SCIENCE AND THE COLLEGES. 725 



In this connection you may pardon me for a word of my own 

 experience, when twenty years ago I set out in search of a place 

 for work. A chair of Natural History was the height of my aspira- 

 tions ; for anything more specialized than this it seemed useless to 

 hope. I was early called from New York to such a chair in a well- 

 known college of Illinois. But in those days the work of a college 

 chair was never limited by its title. As a Professor of Natural 

 History I taught zoology, botany, geology, physiology — of course, 

 a little of each, and to little purpose. Then physics, chemistry, 

 mineralogy, natural theology, and political economy, also as a 

 matter of course. With these went German, Spanish, and evi- 

 dences of Christianity, because there was no one else to take them. 

 There finally fell on me the literary work of the college — the ora- 

 tions, essays, declamations, and all that flavorless foolishness on 

 which the college depended for a creditable display at commence- 

 ment. When to this was added a class in the Sunday school, you 

 will see why it seemed necessary that the naturalist and the pro- 

 fessor must sooner or later part company. I tried at one time to 

 establish a little laboratory in chemistry, but met with a sharp 

 rebuke from the board of trustees, who directed me to keep the 

 students out of what was called the cabinet, for they were likely to 

 injure the apparatus and waste the chemicals. When I left this 

 college and looked elsewhere for work, I found on all sides diffi- 

 culty and disappointment ; for tlie reputation I had, wholly un- 

 deserved, I am sorry to say, was the dreaded reputation of a 

 specialist. The question of theological orthodoxy seemed every- 

 where to be made one of primary importance, and candidates for 

 chairs who, like myself, were not heretics on the subject of the 

 origin of species, passed the rock of evolution only to be stranded 

 on the inner shoals of the mysteries of the Scottish philosophy. 



But these were not the only sources of difficulty. In one insti- 

 tution toward which I had looked the chair of Natural History was 

 found unnecessary. In the meeting of the board of trustees a mem- 

 ber arose and said in substance : " We have just elected a Professor 

 of History. This includes all history, and the work in natural his- 

 tory is a part of it. Let the Professor of History take this, too " ; 

 and for that year, at least, the Professor of History took it all, and 

 it was not hard for him to do it, for the college course in history 

 consisted of nothing but cut straw and its preparation — that is, 

 the reading of a chapter in the text-book a day in advance of the 

 class was no drain on the time or the intellect of the teacher. 



Even in the excellent State university into which I ultimately 

 drifted I was met at the beginning by the caution that the pur- 

 pose of my work must be elementary teaching, the statement of 

 the essential facts of science, and by no means the making of nat- 

 uralists and specialists. 



