1877. ] On the Study of Biology. 215 
much about chemistry. That is what every chemist will tell 
you, and the physicist will do the same for his branch of science. 
The great changes and improvements in physical and chemical 
scientific education which have taken place of late have all re- 
sulted from the combination of practical teaching with the read- 
ing of books and with the hearing of lectures. The same thing 
is true in biology. Nobody will ever know anything about biol- 
ogy, except in a dilettant ‘‘ paper-philosopher ” way, who con- 
tents himself with reading books on botany, zodlogy, and the 
like ; and the reason of this is simple and easy to understand. It 
is, that all language is merely symbolical of the things of which 
it treats ; the more complicated the things, the more bare is the 
symbol, and the more its verbal definition requires to be supple- 
mented by the information derived directly from the handling, 
and the seeing, and the touching of the thing symbolized: that is 
really what is at the bottom of the whole matter. It is plain 
common sense, as all truth in the long run is, only common sense 
clarified. If you want a man to be a tea-merchant, you don’t 
tell him to read books about China or about tea, but you put him 
into a tea-merchant’s office, where he has the handling, the smell- 
ing, and the tasting of tea. Without the sort of knowledge 
which can be gained only in this practical way, his exploits as a 
tea-merchant will soon come to a bankrupt termination. The 
paper-philosophers are under the delusion that physical sci- 
ence can be mastered as literary accomplishments are acquired, 
but unfortunately it is not so. You may read any quantity of 
books, and you may be almost as ignorant as you were at start- 
ing if you don’t have, at the back of your minds, the change 
for words in definite images which can only be acquired through 
the operation of your observing faculties on the phenomena of 
nature, 
It may be said: “ That is all very well, but you told us just 
now that there are probably something like a quarter of a million 
different kinds of living and extinct animals and plants, and a 
human life could not suffice for the examination of one fiftieth 
part of all this.” That is true, but then comes the great con- 
venience of the way things are arranged ; which is, that, although 
there are these immense numbers of different kinds of living 
things in existence, yet they are built up, after all, upon marvel- 
ously few plans, 
There are, I suppose, about 100,000 species of insects, if not 
more, and yet anybody who knows one insect — if a properly 
