4 ADVANTAGES OF THE STUDY OF 



either; yet, were a course of study of Natural History open 

 to them, the spark within them might have been touched, 

 their interest awakened, and they would thus obtain all the 

 good effects of education. On this subject the Rev. Henry 

 Moseley writes as follows: — 



" The sciences of observation and experiment afford, in 

 this point of view, resources of education which it is lament- 

 able we should neglect as we do. I believe that many a 

 youth, who has but little taste for the learning which is pre- 

 scribed for him at school, and for that reason devotes himself 

 to it with but little zeal and gives it up as soon as he is able, 

 might, if the alternative had been allowed him of pursuing 

 those other subjects, have compassed through their means 

 all the highest results of education." And we trust that this 

 consideration will be thoroughly laid to heart by all " parents 

 and guardians." 



Moreover, with many their studies are put aside when 

 they leave college never to be resumed, and the " equations 

 of curves," or u a consideration of the causes which led to the 

 second Peloponnesian war," are not often taken up as matters 

 of amusement during leisure hours. Yet the mind must have 

 some food as well as the stomach ; to dose it with the 

 frivolities of fashionable dissipation, — to cram it with all the 

 novels of the season, is like overloading the stomach with 

 pastry and confectionery, and giving it no solid food ; the 

 mind, like the stomach, becomes weakly and irritable by 

 such treatment. Now, the study of Natural History is just 

 midway between the abstruseness of political economy, or of 

 the past history of the human race, and the extreme lightness 

 of most of the novels of the present day ; it is as interesting 

 as a novel, but gives the same employment to the higher 

 faculties of the mind as are afforded by the abstruser studies 

 of Political Economy and History. To those engaged with 

 these latter graver pursuits, it would afford a pleasant change 



