MARINE BIOLOGICAL STATION AT PORT ERIN. 33 



upon authority and desirous upon all occasions of getting 

 off with the minimum of information or explanation, quite 

 ignorant of the phenomena of nature and almost devoid of 

 curiosity, having no initiative, spring or alertness in a 

 mind over-burdened with book-knowledge and second- 

 hand information. Such is the average school boy reared 

 on the much vaunted humanistic studies. The Prime 

 Minister said in a recent speech that boys of seventeen or 

 eighteen who have been educated in our public and 

 secondary schools " do not care a farthing about the world 

 " they live in except in so far as it concerns the cricket- 

 " field or the football-field or the river." Sir Norman 

 Lockyer commenting on this, adds: — "On this ground 

 " they are not to be taught science ; and hence when they 

 " proceed to the University their curriculum is limited to' 

 " subjects which were better taught before the modern 

 " world existed, or even Galileo was born." 



I do not speak of the really clever boy who can 

 withstand such influences and has strength of mind to 

 train his intelligence even on Latin grammar and Euclid ; 

 nor of the misunderstood and neglected but often 

 sagacious individual who is content to sit stolidly at the 

 bottom of the class biding his time and preserving his slow 

 but developing mind unaffected by the unfavourable 

 environment because he has more important things than 

 lessons that require his attention, and like a wise man he 

 concentrates 'his mind on what he is really interested in. 

 He gets no prizes, and unless he is very philosophic he 

 may have rather a bad time, but he runs some risk of 

 breaking out later on as an original and independent 

 thinker, an eminent practical man, or a pioneer in some 

 new industry. 



Some of our greatest of natural philosophers, such as 

 Darwin and Agassiz and Kelvin, have been said to preserve 



