STRUCTUEE OF DOMESTICATED ANIMALS. 307 



so during our late war. We did not find the generals who knew 

 how to command, the day of the first battle. It requires years 

 to find a man capable of leading two hundred thousand men. 

 In matters of scientific progress we need a great many stud- 

 ents, and large schools, from which to pick out the man who is 

 capable of making new discoveries, or simply accurate investi- 

 gations ; and have we these schools now ? Is the number of 

 our scientific students proportionate to the intellectual capacity 

 of the nation ? By no means ; and until our system of popu- 

 lar education is radically changed, or so far changed, at least, 

 that in all our schools instruction is given in those branches of 

 science which train observers, you may not even have the 

 knowledge necessary to carry on your practical pursuits, and 

 still less the chances of making any real progress. These 

 results can only be brought about by introducing into our 

 schools that sort of instruction which prepares students to 

 become observers, or at least, which gives the teacher an 

 opportunity of ascertaining whether any of his pupils may be 

 educated into an observer or not. Such schools we have not, 

 such teachers we have not, or very few of them — half a dozen 

 in Massachusetts is the sum-total of the men qualified to teach 

 in that way ; and the schools in which they may teach, the 

 apparatus necessary for that instruction, we have not. We 

 have to build them up, and we shall not have them before the 

 community understands what are the conditions necessary for 

 the acquisition of new knowledge which may improve the 

 conditions of our success in the practical afiiiirs of a civilized 

 community. 



You may ask what text-books you shall take to begin with. 

 There are none that I would recommend. You cannot use 

 the present text-books, for most of them are manufactured 

 by people who know nothing or precious little of the sub- 

 ject about which they write. They are mere compilations, 

 made for the market, by men who have no sort of knowledge 

 of what should be the substance of a text-book ; and, what is 

 worse than that, our schools are crowded with so large a num- 

 ber of pupils that the teachers, even the very best of them, 

 have to resort to all sorts of devices in order to keep alive. 

 Instead of teaching, that is, instead of giving out of their 

 .knowledge and their substance something by which they can 



