NATURAL HISTORY. 3 



to recognise many a flower at sight, but also to know by what 

 little peculiarities it is that he does recognise them, has 

 learnt the value of having fixed, determinate ideas ; and how 

 many there are who pass through life in a semi-dreamy state, 

 without giving their attention to anything, or being able to 

 form fixed, determinate ideas. 



The neglect which the study of Natural History has 

 hitherto had to endure at all our great seats of learning, is 

 one of those things which fifty years hence people will look 

 back and wonder at. An instance came to my knowledge 

 lately of a clergyman, in Dorsetshire, who laughed heartily 

 at his pupil (a youth of nineteen) for being so ignorant as to 

 state that a whale was not a fish ; the clergyman had gradu- 

 ated at Oxford, and believed a whale to be a fish ! And he 

 was not a very old clergyman either. I quote this as an in- 

 stance of the want of knowledge that an Oxford graduate 

 may possess ; indeed, it has been well observed by Lord 

 Rosse, that "a man having taken a first-class in Uteris hu- 

 manioribus, may be ignorant of physics in the most element- 

 ary form, and be incapable of comprehending the first 

 principles of machinery and manufactures, or of forming a 

 just and enlarged conception of the resources of this great 

 country." 



But what we advocate for the study of Natural History 

 is, not that it should be merely tolerated, but that it should 

 be placed on a footing of perfect equality with the study of 

 Classics or Mathematics. As a mental discipline it has quite 

 the same advantages ; it inculcates accuracy and precision 

 quite as much as the study of Mathematics; and further, it 

 develops the faculties of observation which are not employed 

 at all in the other branches of education. All minds are not 

 so constituted as to enjoy in an equal degree Classics or 

 Mathematics ; to some Classics are a great bore ; for others 

 Mathematics have no charms : some, perhaps, cannot abide 



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