NEW LIFE IN OLD SUBJECTS 173 



But even suppose for a moment that nature were less 

 lavish, is it, then, the amount of material that determines 

 the effectiveness of study? On the contrary, have not the 

 great teachers of biology always laid stress upon the ideas of 

 science and the methods of science? And have they not, on 

 the whole, opposed as a mischievous and unscientific practice 

 the accumulation of myriads of facts, which, in their confu- 

 sion, not only fail to reveal, but which cloud the truth ? As 

 a rule these masters of science, resolutely eliminating side 

 issues, put before their students a few carefully selected car- 

 dinal type forms. They trusted in the principle that through 

 patient, hard-won intimacy with the mechanism of some type 

 organism, — an earthworm, it might be, a fern, or a fish, 

 — a student's scientific power would reveal itself ; and so 

 indeed it proved. 



To further answer those who worry lest boys and girls 

 may confine their attention to mere marigolds and beans, it 

 may be that they have not found out by experience that when 

 children start on a seemingly easy quest they become, before 

 they know it, lost in a maze of side issues. One step leads 

 to another, much like the chronicle of "The House that Jack 

 built." To illustrate : The gyrations of a cabbage caterpillar 

 once led a class to a dispute in regard to caterpillars and 

 their uses; then to the value of the silkworm; then to the 

 silk industry and its history, including the display of raw 

 materials ; then to an ingenious demonstration of methods of 

 manufacture, which involved investigation by reading and 

 correspondence ; then to the further study of the habits and 

 customs of the silk caterpillar ; then, on the part of one of 

 the company, to a day's journey to the city of Hartford, Con- 

 necticut, where, at that time, in the School of Horticulture, 

 these caterpillars were flourishing on the mulberry trees 

 planted for them. Next followed a scheme for raising a 



