Western Society of Naturalists. 991 
in my own field. I may care little for the classification of the 
Ustilagineæ, but the methods by which that classification were 
worked out may be of the greatest use to me in entomology. I 
had occasion at one time to study minutely a purely biological 
problem—that of the food preferences of certain families of beetles, 
about which too little was known, but found that I could do nothing 
with it except by the methods of the insect anatomist, on the one 
hand, and of the microscopist on the other. I need to know about 
the contagious diseases of insects, as a matter of practicable and 
biological entomology, but find myself powerless to investigate 
them until I become expert in the methods of the baceriologist and 
the cryptogamist generally, and until I can make the nicest of 
histological preparations. I would like to learn the life histories 
of some phytophagous insects, but by the time I have worked them 
out I shall have made a close practical acquaintance with several 
of the methods of botany and horticulture. A new piece of appa- 
ratus in the hands of the mineralogist will suggest to the botanist 
a device solving a difficulty which has long blocked his way in some 
tempting line of investigation. I wish now that some chemist would 
tell me how to distinguish spherical pigment granules, by chemical 
means, from micrococci. That item of chemical method would 
break down a barrier against which I have bumped my head in vain 
for a year. 
And if this is so with methods of research, much more is it true 
of methods of instruction. The geologist has to do primarily with 
rocks and fossils, the botanist with plants, and the zoologist with 
animals; but teachers of whatever subject all have to do primarily 
and chiefly with the human mind and the training of it, and teachers 
of whatever natural science have special ends in view with respect 
to the training of mind not very widely different. If I shall be 
profited by knowing how the geologist does his work, much more 
shall I be pleased to learn how he leads his classes; and it is to be 
hoped that the discussions of teaching methods to which our meet- 
ings should give rise will result finally in the common acknowedg- 
ment and established use by all of us of certain principles and 
methods, such that our work may have a uniform character, and 
its results a definite value, not wholly dependent on the point of 
view and the personal idiosyncrasy of the instructor. 
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