64 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XI. No. 263. 



ences, or in which the personal equation, 

 the character and training of the man, exerts 

 a greater influence over the interpretation 

 of results. 



As the biologist's greatest skill is shown 

 in the marshaling and weighing of a multi- 

 tude of what must alwa3'S remain incom- 

 plete and fragmentary data, his best prepa- 

 ration for such work will be the formation 

 of that sound judgment which comes from 

 a wide knowledge of his special subjects, 

 and something more than the mere vocab- 

 ulary of related ones. 



The college courses do not usually give 

 the required training, not for lack of time, 

 but because so much time is wasted in get- 

 ting ready to teach, and in observing the 

 mouthings of science, that there is none left 

 to hear what she has to say. 



In some instances the instructor appar- 

 ently tries to find out how long he can in- 

 struct without telling anything, and how 

 long he can keep the student guessing what 

 he is expected to see. After the student 

 has made careful drawings of various 

 organs and covered them with unintelli- 

 gible names, he is often left to draw his own 

 conclusions as to their meaning and func- 

 tion. This method may satisfy the stu- 

 dent's curiosity to get a good interior view 

 of the organization of an earthworm, but it 

 does not enable him to discover what the 

 science of biology has to say on the subject. 

 It is as though one should begin a course 

 in the science of football by requiring the 

 student to make careful drawings of the 

 stitching on the ball, and to section its 

 germ layers, and then leave him to form 

 his own notions as to how the game is 

 played. Such a method is said to be of 

 value in cultivating the powers of observa- 

 tion. But if the teacher of biology would 

 teach biology only, and let the powers of 

 observation alone, better results would be 

 obtained. In my own judgment, you can 

 hardly tell a student too much, or tell it too 



quickly, provided you tell it so that he can 

 understand. 



In the university the student often suf- 

 fers from a similar lack of direct instruc- 

 tion. He generally finds that two kinds of 

 courses are open to him : in one tlie treat- 

 ment of the subject is so elementary that he 

 can afford to ignore it; in the other some 

 subdivision of it is discussed in great detail, 

 and perhaps necessitates the expenditure of 

 so much time and energy in the use of in- 

 vestigation methods that he does not 

 want it, or cannot afford the time to take 

 it. 



In these courses, the instructor prides 

 himself on giving the very latest report of 

 the hour, with much controversial matter, 

 better suited for the archives of some 

 learned society than to be detailed in the 

 class or lecture room. A prolonged diet of 

 this kind is depressing, and is apt to leave 

 in the mind of the student a succession of 

 vague impressions of small edittational 

 value, and a feeling that it is more impor- 

 tant that a certain investigator should re- 

 ceive full credit for having made a discov- 

 ery than it is to give that discovery its due 

 weight and position. 



It has been said that biological instruc- 

 tion in America is not what it pretends to 

 be, because the botanical side of the subject 

 is neglected and most of the time given to 

 zoology. But even the zoological instruc- 

 tion, that is supposed to be biological, is 

 itself one-sided, since it may be treated 

 from the purely morphological standpoint, 

 ignoring altogether the experimental, physi- 

 ological and ecological sides of the sub- 

 ject. 



With all this special work goes a great 

 deal of technique, something that readily 

 degenerates into an interminable puttering 

 over different methods, with very little at- 

 tention given to the real questions to be 

 solved by them. 



On reaching the university the student's 



