378 STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



elements of zoology cannot be acquired at these 

 seats of learning, how can it be supposed that a 

 taste for it should be acquired in youth and culti- 

 vated in manhood, when the student emerges 

 from college, quits education, and at once enters 

 upon the active duties of life ? But supposing that 

 professorships were appointed, on small salaries, 

 sufficient, with the emoluments of lectures and 

 pupils, to make them desirable. What leisure is 

 left for the lecturer to prosecute original research? 

 The emoluments of his chair being chiefly derived 

 from teaching the elements of science, these will 

 naturally engross his chief solicitude. He will strive 

 to make his lectures popular, by waiving the dis- 

 cussion of abstract principles, and dilating on all 

 those comparatively trivial matters, which his audi- 

 ence can at once understand : under such circum- 

 stances, how can he himself himself cultivate or 

 teach to others the higher principles of science ? or 

 how can he concentrate his mind to the exclusive 

 study of one or two abstract theories, which, after 

 occupying his deepest attention for years, may be 

 expressed in a few lines ? It is from among men of 

 talent, and of "learned leisure," whofrom their station 

 in society possess competency, that we may hope 

 zoological science will be pursued with true dignity ; 

 from such only may we expect its advancement in- 

 stead of its diffusion. Characters, promising to unite 

 all these necessary acquirements, are most likely to be 

 formed at our universities; and if no effectual means 

 are supplied for directing such powers where they 

 exist, what wonder is it that zoology is looked upon 

 as a mere vocabulary of technicalities, or an amusing 



