BIOLOGY IN EDUCATION. 9 



have their hardest battle to fight in cases where this non- 

 recognition of their subject is a settled idea in their em- 

 ployers' minds. 



This aspect of the subject leads me now to say some- 

 thing of the exact place which biology should occupy in the 

 curriculum of the school. The question, "At what stage 

 of the pupil's progress should biological teaching be intro- 

 duced ? " may be answered by maintaining its educative 

 value to pupils of every age above that of mere infant or 

 primary school-children. I do not hesitate to affirm that a 

 boy or girl of, say, ten years of age may receive a certain 

 amount of elementary biological instruction, which will be 

 of the greatest service in the training of the child's mind, 

 and which will assist the due appreciation of its other studies. 

 As Sir James Paget well remarks, " The askings of children 

 seem to indicate a natural desire after a knowledge of the 

 purposes fulfilled in nature ; " and even where this desire is 

 most feebly developed, the plain, interesting teaching of the 

 grand yet simple facts of biology, will tend to arouse the 

 latent curiosity of the child, and to early awaken its sym- 

 pathies with the things of living nature. Dr. Carpenter, 

 in his evidence before the English Public Schools Com- 

 mission, lays great stress upon the importance of enabling 

 children to begin the study of physical and natural science 

 at an early age. He says, " The training of the observing 

 faculties by attention to the phenomena of nature, both in 

 physical and in natural science, seems to me to be the natural 

 application of time at the age of say from eight to twelve." 

 Dr. Carpenter further exemplifies, by citing his own case, 

 .the value of an early training in science as tending to culti- 

 vate the observant habits more thoroughly than when the 

 study is entered upon at a later period. The evidence of 

 the late Sir Charles Lyell goes to support Dr. Carpenters 

 views in relation to the advantages of training the observant 

 faculties in early youth ; the age of nine or ten, the late 

 distinguished geologist maintained, being that at which the 

 powers of observation are sufficiently developed ; and when, 



