378 STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 
elements of zoology cannot be acquired at these 
seats of learning, how can it be supposed that a 
taste for it should be acquired in youth and culti- 
vated in manhood, when the student emerges 
from college, quits education, and at once enters 
upon the active duties of life? But supposing that 
professorships were appointed, on small salaries, 
sufficient, with the emoluments of lectures and 
pupils, to make them desirable. What leisure is 
left for the lecturer to prosecute original research ? 
The emoluments of his chair being chiefly derived 
from teaching the elements of science, these will 
naturally engross his chief solicitude. He will strive 
to make his lectures popular, by waiving the dis- 
cussion of abstract principles, and dilating on all 
those comparatively trivial matters, which his audi- 
ence can at once understand: under such circum- 
stances, how can he himself himself cultivate or 
teach to others the higher principles of science? or 
how can he concentrate his mind to the exclusive 
study of one or two abstract theories, which, after 
occupying his deepest attention for years, may be 
expressed in a few lines? It is from among men of 
talent, and of “learned leisure,” whofrom their station 
in society possess competency, that we may hope 
zoological science will be pursued with true dignity ; 
from such only may we expect its advancement in- 
stead of its diffusion. Characters, promising to unite 
all these necessary acquirements, are most likely tobe 
formed at our universities; and if no effectual means 
are supplied for directing such powers where they 
exist, what wonder is it that zoology is looked upon 
as a mere vocabulary of technicalities, or an amusing 
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