APPENDICES 1473 



[d) A SHORT COURSE ON THE PRINCIPLES OF BIOLOGY 



About Forty Meetings devoted to the Study oj Biology 

 with Relevant Practical Work 



1. The Distinctiveness of "Organisms", or the Criteria of Livingness. 



2. "Function" and "Behaviour", or the everyday life of the Organism, 



3. The System of Animate Nature. 



4. The Individual and the Race. 



5. Originative Factors in Evolution; Variation, etc. 



6. Directive Factors in Evolution; Selection, etc. 



THE STUDY OF LIVING ORGANISMS 



At a recent congress of University teachers met in London to 

 discuss the teaching of Biology in the Universities, there was only a 

 single reference to Eugenics ! While we are personally convinced that 

 in schools the indirect method of instruction in regard to the biology 

 of human life has most to recommend it, leaving the outlook to 

 develop in each mind, we are also convinced that the continuance 

 of such detached aloofness in biological education in the Colleges 

 and Universities is not only unprogressive, but unscientific. 



We wish to plead for a form of biological discipline which has 

 never been tried as much as it deserves^-the study of living animals. 

 In many Universities and Colleges it is part of the routine that 

 students should study living Amoebae, various animalcules, Hydra, 

 and so forth; but the study of the living soon comes to an end. In 

 all marine laboratories the student has, however, opportunities of 

 extending this study of the living in very delightful ways, and no 

 one can forget the revelation afforded by the first watching of, say, 

 a vigorous starfish. Our plea is for an extension of this kind of study, 

 for it is rewarding and promiseful. For small groups of students it 

 is sometimes realisable by means of excursions. 



In a well-known educational institution for the Training of 

 Teachers, there is no dissection at all, unless a student particularly 

 wishes it in order to solve some problem. Yet the teaching and 

 learning of Zoology in this institution reach an unusually high level. 

 Its main practice is worth following, to the extent of having much 

 study of the living creature. For this study gives impressions that 

 dissection can never give; it illumines the concepts of growth, 

 development, struggle, variation, and so on; it evokes the biological 

 outlook. 



To watch a transparent egg developing, to follow the life-history 

 of a dragonfly or a tadpole, to watch an ant-lion in its ways, to 

 scrutinise a beehive or a formicarium, to measure and plot out the 

 rapid growth of a caterpillar in size and weight, to study day after 



VOL. II BBB 



