AMERICAN COLLEGES vs. AMERICAN SCIENCE. 477 



eries, instead of leaving the task to amateurs or charlatans. At pres- 

 ent, unfortunately, too many able scientific men depreciate popular 

 work and hold aloof from it. They do nothing themselves to inter- 

 est the general public, and then lament the fact that the public does 

 not become interested. Yet just here is where the beginning must 

 be made. With a wider public interest in science will come a deeper 

 public appreciation, and this will develop the tendencies necessary 

 for the improvement of our colleges and schools. Until the people 

 see and recognize the difference between true investigators and mere 

 collectors of specimens, between original workers and text-book ama- 

 teurs, little real progress can be made. 



Organized effort is also needed. Just as lawyers or physicians 

 band themselves together, so also men of science should combine for 

 mutual self-protection against quackery. A man who had never 

 been admitted to the bar could scarcely be chosen to a law profess- 

 orship, neither could any one but a regular graduate be elected to 

 teach in a respectable medical school. Why should not organization 

 among chemists, geologists, or naturalists, produce in the long-run a 

 similar state of affairs ? Such an effective organization it might be 

 difficult to bring about, and still something could be done. Even a 

 very little improvement w T ould be better than no improvement at 

 all. Local scientific societies might do good in two ways: 1. By 

 preventing, or at least opposing, bad appointments in colleges ; 2. 

 By furnishing the means for popular lectures and field-excursions. 

 They could also, perhaps, do something toward breaking up the 

 present vicious and absurd mode of teaching science by mere text- 

 book recitationsj and so help forward the adoption of correct meth- 

 ods. An attempt to teach drawing or music by lectwres only, would 

 be universally recognized as nonsensical ; the same system of in- 

 struction applied to any oneof the natural sciences is equally ridicu- 

 lous. Nature must be studied at first hand to be properly under- 

 stood. 



Through legislation also something may be accomplished. This 

 something may be very little, but a good many littles taken together 

 aggregate much. Just as a single dollar may be the beginning of a 

 great fortune, so one apparently trifling measure can become the 

 starting-point of a sweeping reform. The first step to take in this 

 direction is to prevent the issue of more charters. Inflation is as bad 

 in education as it is in finance. No State which already contains more 

 than one fair college or university should permit another to be estab- 

 lished. Let the millionaires who wish to help learning give their 

 money to institutions already in existence, or else not give at all. No 

 benefaction is better than a mischievous benefaction. It is not long 

 since Massachusetts lost a splendid opportunity to inaugurate the 

 policy here recommended. The Methodist denomination of that State 

 were discussing the foundation of a new educational institution in or 



