Natural History versus Geography ^ S^c. 7185 



Natural History versus Geography and Others : a Plea in a Great 

 Cause. By the Rev. Hugh A. Stowell, M.A. 



In this day and generation of ours, when popular education is the 

 fashionable mania (I say it not disparagingly), and when Science and 

 Art are with more or less success attempted to be popularised by so 

 many and often by so gifted minds and pens, is it not matter for sur- 

 prise and regret that Natural History as a branch of national education 

 should have found so few advocates compared with the other " graphics" 

 and " ologies " that it has been almost excluded from the all-embracing 

 scheme of the Committee of Privy Council ? 



For the large majority of the pupils of our national schools, much 

 that they learn — we may take Geography as a by no means extreme 

 example — can never have any practical use beyond the general expan- 

 sion it may give to their minds. Now surely the study of Natural 

 History would produce this effect in at least an equal degree, while 

 at the same time it possesses this great advantage in addition, that it 

 would generally prove far more attractive, and would therefore be more 

 heartily taken up and more readily remembered than most of the 

 subjects now taught in our schools. That this last is a point of no 

 small importance, all who have witnessed how much is usually forgotten, 

 and how soon after leaving school, will be ready to admit. 



Moreover, my own experience, so far as it has gone, convinces me 

 that, educate as you will, you will never make the mass of our rural 

 population readers, unless indeed a radical change in the circum- 

 stances of their daily life shall at some future time give an external 

 impulse to their minds. Taken from school at a very early age, — 

 obliged to toil from dawn till almost dark under the soporific influence 

 of the open air, — their homes too often comfortless and lacking the 

 needful privacy, — and above all wanting themselves in a great measure 

 the sharpening contact one with another which a busy town affords, — 

 their work solitary and their dwellings far apart, — is it, I ask, reason- 

 able to expect that they will acquire a taste for habitual reading of 

 any kind ? 



Yet while experience, backed by reason, leads me to despair of 

 making this class readers, it only confirms my belief that they may be 

 made observers — close and rational observers. Thus it is by calling 

 forth and stimulating and training their powers of observation that it 

 seems to me you have the best chance of expanding and elevating 

 their minds ; and for this purpose what means so effectual as the study 

 XVIII. 3 E 



