CHAPTER XVI. 



Lesser Scientific Work. 



Tegetmeier was in a very real sense one of the 

 pioneers of popular' science, for while he hated, 

 and often denounced, the pseudo-scientific senti- 

 mental stuff which in those days at any rate, 

 frequently appeared in certain philanthropical 

 societies' publications, he himself wrote so clearly 

 and simply that he invested his always technically 

 accurate work with a charm and interest that 

 made it acceptable and intelligible to general 

 readers. Forty years ago there were not many 

 scientific men who cared to, or could write about 

 science in a " popular " way : Tegetmeier was 

 one of the few who could put scientific truths 

 in a way to be " under standed of the people," 

 and, undoubtedly, to this gift he owed much of 

 his success. In this way he was a forerunner 

 of the modern advocates of " Nature-study," 

 now so popular that scarce a newspaper exists 

 without its daily note or weekly article on some 

 phase of natural history or botany ; there is 

 scarcely an elementary school but has Nature- 

 study in its curriculum, and there is hardly a 

 scholar but has its glass jam-pot " aquarium " 

 in which to observe the metamorphosis of the 



