February, 11] FERNALD; TEACHING METHODS 65 



For the student who expects to make entomology his Hfe work, the 

 problem is somewhat different. Such a man must know all the impor- 

 tant insect pests, and be able to identify those which he may not recog- 

 nize. He must thoroughly understand the various methods of con- 

 trolling these insects, and must be able to successfully raise insects 

 through their early stages to the adult condition, in case a pest can 

 not be recognized until it is adult. In other words, he should under- 

 stand how to do systematic work, life history work, and how to con- 

 duct methods of treatment, and this should not be knowledge gained 

 from books or in the lecture room alone, but by practical experience. 

 And it is here that the difficulty of adapting collegiate sessions to ento- 

 mological work appears. Structural and sj^stematic work can easily 

 be conducted during the ^^dnter, and methods of treatment, to a slight 

 extent, can also be undertaken at this time, but the larger part of all 

 field work, which is so important, must either be begun so near the 

 end of the spring term that the student leaves before it has been com- 

 pleted, or must be undertaken entirely during the summer vacation, 

 when he is not ordinarily available. Under such conditions, the only 

 substitute is to give as thorough a training as possible along the lines 

 of external anatomy already indicated, and in the sj^stematic deter- 

 mination of insects, and then as much as possible in the other fines, 

 and it is an interesting comment that correspondence with a large 

 number of men trained in this way, who have been out of college for 

 some time, shows that they feel that they are weakest, not in methods 

 of control, nor in life histories, but in their ability to identify the 

 insects with which they have to deal, and they frequently state in the 

 correspondence, that in their work, which is large'ly economic in its 

 character, they feel the need of more extensive systematic training. 



How much of this it is possible to give within the limits of an under- 

 graduate course, will naturally, of course, depend upon the amount of 

 time allotted to the subject, and this is something that is rarely in the 

 hands of the teacher in charge. A college course, as laid out by a 

 college faculty, is usually more or less of a compromise, and while the 

 elective system in tlie last years, permits of some specializing, it is at 

 best, specializing within a certain group of subjects, rather than in any 

 one. Perhaps this is a good thing in some ways, for the broader the 

 foundation in college, provided the man is able afterwards to special- 

 ize, the better will be the results, and Agassiz's remark to his students 

 at Penikese, "Learn something of everything, and everj-thing of some- 

 thing," is still in the opinion of the writer, a fundamental principle. 



In too rnany cases, however, the college course, which, from this 

 standpoint, should be the place to learn the "Something of every- 

 thing," is the last opportunity for training, and if we attempt to crowd 

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