88 EDUCATION OF A MAN OF SCIENCE 



coach tried to ensure that I knew certain inferior 

 books well enough to be examined in them, but he 

 never showed me a specimen, and never attempted 

 to ensure that I should have any sort of first-hand 

 knowledge. We were also taught by the Curator 

 of the Botanic Garden, a completely uneducated 

 man, and in all ways as different from the present 

 learned and cultivated Curator as it is possible to 

 imagine. He, like my other coach, simply insisted 

 that we should know by heart a very bad text-book, 

 on which he cross-examined us as we walked round 

 the Botanic Garden. As far as my recollection 

 goes he never stopped to show us a flower or a leaf, 

 and we had nobody to help us to a sight of the 

 minute structure of plants as seen with a micro- 

 scope, about which, however, we could talk elo- 

 quently from the book. 



I sometimes wonder that fire did not descend 

 from heaven and destroy a University which so 

 sinned against the first elements of knowing, in 

 neglecting the distinction between what we learn 

 by our own personal experience and what we 

 acquire from books. 



Of course there are some sciences which have 

 their origin in practical matters, e.g., chemistry, 

 which originated partly in alchemy and partly in 

 what is now the work of the druggist ; such a 

 science was fortunate, in that no one objected to its 

 claim for practical teaching. Nevertheless, the 

 student of chemistry in my day easily fell into a 

 lamentable dulness of different coloured precipi- 

 tates. I should have liked to do something quanti- 

 tative, however rough, to get away from the 



