BEAL ON THE STUDY OF BOTANY. 101 



I supposed certainly, all oi' one day spent ou these specimens was 

 enougli, Not so; I was to study them louj^er. Thus he called every 

 day for about live minutes during a period of three weeks, hearing what 

 1 had to say, till I made some mistake, when he uniformly turned on his 

 heel and left me, saying, "You are wrong.'' I was surprised at my own 

 work, — surprised to tind at the end of the three weeks, that I was still 

 discovering something new every day. You must understand, that dur- 

 ing this time, I had only two lectures a week on other subjects, devoting 

 all the rest of the time to sea urchins. After this I dissected specimens 

 which had been in alcohol, and occasionally went to Chelsea beach to 

 get fresh living specimens which I examiued while in motion. I began 

 to learn to see sea urchins, and it made little difference to me whether 

 it was daylight or dark, whether the specimens were before me or not, 

 visions of sea urchins in all their details were all the time before me. 



In a similar nuinner, one s])ecies of star fish was examined, occupying 

 a week or so. Agassiz said: "These two animals, the sea urchin (a 

 flattened sphere) and the star fish (with five rays or arms), are composed 

 of similar parts arranged in a similar manner. Learn how it is.'' The 

 comparison occupied several days. 



The next specimen was a spatangoid, an animal somewhat different 

 from either of the others. "Now homologize these three." Then a third 

 and a fourth si)ecimen were given me, differing from the others in ap- 

 pearance, and I was told again, "Compare. It is easy to observe isolated 

 parts, — any one can soon learn to do that, — but when you compare two 

 objects, you take a step in i)hilosophy." In one case I was asked to 

 make a paper model of a coral, to illustrate my idea of the hard por- 

 tions. Corals were compared with sea urchins and star fishes. This 

 work occujjied me for over two months, and during all this time, Agassiz 

 never corrected a mistake, but kept me working till I found out for 

 myself. 



Perhaps it was three months before I was permitted to see books on 

 these subjects, but at that time their contents were carefully read 

 and fully understood. Agassiz often said: "Study specimens and refer 

 to books, and not the reverse, as is usually' done. Text-book knowledge 

 about nature does not amount to anything; it is a very poor basis of 

 culture." 



It has seemed to me that the work with Agassiz helped me more than 

 that of any other teacher with whom I ever came in contact, and yet no 

 teacher ever told me so little. I learned to observe and learned to rely 

 on myself. At that time we supposed that this kind of work was be- 

 ginning the study of zoology in the right way, but in these days, some 

 people are trying to make a new thing out of it, by calling it nature 

 study. Nature study is seeing the things one looks at, and the drawing 

 of correct conclusions from w^hat is seen. In this connection it may be 

 well to keep in mind Dr. Goodale's definition of botany. "Botany at- 

 tempts to answer all reasonable questions about plants." 



I spent months studying asters, golden rods, sedges, and other plants 

 in the laboratory with Dr. Asa Gray, who was always on the alert to 

 keep me in the right track and point out the mistakes at once, saying: 

 "It isn't worth while to pursue a subject when you have got off the right 

 track." 



