218 THE STUDY OF ZOOLOGY vn 



Indeed, I believe that a student who gains 

 from a course of lectures the simple habit of 

 concentrating his attention upon a definitely 

 limited series of facts, until they are thoroughly 

 mastered, has made a step of immeasurable 

 importance. 



But, however good lectures may be, and how- 

 ever extensive the course of reading by which 

 they are followed up, they are but accessories to 

 the great instrument of scientific teaching — 

 demonstration. If I insist unweariedly, nay 

 fanatically, upon the importance of physical 

 science as an educational agent, it is because 

 the study of any branch of science, if properly 

 conducted, appears to me to fill up a void left 

 by all other means of education. I have the 

 greatest respect and love for literature; nothing 

 would grieve me more than to see hterary train- 

 ing other than a very prominent branch of 

 education : indeed, I wish that real literarj^ dis- 

 cipline were far more attended to than it is ; 

 but I cannot shut my eyes to the fact, that there 

 is a vast difference between men who have had a 

 purely literary, and those who have had a sound 

 scientific, training. 



Seeking for the cause of this difference, I 

 imagine I can find it in the fact that, in the 

 world of letters, learning and knowledge are one, 

 and books are the source of both; whereas in 

 science, as in life, learning and knowledge are 



