352 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Johns Hopkins University/' says the modern reformer, " would have 

 been immeasurably better spent in bringing St. Marks at Venice and 

 the Uffizi at Florence into the lives of innumerable young Ameri- 

 cans. Here, then, is the opportunity for a wiser Cornell." 



A few years ago an acquaintance of my own, himself an accom- 

 plished psychologist, brought with him to Washington a young man, 

 a native of north Greenland, that he might take into his life the 

 best substitute for St. Marks at Venice that this country affords. 

 While limited in range, the results were as definite as one could 

 wish, for two of the most refined delights of our wonderful civiliza- 

 tion rum and horses were at once taken into the life of Eskimo 

 Joe with all the fresh enthusiasm of youth. In his boyish impetu- 

 osity he could not see why a hired horse should not have the fleet- 

 ness of Santa Claus's reindeer and the endurance of wild dogs; and 

 as few horses survived the first lesson, the psychologist soon recon- 

 structed the curriculum, for Joe's progress in rum and oysters was 

 most gratifying. You who have attended my lectures in anthro- 

 pology will remember that Nature has bestowed on the Eskimos 

 two endowments which are not elsewhere found united, although 

 they are exhibited separately in high perfection by the anaconda 

 and the camel. Joe was able to load himself with food and drink 

 like a pirate ship victualed for a long cruise, and he became so pro- 

 ficient in three months that a two-year course seemed unnecessary, 

 so he was shipped off to Labrador at the first opportunity, and was 

 left there to carry St. Marks at Venice into the homes of Green- 

 land as best he might. It is clear that our psychological reformer's 

 plan is not new, but he says our curriculum is some thousand years 

 behind the times, and he asks, " Will somebody one day have the 

 wisdom to perceive that the education which sufficed for the me- 

 diaeval England of the Plantagenets is not absolutely adapted to the 

 America of the nineteenth century? " I myself know so little of 

 the curriculum of that day that this charge may, for all I know, be 

 well founded, and if so it were a grievous fault. For all I know 

 the dead-and-gone priests of the twelfth century may have read 

 Homer in the original Greek, and carried on their studies in trigo- 

 nometry and navigation with the aid of logarithms and the nautical 

 almanac, although it has come in my way to know something of their 

 method of teaching zoology, for my studies have led me to examine 

 a text-book on this subject, which was written early in the twelfth 

 century for the education of the young Queen Adelaide, who was 

 married to Henry I of England in 1121. The dedication is as 

 follows : 



" Philippi de Thann into the French language has translated 

 the Bestiary, a book of science, for the honor of a jewel, who is a 



