28 CHAPTERS ON THE NATURAL HISTORY 



lows in tlu school of medicine not similarly prepared, to say 

 nothing of the benetit that will accrue to him in after life. 



Things were very different thirty-five or more years ago, in my 

 boyhood time, when a youth who gave evidence of any such tastes 

 was commonly considered to be some sort of a juvenile 

 crank, with a dash of insanity in his composition, and 

 his father was advised to force him into one of the 

 prescribed "professions," and make every effort to eliminate 

 i lie eminently unpractical streak in his organization. The mi- 

 croscope was taken away from him; the collection of plants or- 

 dered destroyed; the living specimens under examination made 

 to be let go, and the "rubbish" of birds' nests, eggs, skins, and 

 what not destroyed, and the boy with the "bent" bent sure 

 enough into channels for which he had no taste or capacity. 

 Thanks to the present-day methods in biology, such procedures 

 are fast becoming ones of greater and greater rarity. 



