WARD'S NATURAL SCIENCE ESTABLISHMENT. 613 



of his neighborhood, is viewed by the so-called educated community 

 as insignificant in comparison with that of the college boy who can 

 relate stories, from classical history, of persons who never existed and 

 events that never occurred. 



Considering the circumstance that all things, except what we make 

 of them, are natural objects, it would seem that the first and main 

 efforts of education, after acquiring sufficient language and arithme- 

 tic to express our ideas of qualities and numbers, would be to leai-n 

 what the objects are. The child on learning to speak at once begins 

 to ask about the things it sees, but unfortunately too often the parent 

 and teacher are incapable of giving the desired information, and ordi- 

 narily it meets with so little satisfaction that finally the spirit of 

 inquiry disappears. For most persons, after distinguishing the ordi- 

 nary articles pertaining to the necessities and conveniences of life, 

 the crudest generalities of knowledge appear to be sufticient. With 

 them it seems to be enough to know that things are stones, metals, 

 and dirt ; weeds, flowers, and trees ; bugs, animals, and men. Among 

 the cultivated, one is considered the no less educated if he calls a 

 worm a snake, or a caterpillar a nasty reptile ; while he may run 

 the risk of being called ignorant, or at least uneducated, if he can 

 not translate a Latin text. Though quartz is the most abundant 

 mineral substance of the land in which we live, yet perhaps not one 

 in a hundred of an educated community knows a quartz-pebble from 

 any other. 



To the writer the sciences, including natural history, have appeared 

 to be of the utmost importance to the welfare and happiness of man- 

 kind, and no other branches of knowledge can equal them in these re- 

 lations. 



To facilitate the study and to create a more general interest in 

 natural history, museums of characteristic specimens should not only 

 be connected with every college and other educational institutions, but 

 there should be established in every considerable town a free public 

 museum — not a mere show or place of amusement, a collection of curi- 

 osities and rare specimens, queer things, a two-headed calf, or a dried 

 hand of a murderer, but a series of specimens, often of familiar objects, 

 illustrative of the classes, orders, and other chief divisions of the min- 

 eral, vegetal, and animal kingdoms, together with those which illus- 

 trate geology and kindred subjects. A museum of this kind should 

 further be supplied with specimens of all the natural productions of 

 the vicinity, which may be collected from time to time by those who 

 are, or may become, most interested in the study of natural history. 

 Such a museum would not only be of the greatest service as a means 

 of instruction, but would prove useful in a variety of ways to the com- 

 munity, and would also give additional interest to the visits of stran- 

 gers to the locality. 



Professor Ward's great establishment is intended to supply a com- 



