EDUCATION OF A MAN OF SCIENCE 91 



Harry Bertram is, of course, Michael Foster, and I 

 should say that Dandie Dinmont is Coutts Trotter. 

 Meg Merrilees is naturally Huxley, who was the 

 magician of the affair (she is always said to have 

 looked like a man). Here all analogy breaks 

 down. Meg was killed by False Science, Huxley 

 was not ; indeed it was the other way. Harry 

 Bertram lived happily ever afterwards. Michael 

 Foster was not so fortunate, and I am ashamed to 

 think that before he died he was misunderstood 

 and half forgotten in his own University. 



I must apologise for this outburst of inco- 

 herence ; I am afraid it was not this sort of thing 

 that Tyndall had in mind when he pleaded for the 

 scientific imagination — that is something much 

 more serious. 



Not only does the student of to-day get good 

 practical teaching, but he has the great advantage 

 of being under professors who are generally 

 engaged in original work. And if a man can afford 

 the time to stay up after his degree, he is encouraged 

 and helped to undertake research. If practical 

 teaching is the foundation, the protoplasm as it 

 were, of scientific education, I am sure that original 

 work is its soul or spirit. 



Whether, like my father in South America, we 

 have the genius to solve big problems in geology 

 and "can hardly sleep at night for thinking of them," 

 or whether, as with us smaller people, the task is 

 some elusive little point which we triumphantly 

 track to its cause, there is an extraordinary delight 

 in such work. Professor Seward arranged an 

 admirable imitation of original research in his 



