BIOLOGICAL TEAINING AND STUDIES. 847 



obtained from an eminence, but for the full and thorough appre- 

 ciation of which it is necessary that the gazer should himself have 

 cultivated some portion, however small, of the expanse at his feet. 

 It is, of course, a matter of regret to think that persons can be 

 found who look upon an actual landscape without any thought or 

 knowledge as to how the various factors which make up its com- 

 plex beauty have come to co-operate, how the hand of man is recog- 

 nisable here, how the dip of the strata is visible there, and how 

 their alternation is detectable in another place as the potent agency 

 in giving its distinctive features ; but I take it that real and per- 

 manent, however imperfect, pleasure may be drawn from the con- 

 templation of scenery by persons who are ignorant of all these 

 things. I do not think this is the case when we here deal with 

 coup d'oeil views of biology. The amount of the special knowledge, 

 the extent of the special training need not necessarily be great; 

 but some such special knowledge and training there must be if the 

 problems and argumentations familiar to the professed biologist are 

 to be understood and grasped by persons whose whole lives are not 

 devoted to the subject, so as to form for them acquisitions of real 

 and vital knowledge. 



The microscope has done very much (indeed I may say it has 

 done almost all that is necessary) for enabling all persons to obtain 

 the necessary minimum of practical and personal acquaintance with 

 the arrangements of the natural world of which I am speaking. 

 The glass trough used in Edinburgh, the invention of John Good- 

 sir, whose genius showed itself, as genius often does show itself, in 

 simple inventions, can be made into a miniature aquarium (I pur- 

 posely use a word which calls up the idea of an indoors apparatus, 

 wishing thereby to show how the means I recommend are within 

 the reach of all persons); and in it, lying as it does horizontally 

 and underlain as it is by a condenser, animal and vegetable or- 

 ganisms can be observed at any and at all hours, and continuously, 

 and with tolerably high magnifying-powers even whilst undisturbed. 

 Thus is gained an admirable field for the self-discipline in question. 

 The microscope which should be used by preference for exploring 

 and watching such an aquarium should be such a one as is figured 

 in Quekett's work on the Microscope (p. 58, fig. ^6), as consisting 

 of a stem with a stout steadying base, and of a horizontal arm 

 some 9 inches long, which can carry indifferently simple lenses or a 



