JAN 11 1900 
Natural Science 
A Monthly Review of Serenttic Progress 
DECEMBER 1899 

ROLES AND GOMMEN TS. 
Eliminated. 
Ir is one of the conditions of continued vigorous activity on an 
organism’s part that income be at least equal to expenditure, and the 
same is true of journals. To try to sustain the activity when the 
aforesaid condition is not fulfilled is not uninteresting, but there are 
limits to the possibility of continuing it. We regret to say that we 
have reached these limits as regards Natural Science, of which this is 
the last number, so far as we are concerned. In spite of generous 
support from many during the past year, and our own endeavours in 
publishing and editing, the journal has not reached that measure of 
success which would seem to us to warrant another year’s experiment. 
We make our bow, then, to the process of natural elimination. 
Nature Studies. 
THERE has been much talk of late concerning nature-studies and their 
more forcible introduction as part of school-education. On the one 
hand we hear the conservatism of those who think that education had 
much better continue “on the old lines,” that is, without any regulated 
instruction regarding our natural environment except in so far as that 
means man and his many inventions. The proper study of mankind, 
they say, is man, forgetting that he does not live im vacuo, and is really 
unintelligible apart from his non-human environment. On the other 
hand we hear the enthusiasm of those who think that there is a new 
panacea for the ills of minds and morals in a codified system of scientific 
teaching. To any one who is acquainted with the rudiments of the 
rapidly advancing art of paedagogics or possessed of unbiassed common- 
sense, the two extreme positions seem absurd, the practical problem 
being to work our way towards a teaching of the humanities which 
will be scientific, and a learning of science which will be humanitarian. 
26—wnart. sc.—voL. XV. No. 94. 381 
