668 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



grow, the rain fall, the wind howl, and generally all things that are 

 occasional and exceptional ; an indifference being contracted toward 

 what is familiar, constant, and regular. When anything goes wrong, 

 the child has the wish to set it right, and is anxious to know what will 

 answer the purpose ; this is the inlet of practice, and, by this, correct 

 knowledge may find its way to the mind, provided the power of com- 

 prehension is sufficiently matured. Still the radical obstacle remains 

 the impossibility of approaching science at random, or taking it in any 

 order ; we must begin at the proper beginning, and w T e may not always 

 contrive to tickle the curiosity at the exact stage of the pupil's under- 

 standing. Every teacher knows, or should know, the little arts of 

 giving a touch of wonder and mystery to a fact before the explanation 

 is given ; all which is found to tell in the regular march of exposition, 

 but would be lost labor in any other course. 



The very young, those that we are working upon by gentle allure- 

 ment, are not properly competent to learn the " how " or " wherefore " 

 of any important natural fact ; they cannot even be made to desire the 

 thing in the proper way. They are open chiefly to the charm of sense 

 novelty and variety, which, together with accidental charm or liking, 

 impresses the pictorial or concrete aspects of the world, whether quies- 

 cent or changing, the last being the most powerful. They further are 

 capable of understanding the more palpable conditions of many changes 

 without penetrating to ultimate causes. They learn that to light a fire 

 there must be fuel and a light applied ; that the growth of vegetables 

 needs planting or sowing, together with rain and sunshine through a 

 summer season. The empirical knowledge of the world that preceded 

 science is still the knowledge that the child passes through in the way 

 to science ; and all this may be guided so as to prepare for the future 

 scientific revelations. In other respects the so-called curiosity of 

 children is chiefly valuable as yielding ludicrous situations for our 

 comic literature. 



THE PEOGEESS OF AKTHEOPOLOGY. 1 



By Professor T. II. HUXLEY. 



WHEN I undertook, with the greatest possible pleasure, to act as 

 a lieutenant of my friend the president of this section, I stead- 

 fastly purposed to confine myself to the modest and useful duties of 

 that position. For reasons, with which it is not worth while to trouble 

 you, I did not propose to follow the custom which has grown up in the 

 Association of delivering an address upon the occasion of taking the 



1 Address before the Department of Anthropology of the British Association at its 

 recent meeting held in Dublin, August 14, 1878. 



