NOV 22 leoy 
NATURAL SCIENCE 
A Monthly Review of Scientific Progress 
No. 68—Vot. XI—OCTOBER 1897 
NOTES AND COMMENTS 
THE TRAINING OF THE BIOLOGIST 
THE most striking feature of late in the study of animals, at least in 
this country, is the marked tendency of the orthodox school of 
teachers to break through the narrow bounds which have confined 
them since ‘Biology’ replaced the old-fashioned natural history 
and comparative anatomy. It is, indeed, strange that while the 
methods of Darwin have had such an immense influence upon the 
lines of advanced work and research, they should have had so little 
effect upon the curriculum of elementary teaching. As Prof. Miall 
well said in his recent address to Section D of the British Asso- 
ciation, ‘‘ the animals set before the young zoologist are all dead ; it 
is much if they are not pickled as well. When he studies their 
development, he works chiefly or altogether upon continuous sections, 
embryos mounted in balsam and wax models. He is rarely encouraged 
to observe live tadpoles or third-day chicks with beating hearts. As 
for what Gilbert White calls the life and conversation of animals, 
how they defend themselves, feed, and make love, this is commonly 
passed over as a matter of curious but not very important informa- 
tion ; it is not reputed scientific, or at least not eminently scientific.” 
Finally, as to the inter-relationships of animals, the average graduate 
of the orthodox university school is in a state approaching blissful 
ignorance. He is usually led, if not actually taught, to look down 
with scorn upon the ‘systematist.’ He imagines he has mastered 
the whole of the principles of Biology before he has acquired the 
most elementary notions of generic and specific characters and the 
phenomena of variation. 
There have been two noteworthy utterances on this subject 
during the past month, that of Prof. Miall in his Presidential 
Address already referred to, and that of Mr Walter Garstang in the 
last number of the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical. Science (vol. 
xl, p. 211). Both urge that the time has arrived for some reform 
in the methods of elementary training, and we commend their plea 
Q 
