MODERN BIOLOGICAL INQUIBY. 285 



question, und whose completeness of delivery ail who study its utter- 

 ances will appreciate. Scliool-masters anxious to teach science, and 

 doubtful how to set about it, will meet all the facts which can enlighten 

 them in the appendices to the report. They will find lists of accred- 

 ited text-books, specimens of examination-papers, varieties of school 

 time-tables, priced catalogues of apparatus, syllabi of lectures and 

 experiments, botanical schedules and tables, plans and descriptions of 

 laboratories, workshops, museums, botanic gardens ; programmes and 

 reports of school, scientific, and natural history societies. They will 

 learn how costly a temple could be built to science at Rugby, and 

 how modestly it could be housed at Taunton. They will see how Mr. 

 Foster teaches physics, how Mr. Hale teaches geography, how Mr. 

 Wilson teaches Enlkimde. And they will accept all this as coming 

 from men who have a right to speak, and who wield an experience 

 such as has not been amassed before. On any legislative change 

 wliich impends over the system and the endowments of the higher 

 English education, the body of scientific opinion is strong enough, if 

 united, to impress its own convictions; disunion alone can paralyze it. 

 All who feel the discredit of past neglect, its injury to our national , 

 intellect, and its danger to our national prosperity, will do well to 

 support by unqualified adhesion the first attempt that lias been made 

 to probe its causes, and the first consistent and well-considered scheme 

 that has been put forth for its removal. Nature. 



-- 



MODERJS^ BIOLOGICAL INQUIRY. 



By Dr. JOHN L. LE CONTE. 



THE founders of science in America, and the other great students 

 of Nature, who have in previous years occupied the elevated 

 position in which I now stand, have addressed you upon many mo- 

 mentous subjects. In fulfilling the final duty assigned to your Presi- 

 dents by the laws of the Association, some have spoken to you in 

 solemn and wise words concerning the duties and privileges of men 

 of science, and the converse duties of the nation toward those earnest 

 and disinterested promoters of knowledge. Others, again, have given 

 you tlie history of the development of their respective branches of 

 study, and their present condition, and have, in eloquent diction, com- 

 mended to your gratitude those who have established on a firm 

 foundation the basis of our modern systems of investigation. 



The recent changes in our constitution, by which you are led to 



' Address of the retiring President delivered at tlie Detroit meeting of tlic Ameriear. 

 Association for tlie Advancement of Science. 



