8 MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. [Jan. 



course, he soon finds that he is brought without preamble into 

 the very sanctuary of. science, and he may from time to time be 

 astonished to find that he has been prosecuting an investigation 

 the solution of which may not yet have been reached by profes- 

 sional naturalists themselves. This is particularly the case with 

 the examination of American animals of the lower classes, a 

 large number of which have not yet even received names. While 

 the young naturalists are thus tracing facts for themselves, and 

 trying to understand them, I watch carefully their course, 

 bringing them back to the right path if they are imperceptibly 

 led from it, warning them from the many mistakes they may 

 make, pointing out the objects they should steadily keep in 

 view, and in this way I generally succeed in making tolerable 

 observers of them in the course of one or two years. From 

 this time forward they are advised to select a special branch of 

 natural history, to make it their speciality, the field being too 

 wide for any man to attempt to master the whole. This course 

 leads to a rapid advance in one direction ; but I contrive to 

 remedy what might easily become one-sidedness by advising 

 them to pursue as collateral study some other investigation in a 

 different class, and faithfully to attend the lectures in which 

 general instruction is given upon natural history as a whole, 

 and its separate branches in particular. 



I take special care to have them attend courses of lectures 

 upon other branches of science delivered in the University, and 

 to cultivate at the same time some literary, historical and philo- 

 sophical studies. I am more constantly made to feel the impor- 

 tance of pressing these collateral studies, owing to the very cir- 

 cumstance that with the method thus described the students make 

 generally such rapid progress as to mislead them to the belief 

 that they know much more than they really do know. After a 

 few years' study they are generally as far advanced in one special 

 department of Zoology as the most eminent naturalists, and they 

 easily forget how much they do not know, and still more do 

 they overlook to what circumstance they owe their rapid 

 advancement. In the beginning they are never made to feel 

 the constant guidance under which they have been kept, in 

 order not to discourage them. Their familiarity with the 

 special objects of their study naturally leads them to compari- 

 sons with the knowledge recorded in the special published works 



