380 On the Teaching of [July, 



the classical languages is of the value in training the mind that the 

 advocates of their teaching assert, then the minds of all those who 

 are not taught them must suffer, and thereby a gi'eat loss is incurred 

 by the community. But let this pass. Some people believe in a 

 male mind and a female mind, and other subdivisions of mind ; so 

 that what is strengthening and elevating to one class of mind is 

 weakening and depressing to another. Thus our schools, as a whole, 

 present an immense variety of subjects to be taught, but aU agree 

 in the exclusion of natural science. The real reason, however, why 

 natural science is not introduced into the latter class of schools is 

 no sentimental love of the subjects they teach, but the difficulty of 

 teaching facts. Natural science cannot be taught by books ; and 

 the whole system of schooling, except in girls' schools where they 

 teach sewing and music, is carried on by the agency of books. To 

 teach the natural sciences, recourse must be had to things ; books 

 are of little or no use. Physics and chemistry must be taught by 

 experiments ; mineralogy and geology must be taught by specimens 

 of minerals and rocks ; botany and zoology by plants and animals. 

 Neither teachers nor parents are prepared for this invasion, and the 

 consequence is that little or no natural science is taught, even where 

 the bugbear of Latin and Greek does not exist to frighten it away. 

 At the same time, whilst these difficulties exist with regard to 

 teaching natural science in our schools, the study of natural phe- 

 nomena has gone on during the last century with increasing rapidity. 

 The Universities of the continent of Europe have in almost every 

 instance acknowledged the position of natui'al science. In France 

 and in Germany this has been remarkably the case ; and in the 

 latter country so great has been the progress, that she fairly ranks 

 intellectually as first amongst the nations of the world. In England 

 the necessity of natural knowledge for the exercise of certain pro- 

 fessions, as that of the medical man and the engineer, has caused 

 the foundation of schools from which liave proceeded men who 

 have cultivated the natural sciences with great success. We are 

 not, therefore, without some practical knowledge of the beneficial 

 effects produced by their study. That it may be safely introduced 

 into our schools without injuring other studies is obvious from the 

 fact that, when some branch of natural science has been taught in a 

 school, the boys have been found not to have sufiercd in their know- 

 ledge of Latin and Greek. The result of a limit^-d experiment at 

 Eugby has been " that the school, ns, a whole, is the better for it, and 

 that the scholarship is not worse." It is also found by tbe examiners 

 in classics at the University of London and the Colleges of Phy- 

 sicians and Sm-geons, that the point of excellence attained by the 

 medical student who has to study natural science is not lower than 

 that of general students who do not study natural science at all. 

 If this be true, then it shows us that our present system confers 



