1877.] On the Study of Biology. 219 
and to be able to get at that knowledge easily. What will best 
serve his purpose is a comparatively small number of birds, care- 
fully selected, and artistically as well as accurately set up, with 
their different ages, their nests, their young, their eggs, and their 
skeletons side by side, and, in accordance with the admirable 
plan which is pursued in this museum, a tablet, telling the spec- 
tator, in legible characters, what they are and what they mean. 
For the instruction and recreation of the public, such a typical 
collection would be of far greater value than any many-acred 
imitation of Noah’s ark. | 
Lastly comes the question as to when biological study may 
best be pursued. I do not see any valid reason why it should 
not be made, to a certain extent, a part of ordinary school train- 
ing. I have long advocated this view, and I am perfectly cer- 
tain that it can be carried out with ease, and not only with ease, 
but with very considerable profit to those who are taught; but 
then such instruction must be adapted to the minds and needs of 
the scholars. They used to have a very odd way of teaching the 
classical languages when I was a boy. The first task set you 
was to learn the rules of the Latin grammar in the Latin lan- 
guage, — that being the language you were going to learn. I 
thought then that this was an odd way of learning a language, 
but did not venture to rebel against the judgment of my supe- 
rors. Now, perhaps, I am not so modest’ as I was then, and 
I allow myself to think it was a very absurd fashion. But it 
would be no less absurd if we were to set about teaching biol- 
ogy by putting into the hands of boys a series of definitions of 
the classes and orders of the animal kingdom, and making them 
repeat them by heart. That is a very favorite method of teach- 
ing, so that I sometimes fancy the spirit of the old classical 
system has entered into the new scientific system, in which case 
I would much rather that any pretense at scientific teaching 
were abolished altogether. What really has to be done is to get 
into the young mind some notion of what animal and vegetable 
life is. You have to consider in this matter practical conven- 
tence as well as other things. There are difficulties in the way 
of a lot of boys making messes with slugs and snails; it might 
hot work in practice. But there is a very convenient and handy 
animal which everybody has at hand, and that is himself; and 
It is a very easy and simple matter to obtain common plants. 
Hence, the broader facts of anatomy and physiology can be 
taught to young people in a very real fashion by dealing with 
