PRACTICAL BIOLOGY 1 1 5 



an ascent made of Vesuvius. London was reached on 

 April 6. Unfortunately the rest and change were of 

 little permanent benefit. 



During this year Huxley's department migrated from 

 Jermyn Street to South Kensington, and, for the first 

 time, he was able to give his ordinary students the benefit 

 of practical instruction, on the same lines as those 

 adopted for the summer class in 187 1. Speaking of the 

 method employed, Mr. Leonard Huxley says (Life, i, 

 p. 376) :— 



" It involved the verification of every fact by each student, 

 and was a training in scientific method even more than in 

 scientific fact." 



This may have been the aim of the work, but if 

 "every fact" means all or most of those given in the 

 lectures, the statement is very far from being correct. 

 Every teacher of botany or zoology is fully aware that 

 only a selection of leading facts can be verified by ele- 

 mentary students. 



But, even so, the advance on current methods was 

 a great one, and unanticipated in Britain, except by 

 Rolleston at Oxford, and he, according to Professor Ray 

 Lankester, had been influenced by Huxley's advice, and 

 fortunately had "the earlier opportunity of putting the 

 method into practice." The courses thus initiated were 

 on the " type system," a series of average organisms being 

 examined and dissected to illustrate the groups to which 

 they belong. This method has profoundly influenced 

 the teaching of Biology in this country, and fully 

 justified Huxley's expectation that it would " grow into 

 a big thing and bear great fruit." Of late, however, the 

 system has been somewhat discredited, since the practice 

 of a number of teachers, following the arbitrary require- 



