TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 93 



upon hiin ; the influence of physical and chemical agencies upon the growth and 

 development of living beings he soon finds strikingly illustrated ; the mysterious 

 process of development itself is readily observahle in the eggs of the common 

 •water-snails and in those of freshwater fish, so that the "way in which the various 

 organs and system of organs are chiselled out, built up, and finally packed together 

 and stratified can be taken note of in these yet transparent representatives of these 

 great subkingdoms which all the while are undisturbed and at peace : and all these 

 points of large interest are but a few of many which these small means will enable 

 any one to master for himself in the concrete actuality, and thoroughly. The 

 necessity for carefulness and truthfulness in recording what is seen, the necessity 

 for keeping in such records what one observes quite distinct from what one infers, 

 the necessity for patience and punctuality, are lessons which, from having a moral 

 factor as well as a scientific one in their composition, I may specify as belonging to 

 the educational lessons which may be gathered from such a course of study. 



I have been speaking of the microscope as an instrument of education, and I 

 wish before leaving the subject to utter one caution as to its use when this parti- 

 cular object of education is in view. If a subject is to act educationally, it must 

 be understood thoroughly ; and if a subject is to be understood thoroughly, it must 

 form one segment or stretch in a continuous chain of known facts. 'ApKreov dno 

 TOP yvapifxcov, said one of the greatest of educators ; you must start from some 

 previously existing basis of knowledge, and keep your communications with it un- 

 interrupted if your knowledo;e is not to be xmreal. And my concrete application 

 of these generalities is contained in the advice that no sudden jump be made fi-om 

 observations carried on with the naked eye to observations carried on with the 

 highest powers of the microscope. I am speaking of the coui-se to be pursued by 

 beginners, and beginners we all were once ; and if our places are to be filled (and 

 filled they will be), by better men, as we hope, than ourselves, they will have to be 

 filled, we also hope, by men who have yet to become beginners. It is in their 

 interest I have been speaking ; and I say that a lieginner does not ordinarily get an 

 intelligent conception of the revelations of the microscope except in Bacon's words, 

 Ascendendo continenter et ffradatim, by progressing gradually from observations 

 with the naked eye through observations dependent upon dissecting-lenses, dou- 

 blets by preference, and the lower powers of the compoimd microscope, up to obser- 

 vations to be made with the''higher and highest magnifying-powers. Unless he 

 ascends by gradations from organs and systems to structures and tissues and cells, 

 his wonder and admiration at the results of the ultimate microscope analysis, of 

 what he had but a moment before knowledge of only in the concrete and by the 

 naked eye, is likely to be but unintelligent. 



There are three other agencies which can be set into activitj^ with nearly as 

 little trouble and difficulty as the simple apparatus of which I have been just been 

 speaking, and which will, like it, secure for us the necess.ary preliminary discipline 

 or " Pfojxideutik" for the rational comprehension of Biology. These are Local 

 Museums, Local Field Clubs, and Local Natural Histories. Local authorities, 

 persons of local influence, should engage and interest themselves in the starting 

 into life of the two former of these agencies ; and if some such person as Gilbert 

 White could be foimd in each county to write the Natural History of its Selbome, 

 I know not at what cost it would not be well to retain his services. As the world 

 is governed, upon each particular area of its surface there is to be found a certain 

 percentage of the population occupjdng it Avho have special calls for particular 

 lines of study. It is the interest of each country to have such means and such 

 institutions in being as will render it possible to detect the existence of persons 

 gifted with such special vocations, to give the talent thus entrusted to them fair 

 scope for development, and to render smaller the risk of their dying mute and in- 

 glorious. A young man who is possessed of a talent for Natural Science and Phy- 

 sical Inquiry generally, may have the knowledge of this predisposition made 

 known to himself and to others, for the first time, by his introduction to a well- 

 arranged Local Museum. In such an institution, either all at once, or graduallv, 

 the conviction may spring up within him that the investigation of physical pro- 

 blems is the line of investigation to which he should be content to devote himself, 

 relinquishing the pursxiit of other things ; and then, if the museum in question 



