32 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



teaching of Nature-knowledge. Whether this fascinating 

 subject, eminently desirable in itself, and naturally 

 followed by a certain amount of elementary science, can 

 be successfully grafted on to our present school system, or 

 as some think want of system, it is difficult to say. 

 Possibly we must first have an entire re-modelling, 

 relegate a good many of our old ideas like obsolete 

 machineiy to the scrap-heap, put them all in the melting 

 pot and re-cast them in a fresh mould. Mr. Balfour in 

 Manchester, last year, drew an alarming picture of our 

 present condition when he said, " The existing educational 

 " system of this country is chaotic, is ineffectual, is utterly 

 " behind the age, makes us the laughing-stock of every 

 " advanced nation in Europe and America, puts us behind, 

 " not only our American cousins, but the German and the 

 " Frenchman and the Italian " (" Times," Oct. 15th, 1902). 

 Whether it be really so bad as all that, I do not know, 

 but of this I am sure, that our ordinary school studies, 

 based on books or on statements given on authority, seem 

 to have a curiously deadening effect upon that natural 

 curiosity and interest which is so characteristic of the 

 child-mind. We must all have noticed cases where a 

 bright questioning intelligence eager for information, 

 quick in observation, ready to express doubts and put 

 difficulties where the facts observed will not agree with 

 the explanation given, revelling in any sort of investiga- 

 tion and showing traits which make one think surely 

 here is the mind of a born discoverer, is after a few years 

 of compulsory Latin and modern languages, grammar, 

 arithmetic and Euclid, converted into a dull mechanical 

 recording apparatus putting down statements or opinions 

 in a note-book or his memory as directed — or omitting to 

 (j so— dependent at every turn upon dictionaries and 

 text-books which he hates, accustomed to take everything 



