i872 THE NEW TEACHING OF BIOLOGY 407 



Foster, Rutherford, Lankester, Martin, and others,* held short 

 summer classes for science teachers at South Kensington, the 

 daily work consisting of an hour's lecture followed by four 

 hours' laboratory work, in which the students verified for them- 

 selves facts which they had hitherto heard about and taught to 

 their unfortunate pupils from books alone. The naive astonish- 

 ment and delight of the more intelligent among them was 

 sometimes almost pathetic. One clergyman, who had for years 

 conducted classes in physiology under the Science and Art De- 

 partment, was shown a drop of his own blood under the micro- 

 scope. " Dear me ! " he exclaimed, " it's just like the picture 

 in Huxley's Physiology." 



Later, in 1872, when the biological department of the 

 Royal School of Mines was transferred to South Kensing- 

 ton, this method was adopted as part of the regular cur- 

 riculum of the school, and from that time the teaching " of 

 zoology by lectures alone became an anachronism." 



The first of these courses to schoolmasters took place, 

 as has been said, in 1871. Some large rooms on the ground 

 floor of the South Kensington Museum were used for the 

 purpose. There was no proper laboratory, but professor 

 and demonstrators rigged up everything as wanted. Hux- 

 ley was in the full tide of that more than natural energy 

 which preceded his break-down in health, and gave what 

 Professor Ray Lankester describes as " a wonderful course 

 of lectures," one every day from ten to eleven for six weeks, 

 in June and half July. The three demonstrators (those 

 named first on the list above) each took a third of the class, 

 about thirty-five apiece. " Great enthusiasm prevailed. We 

 went over a number of plants and of animals — including 



father's advice. But Rolleston had the earlier opportunity of putting 

 the method into practice. 



"Your father's series of types were chosen so as to include plants, 

 and he gave more attention to microscopic forms and to microscopic 

 structure than did Rolleston." 



It was distinctive of the lectures that they were on biology, on 

 plants as well as animals, to illustrate all the fundamental features of 

 living things. 



* T. J. Parker, G. B. Howes, and Sir W. Thiselton Dyer, K. C, M. G., 

 C. I. E. 



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