BIOLOGICAL TEACHING IN COLLEGES. 579 



come from distant colleges and technical schools. The course is 

 strictly an elementary one, and no previous knowledge of botany or 

 zoology is required. As a fact, a considerable number of the class 

 have studied botany before entering college, and, as others have not, 

 I am able to compare the results of different methods of study in the 

 fitting-schools. 



After a few directions concerning the use of the compound micro- 

 scopes placed before them, some simple material is given them to ex- 

 amine. Considering the large number of good books which insist 

 upon proper training of the observing powers, and knondng how ex- 

 tensively they are read by teachers, I might hope that, at least, a good 

 share of my class would know how to set to work. But what is the 

 case ? The first question asked by about three fourths of any class 

 is sure to be, " What do you wish me to observe ? " What a question ! 

 Is this the result of several years' training, that a young man eighteen 

 years of age, or older, must be told just what to observe when a 

 preparation is put before him ? Has it come to this, that, while a boy 

 eight or ten years old will examine with interest objects placed before 

 him, a college student will not examine a preparation until he has 

 been told exactly what he is to see in it? When I reply, "I wish 

 you to examine whatever there is to be seen in your preparation," 

 there is a look of astonishment, sometimes shading off into dismay. 

 That an instructor should expect students to look at an object before 

 them and make out its structure, or attempt to make out its structure, 

 by themselves, seems to them something quite unheard of, and they evi- 

 dently feel that there is a certain meanness attaching to one who will 

 not tell them just what they must see. It has never entered their 

 heads that, while an instructor may be able to tell them what he him- 

 self sees in the object to be studied, he can not tell them what they 

 will see in it, and that it is only after they have studied the object for 

 themselves and attempted to form an idea of its structure that he can 

 explain what is obscure or correct what is eiToneous. Evidently the 

 greater part of the students regard the objects placed before them as 

 so many diagrams, and the instructor is to serve the same pui'pose as 

 the " explanation of figure so-and-so " in a text -book. 



The question naturally arises, where were those who ask, " What 

 do you wish me to observe ? " fitted for college ? Do they all come from 

 the classical schools, where the only natural history studied is a three 

 weeks' cram of Gray's " How Plants Grow " ? Unfortunately, they do 

 not. Nothing better, perhaps, could have been expected from schools 

 where nearly all the instruction is confined to languages, and where 

 the inquiring spirit and fondness for observation natural to children, 

 are suppressed to a great extent. Some of the students in question 

 have come from schools, or worse still, from colleges, where natural 

 history is taught, and where use is made of some of the excellent books 

 to which I have already referred. It is evident that a good book is 



