602 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XL. No. 1034 



fully. The greatest need, and likewise the great- 

 est demand, among even highly educated per- 

 sons, is for information rather than training 

 in science. All workers and students require 

 training in their specialty, but in other fields 

 they want knowledge in simple form and by 

 the most direct method. 



Natural science has moved from a position 

 of great worth as a school subject to one of 

 minor importance. Science teachers every- 

 where are beginning to regard it a high duty 

 to bring it back to its rightful place and 

 value. Attention has been too sharply focused 

 on teaching " subjects " as against teaching 

 students those things that are important for 

 them to know. The schools reached the low- 

 est point in real science instruction when, 

 under the stress of preparing for higher insti- 

 tutions, they narrowed their work to " the 

 forty quantitative experiments." It was de- 

 sultory, scrappy, unorganized, unscientific. 

 At best the teaching was confined to vocabu- 

 laries of technical words, definitions of scien- 

 tific terms, statements of "fundamental prin- 

 ciples," etc. The natural and effective order 

 is not principles followed by applications, but 

 the reverse. From a multitude of experiences, 

 facts and observations, arranged so as to illu- 

 minate one another, some few principles may 

 be derived; if these principles can be shown 

 to be fundamental and can be brought into 

 immediate use. The trouble with most of the 

 so-called " fundamental principles " is that 

 they are never again met either in school or 

 life, and the majority even of enlightened 

 men get on very well without having ever 

 heard of them, or, having heard, they have 

 forgotten them because they did not prove to 

 be fundamental to anything. A principle 

 which occurs, or is likely to occur, so often 

 that one can not forget it, is fundamental, and 

 few others need be considered. 



Principles are not to be taught merely for 

 discipline and training, nor for use only in a 

 remote future. 



The study of " projects " in science will 

 necessitate the breaking down of boundary 

 fences that have been erected between highly 

 specialized sciences. 



General science should be adapted to local 

 conditions and may not be universalized. 

 Many projects elaborated by ingenious and 

 skilled teachers should be published in a 

 series of small books or pamphlets for the use 

 of pupils. Teachers may select from these as 

 time, place and other circumstances require. 

 Enough of this material may easily be pre- 

 pared to occupy many years of study on the 

 part of pupils. What it is worth while to 

 know from the fields of astronomy, botany, 

 chemistry, geology, meteorology, physics, phys- 

 iology, zoology, etc., may be thus acquired. 



Correspondence is invited. 



John F. Woodhull, 



Chairman 



Columbia Universitt, 

 New Yoek City 



INDIANA UNIVERSITT EXPEDITIONS TO 

 NOBTHWESTEBN SOUTH AMERICA 



In these columns in 1905, Dr. 0. H. Eigen- 

 mann gave a discussion of the fresh-water 

 fishes known from both slopes of Panama,^ and 

 suggested the advisability of a biological survey 

 to record their distribution before the comple- 

 tion of the canal should furnish a waterway 

 and allow the intermingling of the two faunas. 

 His conclusions were, in the main, that the 

 Pacific slope fauna was derived from the 

 Atlantic slope fauna in times more recent than 

 the obliteration of the interoceanic connection, 

 and that this fauna crossed the divide some- 

 where near Panama. At his suggestion, reso- 

 lutions were adopted by various scientific 

 bodies, including the International Zoological 

 Congress and the American Association for 

 the Advancement of Science, calling upon the 

 president and congress to provide means for a 

 survey of the regions about the canal. In 1910, 

 under the auspices of the Smithsonian Insti- 

 tution, the survey was organized from among 

 the various scientific departments at Wash- 

 ington. The collection of fishes was intrusted 

 to Dr. S. E. Meek, of the Field Museum of 

 Natural History, and Mr. S. F. Hildebrand, 



1 Science, N. S., Vol. XXII., No. 549, 1905, 

 p. 18. 



