SCIENCE-CULTURE FOR THE 

 MASSES. 



An Opening Lecture at a "People's College" 



THE opening of a class for the study of zoology in this- 

 institution, which may emphatically rank as a "People's 

 College/' may be regarded in one sense as marking a signifi- 

 cant era in the growth and extension of science-teaching 

 among the people. The great majority of the pupils who. 

 attend this class must, from the nature of their daily avoca- 

 tions, take up the study of natural history from reasons other 

 than those which animate the ordinary school-boy or school- 

 girl, or which lead the medical or scientific student to enter 

 a zoology-class. Your aim in enrolling yourselves as pupils, 

 I take to be represented chiefly by an eager and laudable 

 desire to know something of the living beings which are 

 our co-tenants of the world, and which possess relations of 

 various kinds and degrees with ourselves. Some of you 

 may even look beyond the mere acquirement of this know- 

 ledge, and possess the idea that, in the abstract, such 

 information will serve as a means for the attainment of what 

 is to be regarded as an infinitely higher aim of mankind 

 I mean the acquirement of culture, or the means whereby 

 we form large-minded, liberal, and, at the same time, correct 

 ideas of the universe, and of the relations of ourselves and 

 our neighbours thereto. 



Looking at my position as your teacher, in the second 

 place, I find myself compelled to consider in this discourse 



