TfATUBE-STUDY. six 



I think that it matters but a little in what way the 

 child's interest in nature is awakened, provided only that 

 it is really stirred by a teacher who, like the illustrious 

 Professor Joseph Leidy, thinks of his pupils as he writes 

 a book so simple, so complete that it is a recondite treatise. 

 Yet you would perhaps be amazed if I should call that 

 book by that term. "What! Recondite? That book? 

 Why, I read that ' book with the greatest interest and 

 satisfaction." Of course you did. And have you failed 

 to discover the reason? Leidy himself tells you, for he 

 says, "The study of natural history in the leisure of my 

 life .... has been to me a constant source of happi- 

 ness, and my experience of it is such that, independently 

 of its higher merits, I warmly recommend it as a pastime, 

 which, I believe, no other can excel. ... In the course 

 of preparation of the book I have always had my pupils 

 in mind." 



There your finger touches the very spring of its ex- 

 cellence. "I have always had my pupils in mind." A 

 learned man among learned men, he always had his pupils 

 in mind, and wrote one of the most inspiring and ele- 

 vating and helpful scientific books in the English lan- 

 guage. It has always seemed to me that these exceed- 

 ingly learned persons who write books on natural history 

 in a language that died a thousand years ago, are ex- 

 ceedingly selfish persons, although they may be as much 

 wiser than I, as the sun is brighter than a poor little 

 lamp. But I should prefer to have my pupils in mind, 

 and write the "Fresh Water Khizopods of North Amer- 

 ica," than to indite the Latin Salutatory at your next 

 commencement. Yes, but every scientific man under- 

 stands Latin. Perhaps he does. If Dr. Leidy had writ- 

 ten that monograph in Latin, it might have pleased his 



