1870.] ( 363 ) 



NOTICES OF SCIENTIFIC WORKS. 



FOKMS OF ANIMAL LIFE.* 



Twenty years ago a number of statutes were passed in the Uni- 

 versity of Oxford indicative of a commencing change in the educa- 

 tional methods pursued at that venerable institution, of which change 

 the book before us is one of the fruits. The " progressive studies," 

 and prominently among them the study of the natural sciences, were 

 introduced as legitimate objects of pursuit ; and the admission thus 

 made that, in the opinion of some, they were at least competent to 

 supplement, if not to supplant, as agents of intellectual discipline, 

 the investigation of the ancient classics, or of the philosophical works 

 of Kant and Hamilton. 



Whether science, however, as distinct from literature, be efficient 

 in developing the mental faculties and engendering correct habits of 

 thought, must depend entirely on the method in which it is pursued. 

 It must be obvious to anyone who has had much experience in teach- 

 ing, that it is quite as easy — and perhaps even easier — for a youth 

 to acquire a scientific as a classical pedantry ; to be able glibly to talk 

 chemistry, as many boys do their Latin, by employing a confused 

 jumble of words and formulae, without the slightest appreciation of 

 broad general principles. It is, indeed, quite marvellous how little 

 has been effected in England in some branches of science, even under 

 circumstances that would at first sight appear most favourable, 

 merely through the pursuit of a wrong method. Ask ninety-nine 

 out of a hundred senior medical students what the effect of a section 

 of the phrenic or the sympathetic nerve would be, and they will 

 probably detail certain characteristic changes in the respiration and 

 circulation. Supplement the first question by another requiring the 

 source of their information, and they will at once give the name of 

 the compiler of the physiological text-book most in vogue at the time. 

 Now ask two similar questions concerning the situations of these 

 nerves in the human body, and the replies will be of a very different 

 character. Their directions and relations to contiguous parts will 

 be promply set forth ; and in reply to the second query the students 

 will inform you that they have seen the nerves with their own eyes, 

 and dissected them with their own scalpels, and are quite prepared 

 to prove the correctness of their statements by a demonstration of 



* ' Forms of Animal Life : being Outlines of Zoological Classification based 

 upon Anatomical Investigation, and Illustrated by Descriptions of Specimens and 

 of Figures.' By George Eolleston, D.M., F.K.S., Linacre Professor of Anatomy 

 and Physiology in the University of Oxford. Oxford : Clarendon Press. 

 VOL. VII. 2 C 



