NATURAL SCIENCE 



A Monthly Review of Scientific Progress 



No. 68— Vol. XI— OCTOBEE 1897 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



The Training of the Biologist 



The most striking feature of late in the study of animals, at least in 

 this country, is the marked tendency of the orthodox school of 

 teachers to break through the narrow bounds which have confined 

 them since ' Biology ' replaced the old-fashioned natural history 

 and comparative anatomy. It is, indeed, strange that while the 

 methods of Darwin have had such an immense influence upon the 

 lines of advanced work and research, they should have had so little 

 effect upon the curriculum of elementary teaching. As Prof. Miall 

 well said in his recent address to Section I) of the British Asso- 

 ciation, " the animals set before the young zoologist are all dead ; it 

 is much if they are not pickled as well. When he studies their 

 development, he works chiefly or altogether upon continuous sections, 

 embryos mounted in balsam and wax models. He is rarely encouraged 

 to observe live tadpoles or third-day chicks with beating hearts. As 

 for what Gilbert White calls the life and conversation of animals, 

 how they defend themselves, feed, and make love, this is commonly 

 passed over as a matter of curious but not very important informa- 

 tion ; it is not reputed scientific, or at least not eminently scientific." 

 Finally, as to the inter-relationships of animals, the average graduate 

 of the orthodox university school is in a state approaching blissful 

 ignorance. He is usually led, if not actually taught, to look down 

 with scorn upon the ' systematist.' He imagines he has mastered 

 the whole of the principles of Biology before he has acquired the 

 most elementary notions of generic and specific characters and the 

 phenomena of variation. 



There have been two noteworthy utterances on this subject 

 during the past month, that of Prof. Miall in his Presidential 

 Address already referred to, and that of Mr Walter Garstang in the 

 last number of the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science (vol. 

 xl., p. 211). Both urge that the time has arrived for some reform 

 in the methods of elementary training, and we commend their plea 



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