566 
a traffic, of which you will find no record 
in commercial literature—the training of 
teachers and exchanging with each other— 
a commerce that is indicated in university 
and scientific publications. This is a kind 
of intellectual in-and-in breeding. Among 
animals and plants this is only practised 
where the intention is to establish a fixed 
type that will not change but remain stable. 
Hence it is that your type of teacher and 
teaching is so fixed and to a certain degree 
inflexible. A teacher instructs as he was 
himself taught to do—taught that it was 
the one and only way. If he departs there- 
from to the extent of substituting direction 
for instruction he feels as though he was a 
discordant note, and has somehow done 
something not just right. 
This is not intended so much as a criti- 
cism as pointing out the fact.that it simpli- 
fies correction. The matter is one that the 
pedagogue can change and correct, because 
the old method has become antiquated. 
The time was when the pedagogue could 
and did decide the sort of training neces- 
sary, and perhaps it was, at that time, best 
that he did so, but times have changed 
since then. Up to not so many years ago 
when instruction was even more functional 
than now it was hard to find a university- 
trained man in the employ of industrial 
firms or corporations. Now there are 
many. There must, however, be still fur- 
ther modifications to meet the still more 
exacting demands at present made upon 
university-trained men. The business man 
succeeds by being the first to see a demand 
as well as the first to supply it. If you will 
allow me to put it in a homely way, the 
pedagogue must get down from his anti- 
quated pedestal that is badly affected both 
by dry rot and Lyctide and get on to 
another, more substantial, of conerete and 
steel perhaps. 
You can not suppose, for a moment, that 
SCIENCE 
[N.S. Vou. XXXV. No. 902 
we can carry on investigations that, ten 
years ago, we would not have dared to 
touch, with men trained just as they were 
ten or twenty years ago. This is far from 
being a personal matter. It is our irre- 
sistible, progressive civilization, the pride 
of every American, that calls for improve- 
ment, and it must come. Slowly, perhaps, 
but surely. 
Tt has not been my aim in this paper to 
unduly criticize the progressive instructor, 
or the institution that is doing its best to 
break away from the old régime, but to 
encourage and if possible aid both in their 
laudable efforts. 
If I have been able to put into the hands 
of those who are to train our entomologists 
for us in future facts or arguments that 
will aid them to push for a more rational, 
natural and therefore easier, though none 
the less thorough and severe, university 
training, I shall have certainly accom- 
plished all that was intended. 
F. M. WEBSTER 
U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
ON THE IMPROVEMENT OF MEDICAL 
TEACHING? 
THE watchword of the present is conserva- 
tion. Especially in the industrial world it 
has been shown that great improvement is 
possible by the elimination of needless waste 
of time and energy. Though not yet so 
clearly recognized, this is equally true in the 
field of education. Teachers, especially those 
in the higher institutions of learning, are 
notoriously neglectful of the principles and 
technique of their profession. Unquestion- 
ably this results in great losses due to inefii- 
cient methods of teaching. These losses, in 
medical education, may be conservatively 
estimated at twenty to twenty-five per cent. 
In other words, the adoption of more efficient 
methods of teaching would probably enable 
1+Read at the twenty-second annual meeting of 
the Association of American Medical Colleges, 
Chicago, February 28, 1912. 
