370 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER 



ests ; even assuming, in times of stress, financial risks, and fur- 

 thermore burdening himself with a great deal of additional work 

 without compensation either as teacher or as chairman. Yet in 

 spite of many hindrances his enthusiasm and zeal never flagged, 

 and he persistently advocated the continuous utilization of the 

 college plant its laboratories and museums, as well as a part 

 of the time given up to the long vacation for the benefit of 

 graduates, teachers, and others of both sexes. 



In the paper on School Vacations, already referred to, is found 

 the substance of his argument for summer schools of natural 

 science. "It may be asked/' he says, "how the student weary 

 of his school year can be expected to devote a large part of his 

 holiday to this other form of schooling ; how are we to avoid the 

 evils of overtaxing the pupil if we put a large share of his labor 

 into the time we have found to be required for refreshment? 

 Experience gives a satisfactory answer to this question : for it 

 shows us that the character of the true scientific work so far 

 differs from the labor done in the school-room that he finds a 

 large measure of diversion in the change in the nature of his 

 employment. ... In the laboratory or the open field work 

 of nature the memory is no more taxed than in the ordinary 

 occupations of men, but the constructive imagination which is 

 generally unemployed in the tasks of term-time is actively 

 aroused. In the class-room the pupil is tied to print, in labora- 

 tory work he deals with natural objects and finds in his contact 

 with them the quickening of spirit which to be conceived needs 

 to be felt. My own experience with vacation schools shows me 

 that ordinary students may, without suffering any tax upon 

 their vitality, year after year devote six weeks of the summer 

 vacation to hard work in natural -science schools/' 



He further believed that "a well-trained young man in college 

 may with general advantage devote a small part of the year he 

 consecrates to literary studies to some easy course in natural 

 science ; or in case his devotion is to science he may find refresh- 

 ment in following an elective in music or metaphysics. . . . 



