Mabch 13, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



373 



fessional zoologists, the somewhat larger 

 proportion who are going into medicine, or 

 the vastly greater proportion who are going 

 to take only one, or, at most, two or three 

 courses as part of their general education ? 

 Personally, after experimenting with vari- 

 ous plans for different classes of students, 

 I have reached the rather settled conviction 

 that no matter what the later work of the 

 students is to be, they may all profitably 

 be subjected to the same first-year course; 

 namely, a course which will give them a 

 good perspective of the whole field of zool- 

 ogy, old and new, and which emphasizes 

 general principles rather than morpholog- 

 ical detail, though by no means ignoring the 

 essentials of morphology, or in other words, 

 a course arranged for principles and not 

 primarily for types. 



I think there is particular danger of the 

 specialist letting his specialty obsess him 

 to the disadvantage of his general introduc- 

 tory course. Even though facts are for- 

 mally true in themselves, the student may 

 be given an entirely erroneous view of the 

 whole, if the facts emphasized are the less 

 important components. To an entomologist 

 all zoology may lie in the realm of the in- 

 sect, or perhaps of even some particular 

 group of insects ; or, if a specialist in fungi, 

 all botany centers, perhaps, in the toadstool 

 and its anemic brethren ; or if a cytologist, 

 the student may hardly be led to realize 

 that there may be something in the world 

 of life worth studying that does not lie 

 under a cover-slip. I thoroughly sympa- 

 thize with the heartfelt cry that heads the 

 title-page of a recent elementary text-book 

 in botany, "More about hay, less about 

 karyokinesis ! ' ' 



The general course I have in mind, 

 though omitting much of the technical de- 

 tail that a professional zoologist must ac- 

 quire, nevertheless should give the prospec- 

 tive specialist such an orientation in the 



whole field of his science as is almost indis- 

 pensable for balance and which in all prob- 

 ability he will not get in any of his later 

 courses. At the same time it must give the 

 general student an intelligent insight into 

 the real live problems of zoology and 

 should tempt him to venture further into 

 some of the special phases of the work 

 which appeal to him. The laboratory work 

 of this introductory course should, in my 

 estimation, be a study of various animals 

 in all their life relations, with a constant 

 demand on the student for interpretation, 

 not merely corroboration of anatomical and 

 morphological descriptions. The forms 

 should be selected to illustrate general prin- 

 ciples of physiology, environmental rela- 

 tions, evolution and genetics as well as phy- 

 logenetic position. They should also intro- 

 duce the student to the fields of embryology 

 and histology. In our own university we 

 have found a series consisting of the frog, 

 ameba, Paramecium, euglena, volvox, hydra, 

 gonionemus, crayfish and bee to answer our 

 purposes very well as an introduction to 

 general principles in a one-semester course, 

 although we prefer to have our students 

 take a second semester of zoology supple- 

 menting the general work by additional 

 forms taken partly from the same but 

 mainly from other phyla of the animal 

 kingdom. 



The frog is admirably adapted to the 

 elucidation of general principles of mor- 

 phology, physiology and ecology, and also 

 furnishes excellent material for an intro- 

 duction to embryology and histology. In 

 our own laboratory we devote a total of 

 some fifty-six hours of work to the frog. 

 We find it a decided advantage to begin 

 with a form sufficiently large that every 

 student can get to work on it during the 

 first ten minutes of the first laboratory 

 period. Having begun with a larger form, 

 all will not come to the microscopical work 



