83 



intellectual mill. The same quotations from Virgil reappeared from time 

 to time in Parliament, for they were part of the stock-in-trade of all 

 educated persons. Contrast the actual condition of our public schools, 

 contrast the condition towards which they appear to be tending with the 

 happy monotony of thirty years ago. Now we haxe the boy who is 

 specializing in history, or specializing in science, or specializing in mathe- 

 matics. Three-fourths, sometimes more, of his time is spent on his one 

 subject, in this he is prematurely forced, of all others he is practically 

 ignorant. With much that has been gained in finding for boys a path 

 along which they can go, instead of forcing them all alike along a road 

 which is suited for only a proportion, there is in the over specialization 

 and premature specialization of the present day, a risk of narrowing and 

 impoverishing the mind. It is not sufficient to specialize in science, the 

 field is far too wide, a branch miist be chosen ; let it be biology, this 

 again is too vast, we must limit ourselves to a portion, let us say embry- 

 ology. But there are many embryos, let us make a European reputation 

 by the study of embryonic guinea pigs. In all seriousness specialization 

 has changed and is changing the conditions of cultivated society as well 

 as the methods of education. It is a loss that the common stock of ideas 

 which all educated men are supposed to know becomes smaller, because 

 in their own particular line the researches of specialists become more 

 minute. When the chemist has to limit his special department to the 

 paraffin compounds, or the student of insect forms to a branch of a sub- 

 division of eoleoptera, the mind seems to be imprisoned within the circle 

 of a narrow round. 



XXII. 

 SOME FORMS OF CHALK LIFE, 



BY 



CAPTAIN McDAKIN, 



January lltli, 1892. 

 This lecture was not intended for publication, being a description of 

 photographic lantern slides, exhibited by means of the oxycalcium light, 

 without which illustrations it would lose much of its interest. 



Captain McDakin referred to the great changes that took place in' 

 the vegetable kingdom at the close of, the Jurassic period and commence- 

 ment of the Cretaceous, and to those which took place in the animal 

 kingdom at the close of the Cretaceous and commencement of 

 the Tertiary. The curious approximation of the skeletons of ancient 

 reptiles to those of birds was also desciibed Photographs of the 

 typical forms of Foraminiferse were shown, and reference was made 

 to the eozoon and bathybius. The lecturer also exhibited some 

 translucent chalk prepared by himself from cut sections by develop- 

 ing with dilute acids in a similar manner to that familiar to 

 photographers. The mode of preparing these is given in detail at 

 page 96. 



