io6 Laboratory Work in Schools and Colleges. 



be successful teacher; the weaker students must be obliged to 

 stand on their own ground, they must learn to train their own 

 powers of observation, exercise other mental gifts than that of 

 memorizing, and become as far as possible as proficient in the 

 laboratory as in the class room. We would not, by the above 

 statement, wish to lay ourselves liable to the accusation of being 

 in favor of abolishing text books; on the contrary we believe 

 that the judicious use of good text books and reierence books is 

 a valuable adjunct to laboratory work. But, certainly, we only 

 truly learn that which we make our own, part of ourselves, and 

 many a book learned lesson and principle has laded from mem- 

 ory to give place to something actually seen. 



A trained biologist in an eastern college, having charge of a zoolog- 

 ical laboratory with which we were fortunately connected, rarely 

 looked over his pupils' examination papers, 'for,' said he, 'by 

 almost daily contact with each student, by observing their meth- 

 od of work, their faithfulness or the contrary, the accuracy or in- 

 accuracy of their observations, I become conversant with their 

 mental status and can grade them as they deserve ' 



The same principles oi laboratory work, as above outlined for 

 zoology, hold in physics, chemistry, geology, botany, household 

 economics and other branches. Independent observation and 

 thought is the keynote in them all. 



As previously intimated, a student blind to the beauties of 

 zoology (if the reader will pardon the conceit) profits from work 

 in a zoological laboratory just so far as he acquires there habits 

 of originality and independence in mental and manual work 

 which will help him in after life. It has been the writer's expe- 

 rience and observation that many a student promising little at the 

 beginnining of a laboratory course, has, by being held rigidly to 

 the principle at stake, developed into a capable worker, pleas- 

 ing and astonishing his teacher by bringing to the surface latent 

 gifts not suspected to exist. 



Advanced workers in zoology, botany, chemistry, etc. , seek 

 and find opportunities in our seaside laboratories and post-grad- 

 uate universities to carry out their ambitions in the way of origi- 

 nal research, but it is only those workers who have learned hab- 

 its of independence in earlier training that can hope to rank 

 with those from whose efforts come reports of wonderful discov- 

 eries which delight scientists and aid humanity. 



It would be, indeed, a difficult and radical move to attempt to 

 introduce into our high schools any such system as above out- 

 lined, and yet it would seem, to the writer, that a modification 

 of the present system, coupled with laboratory methods to such 

 an extent as to do away with a large proportion of the in- 

 discriminate cramming, for such it is, now present in these in- 

 stitutions, might be possible. Laboratory work as now practiced 

 in the best colleges and universities, is only a very much ad- 

 vanced kindergarten, for children of a larger growth ; an oppor- 



