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BULLETIN OF THE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 
** Our education of the young,” he declares, “ is no more in har- 
mony with modern scientific progress than our legal and political 
world.” Physical science, which is so much more important than 
all other sciences, and which, properly understood, really embraces 
all the so-called moral sciences, is still regarded as a mere 
accessory in our schools, if not treated as the Cinderella of the 
curriculum. Most of our teachers still give the most prominent 
place to that dead learning which has come down from the 
cloistral schools of the middle ages. In the front rank we have 
grammatical gymnastics and an immense waste of time over a 
“ thorough knowledge ” of classics and of the history of foreign 
nations. Ethics, the most important object of practical philo- 
sophy, is entirely neglected. The valuable teaching of modern 
cosmology and anthropology, of biology and evolution, is most 
inadequately imparted, if not entirely unknown, in pur higher 
schools, while the memory is burdened with a mass of philological 
and historical facts which are utterly useless, either from the 
point of view of theoretical education or for the practical purposes 
of life ; and he adds that the antiquated arrangements of the 
universities are as little in harmony with our scientific knowledge 
as the curriculum of the primary and secondary schools. It can 
be said, at least for this distinguished professor of the University 
of Jena, that he does not fear to express his opinions. 
The President then proceeded to the consideration of the 
special theme which he discussed during the evening, viz., the 
relation of ordinary animal life, in its consciousness, to the life of 
man. 
He inquired into the possibility of there being among insects 
and birds and animals a certain amount of race or family know- 
ledge in addition to the mere experiences of indviduals. He 
expressed the belief that there was something more than mere 
instinct in the knowledge a butterfly — the ordinary cabbage butter- 
fly — displayed in placing its eggs upon the cabbage plant. As a 
grub it had fed upon that plant ; did it carry through its existence 
in the chrysalis form and into the prefect insect remembrance 
of its food when a mere grub? Was there a form of reasoning 
in its mind when, unable to find a cabbage, it sought some other 
