204 TEACHING OF SCIENCE 



not one cook in a thousand has a thermometer in her 

 oven. I hope that some of the ladies who have 

 in these laboratories learned to believe in accuracy, 

 will become missionaries among the ignorant and 

 insist on this simple reform. 



There is a type of accuracy of a very different 

 kind which may become an actual vice. For 

 instance, the desire to weigh things to i-io mg. 

 which should only have been weighed to a centi- 

 gram, measuring to i-io mm,, and calculating 

 averages to several places of decimals. In such a 

 science as Botany this may be positive waste of 

 time. Sachs, the great German botanist, in whose 

 laboratory I worked, was never tired of complaining 

 of this "sogenannte Genauigkeit," (this so-called 

 accuracy). I am told that Lord Rayleigh, whose 

 physical inquiries demand in some cases excessive 

 and minute acciu-acy, has a wonderful instinct for 

 knowing when and where he may relax his 

 methods. 



I have been compelled to use the words ' science' 

 and 'scientific' because these terms have become 

 firmly adherent to a group of subjects such as 

 Ph3reics, Chemistry, Geology, Botany, etc., and 

 cannot now be detached from them. Unfortu- 

 nately 'scientific' is used in another sense as impljring 

 accuracy of experimental method and in deduction 

 from results. So that in calling ourselves scientific 

 men we run the risk of seeming to claim a monopoly 

 of method, as though we pretended to be somehow 

 superior to the trained workers in other branches. 

 The current use of the word seems therefore to 

 cast unjust suspicion on literature. I wish that 



