120 Bibliographical Notices, 



of these few remarks are sufficient to establish the general fact, 

 while they certainly do not preclude the necessity of further and 

 closer investigation. I am at a loss to conceive what Mr. Forbes's 

 object has been in penning his remarks ; their tendency is cer- 

 tainly to depreciate the knowledge which has been already ac- 

 quired of one of the most striking and beautiful of the many 

 facts of interest connected with the history of zoophytes. 

 Cheslmnt, July 15, 1843. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES. 



An Inaugural Lecture on Botany. By Edward Forbes, F.L.S., F.B.S. 

 &c. Van Voorst, London. 8vo. pp. 23. 



The author of this inaugural address is probably better known to 

 our readers as a zoologist and the historian of the British Starfishes 

 than as a botanist. But amongst those who best know his enthu- 

 siastic devotion to the whole range of natural-history science, he has 

 always been distinguished for the extent and accuracy of his know- 

 ledge of botany, and we congratulate the Institution with which he 

 is now connected on having obtained the services of so valuable a 

 teacher. It may be important, in the selection of lecturers in our 

 public schools, that men should be sought for who possess a pro- 

 found and intimate acquaintance with the subjects they are about to 

 teach, but at the same time it should not be forgotten that our 

 branches of science are mere artificial divisions — parts of one great 

 whole, and that to teach one properly, its relations to others should 

 be understood. This is of especial importance in a course of medical 

 education comprising many sciences, where the object is rather the 

 pointing out to the student the relation which each particular sci- 

 ence bears to the profession on which he has entered, than making 

 him profoundly acquainted with any particular department. There 

 has been no more prevalent error amongst the great body of medical 

 men, than supposing that the study of disease was their only busi- 

 ness, and that the study of the natural- history sciences M^as a mere 

 impertinence, or at most to be regarded as an ornament ; and this 

 error we suspect will always be most prevalent where the chairs of 

 chemistry, botany, &c. in our medical schools are filled by those who 

 are unacquainted with the relations which these subjects bear to the 

 study of medicine. We are glad therefore to see a gentleman edu- 

 cated for the medical profession, a zoologist and geologist, in the 

 chair of botany at King's College. 



At the present day there is perhaps too great a tendency to re- 

 gard education as the mere cramming of so many facts into the 

 heads of the taught, and in no profession is this carried to a more 

 vicious extent than in the medical. It seems to be forgotten that the 

 most effective education is to fit a person, not by the amount of facts 

 that he knows, but by rendering him capable of using the facts that 

 are presented to him, for the skilful exercise of the profession he 



