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516. : Biological Instruction in Universities. [June 
the uniform and are ambitious to grab the honors without shar- 
ing the work. They are a most dangerous foe, for their preten- 
sions are a source of deception to honest people. These are the 
men who, under the delusion ‘that shallowness is breadth, flit 
from point to point, snatching a little here and a little there, 
learning a little of everything and not much of anything, aiming 
to amaze the vulgar with glib talk and profuse writing, while 
they disgust every conscientious worker. To such the hard toil 
of special work is irksome drudgery, proper enough for minds of 
small calibre, but quite foreign to the philosophical province to 
which they aspire. You would never recognize these impostors 
by the names they desecrate ; for some of them call themselves 
zoologists, and insist that staring at the outside of things is the 
only proper method of teaching or investigating ; and a few, see- 
ing that biologist is a word of many meanings, and therefore just 
adapted to their versatile character, flourish that title. The dis- 
tinctive mark of the whole genus, as you will always learn on 
close acquaintance, is a single eye set in the hindhead instead of 
the forehead. They know nothing of the tendencies of the bio- 
logical sciences, and are therefore as incapable of steering their 
own craft as of directing others. The backward vision incapaci- 
tates them from ever understanding either the needs of the future 
or the lesson of the past. They would organize a biological de- 
partment on a basis suited to the times of Linnzus; because, 
forsooth, Linnzeus was a great man, whose mind could compass 
a “ Systema Nature” which embodied all that was then known of 
the distinctive characters of minerals, plants, and animals. This 
was natural history in the broadest acceptation of the phrase, and 
it is only the breadth, as pure surface expansion, that these men 
look at. They cannot, or will not, see that our intellectual 
horizon has been extended in proportion as science has made it 
‘necessary to sacrifice superficial breadth to profundity. 
The misfortune is that these opinions are so generally accepted, 
as the state of biological instruction in the four hundred or more 
institutions of the country calling themselves colleges and univer- 
sities abundantly shows. Argument will never dislodge them; 
they can be reached only through the leavening influence of high 
examples. A single biological department organized on a basis 
broad enough to represent every important branch at its best, and 
provided with the means necessary to the freest exercise of its _ l x 
