58o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



not enough, for there can be no doubt that many teachers take the 

 very books ■\vhich emphatically urge the necessity of observation, and 

 use them just as they would a grammar, or a school history, so that the 

 observation, in this case, may be said to consist in observing what is 

 said on a certain page of a certain book, and not in watching any 

 plant or animal. 



Supposing that I am correct in believing that about three fourths 

 of a class ask the question, " What do you wish me to observe ? " there 

 still remain one fourth who do not ask the question. Among these 

 are some who are by nature good observers, or who have been well 

 trained, but the number of these is very small. The remainder consists 

 of those who have already studied biology according to the very latest 

 method with all the modern improvements. They do not ask what I 

 wish them to observe, but, on the contrary, begin to lecture to me 

 about the object under consideration and things in general. If I give 

 them some yeast to examine, they tell me at once all about its his- 

 tory, and show me the spores which it seems necessary that the yeast 

 should have to make it agree with the books. It makes no difference 

 if I substitute a quantity of starch for the yeast. If I only call it 

 yeast, it will have all the book-marks of yeast. This over-educated 

 class of young men is very entertaining, but very hard to teach. 

 Everything is grist to their mill. For them the ubiquitous air-bubble 

 makes a simple but sufficient nucleus, if it is necessary to have a nu- 

 cleus, or it will serve equally well as a spore if spores are desired. 

 Nothing is so insignificant that they can not apply to it a big name, 

 and no theory is so complex that it can not be dragged in to explain 

 the most self-evident cases. 



I have said enough to show that, unless my experience is an excep- 

 tional one, in spite of all the talk on the subject, boys at school are 

 not taught to observe as they should be, and that even those teachers 

 who use good text-books frequently use them as means of imparting 

 facts easily and quickly by the old method, rather than as an aid in the 

 scientific training of the faculties which must form the basis of any 

 serious study of biology. One fact has surprised me. Some of the 

 best observers among my students have been persons who fitted at 

 the classical schools, where the training is exclusively linguistic and 

 mathematical. To be sure, thoy have been considered a bad lot by 

 some of their instructors, and I presume that they paid little attention 

 to their studies at school. Perhaps it is in consequence of this very 

 neglect that their natural powers of observation have been less im- 

 paired than those of their fellows who have learned more and seen 

 less. 



It seems a great pity that students should come to college so ill- 

 fitted, as are the majority, to undertake biological work. But we 

 must accept things as they are, and there is no use in attempting to 

 take the second step before the first has been taken. If the school can 



