MARINE BIOLOGICAL STATION AT PORT ERIN. 29 



Sorby of Sheffield, might not be valuable adjuncts in the 

 bacterial treatment of sewage. Some obvious difficulties 

 occur, and tiie point could only be settled by direct 

 experiment. Our late member Mr. Thompson took the 

 matter up, and during last summer started some 

 experiments at Port Erin which he had hoped to continue 

 during the present winter. 



The second part of our duty to the community is in 

 connection with school-teaching. University teaching of 

 the subject is a different matter, is conducted on well- 

 established scientific lines and may be left to look after 

 itself. But school teaching in our subject is new, and it is 

 essential for success that it should be carried on with 

 intelligence on a definite plan so as to secure the desired 

 results. It should be quite unlike a college course in 

 Biology, should approximate much more to the time- 

 honoured Natural History of the Field-Naturalist, and 

 has been more or less appropriately called Nature-know- 

 ledge or Nature- study. I should prefer, myself, to call it 

 simply Natural History, but the name matters little if the 

 method be the right one. The object of the teacher ought 

 to be to direct attention to the leading phenomena of life, 

 to bring the variety and beauty and wonder of Nature 

 before the pupil's eyes and mind, and to cultivate his 

 powers of observation and comparison and train him to use 

 his reasoning faculties. 



At the end of the essay to which I have alluded above 

 Professor Karl Pearson gives a fascinating sketch of the 

 great series of scientific institutes, founded and maintained 

 by the State, which will be necessary in the near future in 

 order to carry on the important practical work required in 

 the direct service of the nation. National institutes for 

 Engineering, Electricity, Meteorology and various other 

 departments of the physical and chemical sciences ; 

 c 



