28 CHAPTERS ON THE NATURAL HISTORY 



lows iii the school of medicine not similarly prepared, to say 

 nothing of the benefit that will accrue to liini in after life. 



Things were very different thirty-five or more years ago, in my 

 boyhood time, when a youtb who gave evidence of any such tastes 

 was commonly considered to be some sort of a juvenile 

 crank, with a dash of insanity in his composition, and 

 his father was advised to force him into one of the 

 prescribed "professions," and make every effort to eliminate 

 I he eminently unpractical streak in his organization. The mi- 

 croscope was taken away from him; the collection of plants or- 

 dered destroyed; the living specimens under examination made 

 lo be lei go, and the "rubbish" of birds' nests, eggs, skins, and 

 what nol destroyed, and the boy with the "bent'' bent sure 

 enough into channels for which he had no taste or capacity. 

 Thanks lo the present-day methods in biology, such procedures 

 are fast becoming ones of greater and greater raritv. 



