218 Naturalist at Large 



When I was on the Board of Overseers, I was pretty- 

 constantly on Visiting Committees that visited botani- 

 cal and biological departments, and I got very much 

 interested in a fact, as to which I worked up a lot of 

 figures, for a report to the Overseers, viz., that the 

 graduate students in biology are on the whole not 

 graduates of Harvard College. The undergraduates 

 who take much biology at Harvard don't pursue the 

 subject except at the Medical School or elsewhere. 

 And the implications and explanations of this, to you, 

 perfectly familiar fact seemed to me quite interesting. 

 What used to be called Natural History ought to be 

 one of the best cultural studies. A man who cannot 

 use his eyes and ears as he goes about in his physical 

 environment and cannot learn about the universe ex- 

 cept by digging himself into the stacks of the Widener 

 Library and putting on a pair of spectacles is only 

 half a man. But for some strange reason two genera- 

 tions of scientists have chosen to treat amateur natural- 

 ists as triflers, the systematist as a pedant; and the school 

 teachers have failed pretty completely to do much with 

 natural science. Crazy and deplorable! ! 



This is something which Howard Parker has also often 

 spoken about. He has remarked on many occasions how few 

 of his colleagues teaching biology in Cambridge are gradu- 

 ates of Harvard College. Robert Jackson was until he 

 retired. Henry Bigelow, Jeffries Wyman, and I are the 

 only three on the present staff if I mistake not. 



