BIOLOGY IX EDUCATION. 17 



amply to recall to mind the more salient features of the 

 discourse. And it must also be borne in mind that the 

 note-takers in schools are not, in the vast majority of cases, 

 so very deft with pen or pencil that great things in the way 

 of quick writing can be expected of them. But the youngest 

 may make a jotting; and in the rewriting of the notes 

 which, by the way, should be almost a sine qua non in the 

 practice of science-lecturers, facts and ideas stored up in 

 the mind by attention to the lecturer's words and supple- 

 mented by reference to books, will grow around the jotting, 

 and increase its proportions to a goodly extent. Through 

 this practice of oral examination, of making many jottings, 

 and of subsequently extending and verifying the informa- 

 tion given in the lecture, the powers of the memory are 

 braced, strengthened, and improved. And this last forms, 

 of itself, no mean result of science-teaching in schools, 

 from its obvious bearing upon the other studies and general 

 intellectual progress of the pupil. 



It is impossible, of course, that science should be studied 

 in schools without the aid of books ; but I would rank the 

 help of works of reference as very subsidiary to that of 

 active teaching by lectures, questions, and verbal explana- 

 tion. Too frequently, however, do we find a tacit adherence 

 to the text of books to be a characteristic of lectures of 

 professedly higher grades than those of schools. Nothing 

 can be more injurious to the real interests of science- 

 teaching, and to the progress of the pupil, than to make 

 his dependence on books a necessity. He thereby loses 

 confidence in the statements of his teacher, and comes to 

 regard the book as his chief authority in matters of dispute 

 or doubt. Books should therefore ever have a secondary 

 place in the teaching of science. The pupil should be 

 taught to see, to observe, and to judge for himself; and to- 

 form those habits of self-reliance, the cultivation of which 

 is to be regarded as one of the chief benefits of science- 

 training. 



Periodical written examinations, conducted by the 



c 



