Science Primers 171 



being told not to ask foolish questions, there is no limit to the 

 intellectual craving of a young child ; nor any bounds to the 

 slow but solid accretion of knowledge and development of 

 the thinking faculty in this way. To all such questions, 

 answers which are necessarily incomplete, though true as far 

 as they go, may be given by any teacher whose ideas repre- 

 sent real knowledge and not mere book learning : and a 

 panoramic view of nature, accompanied by a strong infusion 

 of the scientific habit of mind, may thus be placed within the 

 reach of every child of nine or ten." 



Ill 1880 Huxley, in association with Professor Ros- 

 coe, the chemist, and Professor Balfour Stewart, the 

 physicist, took a great practical step toward securing 

 the widest possible extension of elementar}^ knowledge 

 in science. They became general editors, for the Eng- 

 lish publishing house of Macmillan, of a series of 

 "Science Primers." These were written in simple 

 language, suitable for those with no preliminary know- 

 ledge of science, but were the work of the chief au- 

 thorities in the leading branches of science. They 

 were published at what was then the phenomenally 

 cheap price of a shilling, and thej^ sold in almost in- 

 credible ntimbers. Huxley himself wrote the intro- 

 ductory volume to this great series of tracts, taking 

 for his subject the simplest and most natural phenomena 

 of the world and the simplest chains of catise and 

 effect that can be observed around us. The keynote 

 of the little book was that knowledge of nature could 

 be gained only by observation and experiment, and 

 that for these the ordinary things in the world around 

 us provided ample material. A few j^ears later he 

 wrote a more advanced volume on the same subject. 

 He had now found an English name for the German 

 Erdkunde, and his book on Physiography was sim- 

 ply an account of the leading things and forces of 



