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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXATril. No. 983 



ers of science, who for periods of years have 

 had young men come to study with us our 

 favorite subjects, have inevitably noted the 

 various influences which have prompted 

 them to do so. 



Some young men are naturally hunters or 

 fishermen and become thereby attached to 

 outdoor life. An obscure inheritance from 

 some far-off ancestor, who was forced to 

 hunt or to fish for the necessaries of life, 

 may ofttimes assert itself. The latent 

 savage in us, in so far as it may revive and 

 lead to a life in the open, is to be cultivated 

 and developed rather than to be suppressed 

 and bred out. No one, young or old, can 

 roam the woods or fish the streams, the 

 lakes or the ocean, without forming a pro- 

 found attachment for these surroundings. 

 The pastime of the free days of youth 

 brings into the field of view possible sub- 

 jects of study for maturer years and occa- 

 sionally for a life-work. If a youth pos- 

 sesses a studious, thoughtful and reflective 

 type of mind, he is drawn well-nigh irresis- 

 tibly to continue in these ways. Dr. Henry 

 van Dyke, in one of his charming sketches, 

 describes the taking of his first trout under 

 the guidance of his father, and the deep im- 

 pression which it made upon him. So many 

 similar experiences followed, with close 

 comradeship between father and son, as to 

 lead our delightful author to wonder, in a 

 mood of whimsical and touching fancy, if 

 somewhere in the Elysian Fields of the 

 future the comradeship will not be resumed. 

 One can not but suspect that it must have 

 been a close decision in his early life whether 

 the youthful van Dyke should become a 

 clergyman or a naturalist ; or, as the result 

 proved, a happy combination of both. 



Some young men have not roamed the 

 woods or fished the streams for sport in 

 their earlier years, but have been naturally 

 of observant and accurate habit of mind 

 and have been accustomed to note likenesses 



and differences. The plants, the animals, 

 the minerals and rocks have been the objects 

 to which they have turned and upon which 

 they have exercised their efforts. From an 

 early and close acquaintanceship with a 

 limited area they have begun to wonder 

 about the world outside. The longing to 

 know more fully has brought them to the 

 lecture rooms of the university. 



Some are natural collectors and bring to- 

 gether minerals or plants or the smaller 

 forms of animal life in private cabinets. 

 Many a lad has worked by himself over his 

 little herbarium, his trays of minerals or 

 butterflies or birds or beetles until the in- 

 terest thereby aroused has shaped his fu- 

 ture life-work. The beauty of crystal form 

 or of plant structure has appealed to a few 

 more susceptible natures and has drawn 

 them to the study of objects whose attrac- 

 tions seemed irresistible. There are, more- 

 over, from time to time, teachers born into 

 the world — men and women with the gift 

 of clear exposition and with the irrepressi- 

 ble call to shape their lives so as to give it 

 free scope. Some turn to languages; some 

 to the subjective thought of the past; some 

 to moral, religious or economic instruction; 

 and some to preach the gospel of the out-of- 

 doors and of the world of nature. 



Some men, especially amid the mountains 

 or in the desert regions such as we find in 

 our western states, are born and reared 

 amid the grand and striking phenomena of 

 nature. Great gorges, abrupt precipices or 

 barren wastes may well raise in their minds 

 the desire to know more about these phe- 

 nomena. We always find the people in such 

 surroundings refiecting on the causes of 

 things about them and groping for their 

 explanation, it may be blindly, until taught 

 the results laboriously attained by earlier 

 students and until they are steadied by the 

 accumulated results of many observers. 

 There are in other regions young men of 



