thought that have been 

 made in preceding ages. There has al- 

 ways been a party unwilling to allow 

 science to find its own limits. They 

 have forbidden each step of its prog- 

 ress, and demanded that it should 

 keep within its sphere, for the sake 

 of its own good. They have never 

 denied science, or questioned its au- 

 thority, but only demanded that it 

 should consult its own interests by 

 staying in its proper place. When the 

 work of investigating Nature was se- 

 riously commenced, some three or four 

 centuries ago, "Aristotle," "Galen," 

 and " Mathematics," were terms used 

 to define the scope of legitimate sci- 

 ence; and, when the first great step 

 forward was taken, and men began to 

 question the tradition of the flatness of 

 the earth, they were sharply met with 

 the charge that they were going beyond 

 their sphere and damaging science it- 

 self. Men were as free as the wind to 

 pursue true science that is, to accept 

 Aristotelian and Galenic dicta, and to 

 cultivate the whole range of mathe- 

 matics. The ideal world was a sphere 

 of exact and eternal truth ; external 

 Nature was a mere flux of sensuous ap- 

 pearances, not suspected to be a sphere 

 of law; the attempt to study her was 

 therefore to invade the ancient and in- 

 violable limits of science. Hence, in 

 denying the flatness of the earth, and 

 affirming its sphericity, the early in- 

 quirers not only shocked common- 

 sense but were charged with violat- 

 ing every canon of established scien- 

 tific method. Exactly the same con- 

 siderations that are now urged were 

 urged then with tenfold force, and the 

 antagonists of the new doctrine might 

 well have said that they "did not 

 propose to cramp scientific inquiry, 



