January 31, 1919] 



SCIENCE 



109 



principle of personal contact with the material 

 on which the instruction is based. 



Just now the content of the first college 

 course and the time allotted to it seems to me 

 to be of very grave concern, as many in- 

 fluences are operating to change its status. 



To ignore or minimize these is to endanger 

 the position already secured after many years 

 of effort and to me this is to endanger the 

 whole fabric of our educational system, as I 

 deem the biological point of view and mode 

 of attack of the greatest concern to a properly 

 balanced and rounded education. 



The great increase of subjects offered in 

 our elective systems of education ; the con- 

 stant effort of the devotees of each branch to 

 secure more and more time with minuter sub- 

 divisions of subjects or greater numbers of 

 students, results in the practical elimination 

 of certain subjects from the curriculum for 

 many individual students. The demand of 

 special, technical or professional schools for 

 certain phases of the subject, or its limitation 

 to very meager time, threatens to reduce the 

 time and scope of work with serious disad- 

 vantage to both teacher and student. The call 

 for special courses is highly encouraging as 

 an evidence of the place zoology has come to 

 occupy in these fields, still the supposed wants 

 of medical, dental, sociological and agricul- 

 tural students puts a serious strain upon the 

 teacher who feels that there are certain funda- 

 mental things that are essential to proper 

 handling of any subject resting upon bio- 

 logical foundations. 



Moreover, under the stress of national 

 emergency, we have been straining to give 

 intensive or specialized courses containing the 

 greatest amount of essential matter, especially 

 economic, in the shortest possible time. 

 Whether we will or no, there is likely to 

 come the view either to the student or the ad- 

 ministrator of student curricula, that if such 

 intensive courses are effective in an emer- 

 gency they might well be useful at other times. 

 In any case we may be obliged to face the 

 alternative of giving what seems zoologically 

 most necessary in briefer courses, or seeing 

 many o£ the students who ought normally to 



get the training it affords disappear from our 

 laboratories. - 



I feel very certain, however, that whatever 

 may be necessary in the way of concentration 

 or reduction of time, we must insist on a 

 projjer balance of the various fundamentals 

 in our subect, a proper combination of mor- 

 phology, physiology, ontogeny, ecology, genet- 

 ics, distribution, evolution, taxonomy and the 

 basic principles of economic practise, as es- 

 sential to a proi)er perspective and to any 

 recognition of the proportion and values, the 

 omission of any one of which will result in 

 imperfect views. 



To borrow a simile from the field of animal 

 nutrition we must have a balanced ration to 

 ensure symmetry of growth and completeness 

 of development and I can not approve efforts 

 to give introductory courses based on any one 

 of these elements to the exclusion of others no 

 matter how fundamental and necessary they 

 may be to the structure as a whole. 



In the same way I can not endorse selection 

 on the base of any one group of animals. 

 While it is true that practically all biological 

 principles may be illustrated within the con- 

 fines of a single class of animals such limita- 

 tion must necessarily result in a narrower 

 conception of the animal kingdom as a whole. 



I confidently believe that almost every phase 

 of life can be found among the insects and, 

 as a specialist in Hemiptera, I have often had 

 occasion to remark that this one group of 

 insects can easily be made to exhibit the great- 

 est variety of biological principles. The same 

 no doubt can be claimed by the specialist in 

 almost any general group. But to make such 

 a selection in our elementary training courses 



2 1 note in a recent number of Science (No- 

 vember 22, 1918) in an article by Professor Brad- 

 ley M. Davis on ' ' Botany after the War ' ' that the 

 same questions concerning instruction in botany 

 are confronting our brothers in biology and it is 

 very evident that much may be said in one branch 

 which will apply with equal force in the other. The 

 important point for us is to decide whether we shall 

 rise to meet the new vision and either justify and 

 defend our present standards or adapt them to 

 coming needs that may require new alignments. 



