238 Nature Study. [Sess. 
and catechisms : it saved so much trouble to put a question 
and get the stereotyped correct answer; and it was hard 
work indeed to teach in the concrete. There is some hope 
for improvements in the future, when an earnest attempt 
is being made to discontinue a system in which, to quote 
again from Sir John Gorst, “the children were not really 
educated at all—they were only prepared for examinations.” 
Systems of national education, like human institutions 
generally, became in course of time hindrances to progress 
from their want of elasticity. They are like the crustacean 
exoskeleton: while it strengthens and protects the organism 
within, it must frequently be cast off, and the process is 
painful and dangerous; still it is unavoidable, if the living 
organism is to retain its vigour and grow. All social 
systems must undergo ecdysis, for the institution was made 
for man, and not man for the institution. 
I have referred to payment by results, which is happily now 
likely to become a thing of the past, and I had fondly hoped 
that nature study was a‘territory still unexploited by the 
examiner, a region where the educational prospector had not 
marked off his claim. Of that I have lately had doubts—for 
habits, individual or social, are hard to eradicate. I attended 
a lecture or two of a recent course given by well-known 
scientific men to schoolmasters, to show how nature study 
might be taught. What I heard disappointed me, because it 
was academical and bookish in form. I had expected a shore 
walk, a basketful of the common objects,"and demonstrations 
from the living things: perhaps that was quite impracticable. 
Instead of it we had a number of magic-lantern slides, not 
taken from nature but from well-known book-illustrations, 
some of which had done duty for a couple of generations. 
Now man is a very imitative animal, and one may imagine 
the pedagogic audience repeating the lessons they had them- 
selves received after being diluted to suit juvenile digestion ; 
and the magic-lantern and the book illustrations will doubtless 
reappear in the primary or secondary school. Not only so 
but this course of lectures ended, I heard, with the usual 
written examination to ascertain how far the schoolboy of 
mature life had imbibed the instruction imparted to him. 
If this is also to be repeated in the schools, it makes one 
