9 



great pleasure to the paper by Mr. Groce, and he con- 

 gratulated the Institute that at last a teacher in our public 

 schools had taken the platform of the Institute, and de- 

 clared that, though no naturalist himself, he had become 

 convinced that the judicious teaching of natural history 

 in the schools would do more good to the pupils than 

 some of the studies they now pursue. This being the 

 stand that the Institute has taken for years, it has done 

 all it could to bring about such a feeling on the part of 

 the teachers, but with one or two exceptions the teachers 

 themselves would not be taught, and they consequently 

 did not appreciate the value of the study of nature. He 

 felt confident that the day was not far distant when a 

 teacher, before being considered qualified to take charge 

 of a school would have to convince its committee that he 

 at least was acquainted with the general structure of ani- 

 mals and plants, and the leading principles of mineralogy 

 and geology, as well as with the rules of grammar and 

 algebra, and now that natural history was no longer 

 mainly the learning of the names of objects, the old plea 

 that to study it meant simply to commit a list of names 

 to memory would not hold. The study now consisted in 

 reading the great principles and laws of nature, and 

 though a naturalist was all the better able to study them 

 by being familiar with an immense number of forms, 

 which he must classify and have names for in order to 

 make his knowledge easily known to others, yet it was 

 not necessary for the pupils to know more than a few of 

 the leading and common types and to be taught the gen- 

 eral principles of nature, in order to lay a foundation 

 which, as Mr. Groce had so well said, would be one that, 

 throughout all walks of life, would prove of far greater 

 value than much of the routine instruction now given, if, 

 indeed, the word instruction can be used to express that 



