I po THE STORY OF ANIMAL LIFE 



tasks of the scientist who has attained a position 

 of eminence in the world of learning. The prep- 

 aration of lectures, with their accompanying il- 

 lustrations of diagrams and lantern slides : the 

 guiding of classes engaged in the actual work 

 of making acquaintance with animal specimens- 

 these are the labours of the great man who is at 

 the head of things. His task is carried out with 

 the aid of junior helpers of his own profession 

 the demonstrators, who " point out " detail after 

 detail of the work described in the lectures. 

 Another helper, more esteemed by the students 

 than by the professor who teaches them, is the 

 " coach " who prepares them directly for their 

 examinations. His aid, in the shape of extra 

 teaching, given at the last moment, will often 

 secure for the careless and inattentive pupil, 

 better success than is the lot of the painstaking 

 and industrious one, who cannot afford to pay 

 extra fees. 



Few, however, of all the many pupils who 

 crowd the lecture room of the zoologist, will ever 

 become zoologists themselves. A vast proportion 

 of them are students of medicine, of whom some 

 knowledge of the subject is required. Others 

 are preparing to be schoolmasters or school- 

 mistresses, and seek just such an amount of 

 knowledge as they expect to find useful in teach- 

 ing pupils of their own. To the students who 

 are preparing to be doctors or teachers, circum- 

 stances often assign a limit " thus far and no 

 farther" when they would fain bring their 

 knowledge to a higher standard. But the time 

 they have spent already has not been wasted. 

 How keen an observer of animal life is the coun- 

 try doctor 1 How often, isolated from the world 



