12 



and after all the real causes of natural phenomena are far more 

 striking and contain more real poetry than those which have 

 occurred to the untrained imagination of mankind. 



These remarks show that true science having replaced 

 unsystematic speculation with a solid basis of fact, whether in the 

 mind of a child, the uninstructed national mind, or the 

 individual mind, there is established a means for the opening 

 out of every mental faculty. 



This, then, is the position of the Amateur ; and as the 

 principles of Natural Science become apprehended, it is like the 

 uplifting of a veil, by which the whole being is quickened as it 

 perceives, in however small a measure, the order, law, and 

 beauty in Nature, and in beholding, becomes a lover of them. 



Whilst, therefore, the awakened mind of the amateur may 

 not diacover in the sense of adding to the aggregate of human 

 knowledge, yet the habits of observation being stimulated, enable 

 him to make research on his own account and for his own 

 benefit. 



Though he enters into an inheritance of garnered know- 

 ledge his own efforts will add to its value to himself by com- 

 pound interest. 



"Science," said a Royal Commission in 1861, "quickens 

 and cultivates directly the faculty of observation, which in very 

 many persons lies almost dormant through life, the power of 

 accurate and rapid generalisation and the mental habit of 

 method and arrangement ; it accustoms young persons to trace 

 the sequence of cause and effect ; it familiarizes them with a 

 kind of reasoning which interests them and which they can 

 promptly comprehend ; and it is perhaps the best corrective for 

 that indolence which is the vice of half-awakened minds, and 

 which shrinks from any exertion that is not, like an effort of 

 memory, merely mechanical." 



So much has the value of science become recognized in 

 these respects, that, as we all know, of late years science has 

 been an accepted part of the curriculum of schools of all grades, 

 and received every encouragement possible from the government. 

 To the rising generation education in Natural Science is there- 

 fore not so much a luxury as a school task. 



At least it must be so if the teaching of it is simply a 

 " subject " in the technical sense of the Education Code. It 

 is not in this way that naturalists are made. It is not so much 

 a matter of h-nonivfi as of luvim/, and the charms of Nature are 

 not to be found by simply regarding her as one might a beautiful 

 creation in marble, but as a companion, instinct with the breath 

 of life. When, therefore, the youth leaves his school it 

 must be borne in mind that his education is but begun, and 

 it is then that societies, clubs, or other means to encourage 

 him to continue his studies, not so much in a theoretical 

 way as in an experimental, will be of great assistance to 



