226 GLAUCUS ; OR, 
awake to the real needs of the age, and—even to the 
curtailing of the time usually spent in not learning 
Latin and Greek—teach boys the rudiments at 
least of botany, zoology, geology, and so forth; and 
when the public opinion, at least of the refined and 
educated, shall consider it as ludicrous—to use no 
stronger word—to be ignorant of the commonest 
facts and laws of this living planet, as to he ignorant 
of the rudiments of two dead languages. All 
honour to the said two languages. Ignorance of 
them is a serious weakness; for it implies ignorance 
of many things else; and indeed, without some 
knowledge of them, the nomenclature of the physical 
sciences cannot be mastered. But I have got to 
discover that a boy’s time is more usefully spent, 
and his intellect more methodically trained, by 
getting up Ovid’s Fasti with an ulterior hope of 
being able to write a few Latin verses, than in 
getting up Professor Rolleston’s “Forms of Animal 
Life,” or any other of the excellent Scientific 
Manuals for beginners, which are now, as I said, 
happily so numerous. 
