120 



SCIENCE. 



[!Sr. S. Vol. XVIII. Xo. 447. 



tlie problem of gastrulation may be prepared 

 and published. Each member takes one group, 

 such as the different types of fishes, amphibia, 

 reptiles and so on, goes over the literature and 

 works out his account. The whole thing is 

 then put together, added to and got ready for 

 publication by the instructor. 



IX. For the sake of completeness I wish 

 to mention here the so-called zoological clubs 

 or research clubs, where each member gives 

 a piece of his own research, and the journal 

 clubs. In the latter, each member takes one 

 or a number of journals and gives a report of 

 all the papers which have been published 

 therein, which seem of a more general in- 

 terest, or the papers are assigned to the mem- 

 bers, or each member selects a specialty and 

 reports in his turn on all the new papers in 

 this line. 



The advantages of the seminar method, it 

 seems to me, are the following : (1) we are 

 more able to give our students an idea of the 

 many-sidedness of a modern science. A 

 young student, after having heard the usual 

 lectures and done his laboratory work, may 

 be ready to believe that there are some more 

 animals which he did not study and that some 

 things and courses may be given which could 

 not be offered, or he could not take ; but on the 

 whole he is apt to believe that, having done 

 what was required of him, he knows now about 

 what can be known on the subject in question. 

 A seminar may have the not very pleasant 

 but useful task of showing him how little he 

 knows ; that is to say, it can give the students 

 an idea of the different points of view from 

 which we may look at the very things which 

 they have studied, the different ways in which 

 we may combine them in order to find our way 

 to a deeper knowledge, to . gain a new truth. 

 There is not always time and opportunity to 

 discuss a question or attack a problem from 

 several sides in a lecture ; we can at best allude 

 to that ; and in the laboratory the main object 

 ought always to be the most careful and exact 

 observation of a few forms. In fact, perhaps, 

 nothing but established facts or accepted 

 theories and hypotheses ought to be brought 

 up in the lectures, in the laboratory nothing 

 but points which can be demonstrated or 



actually studied; the seminar is the place to 

 give new ideas, to open new ways of looking 

 at things, new connections and associations, to 

 discuss uncertain points with their pros and 

 oons, and to oblige the students to form an 

 opinion of their own. In a seminar on Dar- 

 winism, for instance, we must offer and dis- 

 cuss, not only the points brought up by ISTageli, 

 Eimer, Wolff, Dreyer, Gotte, Cunningham, etc., 

 but we must also see what Fleischmann has to 

 say, and must let our students find his weak 

 points. 



(2) It seems to me that we often give, and 

 have to give, certain things in our lectures 

 which ought not to be given there. While I 

 strongly believe that a careful study of anat- 

 omy or morphology is still and, after all, the 

 only basis of all our further studies, be they 

 physiological, psychological, bionomical and 

 ecological or what else, it might, perhaps, be 

 better to give in our lectures, aided by dem- 

 onstrations, charts, models, lantern slides, 

 etc., only the general outlines, the fundamental 

 laws, certain views, certain points of the life 

 history, habits, etc., and to leave details for a 

 seminar. It is wonderful to develop before 

 an audience the primitive forms of the embryo 

 with the aid of models, clay and cloths of dif- 

 ferent colors, but when it comes to the details 

 of the development of the vessels, muscles and 

 the skeleton, the interest decreases equally with 

 the student and with the teacher. In osteology 

 the general features and arrangements of the 

 bones in one animal, in a group or in the en- 

 tire series of vertebrates, may profitably be 

 explained in lectures ; but the processes and 

 their muscular attachments, the foramina and 

 their passing nerves and vessels, and the de- 

 tails of the bones themselves, the peculiar 

 twist, for instance, of femur and humerus, or 

 of the ribs, are a rather dry subject for the 

 hearer and unsatisfactory to lecture on for the 

 instructor. What can not be covered by 

 regular laboratory work could be treated in a 

 seminar. 



Especially helpful does the seminar appear 

 in systematic zoology. Lectures on systematic 

 zoology must always seem more or less unsatis- 

 factory, even when supported by much dem- 

 onstration material, because there are neces- 



