February, '11] COMSTOCK: TEACHING METHODS 57 



information is subordinated to the giving of a training that shall enable 

 the student to ascertain facts for himself. Much more attention is given 

 to laboratory and field work than to lectures. Thus at the outset, these 

 students when taking the introductory course on general entomology, 

 described above, take only the lectures, and instead of the "one-hour" 

 (2Jx^ hours actual time) laboratory work, take first a "three-hour" 

 laboratory course (73^ hours per week) in elementary morphology 

 of insects and then a "three-hour" laboratory course in elementary 

 systematic entomology; the two constituting a "three-hour" labora- 

 tory course throughout a year. 



In this elementary laboratory course the student is held to the per- 

 formance of his work in the most accurate manner possible for him, 

 and we usually convince him that he can do it more accurately then 

 he thinks he can at first. We care comparatively little for the facts 

 that he learns. It is not much to have learned the more general fea- 

 tures of the external anatomy of a grasshopper; but it is a great deal to 

 have worked out these features in a painstaking way. It is here in the 

 performance of this elementary work that is largely determined the 

 kind of a worker that a student is to be. It rarely happens that a man 

 who persists in doing slovenly work here becomes a careful worker 

 later. It sometimes takes considerable time for a student to learn to 

 work in a careful manner, but if he has the right kind of stuff in him 

 he will learn before the end of this year's work. If he does not do so, 

 he is advised to devote himself to some other field of activitj^ Here, 

 as elsewhere in nature, a thinning-out process is necessary to produce 

 the best results. 



I have given considerable space to the discussion of this course, for 

 we regard it the most important course in our curriculum; it is the 

 foundation on which all the other courses rest. Later the student who 

 has been started in the right way needs only to be given the facilities 

 of the laboratory and library and occasional suggestions as to methods 

 of work and interpretation of results. 



I will not take the space to describe in detail the more advanced 

 courses. Those who are interested will find them listed in our 

 Announcement of Courses, a copy of which I will append to this 

 paper. A few words, however, regarding the organization of our 

 department of entomology may be of interest. 



The work in systematic entomology is under the direction of Dr. 

 A. D. MacGillivray. It includes the elementary work in this field, 

 already referred to, and several special advanced courses. One of 

 these, a three-hour course (i. e., 7}^ hours per week for a half-year) is 

 devoted to the classification of the Carabidse. This family was. 

 selected because it contains many genera, and these are separated. 



