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ment of the amphioxus, but he don't know a jumping mouse from a long- 

 tailed shrew, an oriole from a cat bird, nor a Hessian fly from a chinch 

 bug. The only field of nature which he has ever explored, or which he 

 deems worthy of exploration, is the field beneath the lenses of his micro- 

 scope. 



When he assumes the biological chair he does so for two reasons; first, 

 to replenish his exchequer; second, to use his position as a stepping stone 

 to a higher one, where his methods are in vogue. 



He finds on entering the high school no equipments for teaching 

 zoology, no collection except a worm-eaten, dried sea urchin and a half 

 rotten, alcohclic horned toad, no library except a worn copy of Steele's 

 zoology. He appeals to the school board for aid. Their belief in the 

 potency of his sheep skin and other credentials cause them to allow him $300 

 for supplies. Two-thirds of this he expends for compound microscopes, a 

 microtome and reagents ; one-sixth of it he sends to a marine supply house 

 for sea urchins, star fish and amphioxus, and with the remainder he pur- 

 chases a few standard reference works on embryology and morphology ; 

 and then settles down to teach his pupils of fourteen and fifteen years of 

 age in the high school, the same facts according to the same methods 

 which he learned in the great universities where he received his special 

 training. 



His pupils bring in for a time birds, reptiles and insects from their 

 native heath, but their instructor can tell the youthful collectors nothing 

 of the habits, life history, or classification of their specimens. Their 

 natural desire for collecting and observation, which, with a little en- 

 couragement, would soon have resulted in much good both for them- 

 selves and for the high school collection, is soon chilled. 



They cease to notice the animals and plants about them, and in a month 

 or two settle down under the teacher's guidance and study, for a year, sec- 

 tions one-three thousandth of an inch thick of some half dozen marine 

 forms, and perhaps, if they know where to find them, of the eggs or tad- 

 poles of a frog or salamander. 



At the end of the year they can talk smatteringly of ectoderms, blasto- 

 spheres, actinial filaments and calycoblasts. They can make fair diagrams 

 of the sections they have studied, but they know little of morphology, less 

 of adaptation and correlation of organs, and absolutely nothing of the 

 claseification of animals. 



They graduate from the high school and go out into the world. One 



