1897] NOTES AND COMMENTS 219 



The Historical Method in Teaching Biology 



Prof. Miall, in his Presidential Address, not only emphasises 

 the importance of the study of living animals in a manner that will 

 scarcely bear abstracting, he also adds another important sugges- 

 tion, that too little attention is bestowed by biological teachers upon 

 the historical development of the subject. Many students attend 

 the lectures and demonstrations simply because they are compelled 

 to do so by the college curriculum or by the exigencies of a certifi- 

 cate. Those who happen to have no preliminary inclination to the 

 subject thus find many of the statements of bare facts dull, unin- 

 teresting, and useless for mental discipline. Suppose that that well- 

 worn topic, the Alternation of Generations, is being treated. As 

 Prof. Miall remarks, " the lecturer defines his terms and quotes 

 his examples ; we have Salpa and Aurclia and the Fern, and as 

 many more as time allows. How can he expect to interest any- 

 body in a featureless narrative, which gives no fact with its natural 

 circumstances, but mashes the whole into pemmican ? What 

 student goes away with the thought that it would be good and 

 pleasant to add to the heap of known facts ? The heap seems need- 

 lessly big already. And yet every item in that dull mass was once 

 deeply interesting, moving all naturalists and many who were not 

 naturalists to wonder and delight. The Alternation of Generations 

 worked upon men's minds in its day like Swammerdam's discovery 

 of the butterfly within the caterpillar, or Trembley's discovery of 

 the budding Hydra, which when cut in two made two new animals, 

 or Bonnet's discovery that an Aphis could bring forth living young 

 without having ever met another individual of its own species. 

 All these wonders of nature have now been condensed into glue. 

 But we can at any time rouse in the minds of our students some 

 little of the old interest, if we will only tell the tale as it was told 

 for the first time." 



Of course, there are many practical difficulties in carrying out 

 this suggestion. It entails much reading of ancient literature, 

 which the ordinary teacher rarely sees. It trespasses upon the 

 allotted lecture hours, already too short for the material to be 

 treated. At the same time, if it succeeded in infusing a little 

 more philosophy into our medical students and others, who are 

 too apt to look upon the preliminary biological course as drudgery, 

 it would well repay the additional labour involved in preparation. 



The Times on Archaeology 



The foregoing matters are of more or less professional interest. So 

 also are the geological questions — the pre-Cambrian problems of 



