512 Biological Instruction in Universities. ° [June 
It is certainly time that the higher side of biological instruc- 
tion should receive more attention, and it is unquestionably one 
of the first duties of an institution, which strives to be a univer- 
sity in reality as well as in name, to see to it that the productive | 
side of the department is encouraged and maintained at a level 
of high respectability. Scientific activity flourishes only when 
research is made the dominant aim, and when, for the realization 
of the aim, the working forces are organized with a view to rep- 
, resenting every important side of the department, and on a basis 
which provides for giving the larger share of energy to produc- 
tive investigation. For the efficiency of the department, then, we 
have this double test,—/igh aims and comprehensive organization. 
What constitutes a properly organized corps of instructors, and 
what should be the paramount aim in any given department of 
science, are questions for the specialists in that department. It 
is the position, the scope, and the tendencies of the sciences rep- 
resented which claim foremost consideration in such questions. 
The value of any plan of organization will depend, not upon 
whether it will provide for the more general needs ascertained by 
experience, but upon its capacity for expansion and its ability 
to supply needs not already clamored for. Any organization 
trimmed to provide merely what the uninstructed public ask for 
can never fulfil its highest function, which is to create and direct, 
not to adapt and conform. An educational institution which 
limits itself to elementary instruction may advertise itself as a 
university ; but where is the educated public that does not see 
through the mask of such ill-founded pretensions ? 
It has been said that in German universities too exclusive 
regard is paid to the promotion of scientific and literary activity. 
I wish that academic administration in this country could be 
justly charged with such a fault. But our boasted “ practical” 
wisdom has never been known to err in the same laudable direc- 
tion. We hear altogether too much about the necessity of pro- 
viding for the general purposes of education ; but seldom any 
allusion to the fact, which appears so eminently practical to some 
_ of us, that a liberal provision for the higher ends of education is 
the only means by which those general purposes can be success- 
fully reached. Leta department be organized with a view to the 
fulfilment of its higher functions, and you place it on the only 
basis that admits of the healthy exercise of its non-productive — 
