Feb., 1913. T E Queensland Naturalist. 251 
as is practicable, adopt the interrogative method, leading 
up to questions that make demands on greater and greater 
powers of accurate observation, concentrated thought, or 
even where investigation and experiment is needed — technical 
proficiency or skill. 
He should remember in this connection the first of 
Bacon's aphorisms, relating to the understanding of nature 
and man's domain, with which he prefaces his great “ Novum 
Organum Scientiarum " : — Homo, natures minister et interpres, 
tanium facit et inielligit, quantum, de natura ordine, re vel 
menie ohservaverit ; nec amplius scit, aut potest. 
Man the servant and interpreter of nature can alone 
accomplish and know what he shall have seen or understood, 
nor can his knowledge or ability extend beyond this. 
2. It should be a special feature in this branch of study 
that the pupil in obtaining his information, rely as far as 
possible on the objects before him, and whar they show, 
and the use to which he puts them, manipulation and ex- 
periment — the latter having a very wide interpretation 
from the growing of a seed or the rearing of an insect to the 
planting of a field or raising a flock by himself or others, 
and then again are nature's own efforts experiments in a 
broad sense. He should learn to ascertain facts for himself 
either as their discoverer or their verifier ; and not so much 
because he has been told about them, or has read about 
them, but because he has perceived them, either by the use 
of his senses, or by the use of his mind, exercised on what 
these convey. Deduction being a subsequent process. Thus, 
although he may accumulate “ specimens," so called, in the 
course of his studies, his attitude towards them should rather 
be that of the child who pulls the insect or flower to pieces 
to see how it is made, finding more of what is precious, in 
crushing it, than its surface features indicate. 
3. Books. — Books should be resorted rather for use as 
guides than for instruction. The great Dutch naturalist of 
the seventeenth century , Swammerdam, whose precise 
studies of insect life have never been eclipsed, writing 
concerning insect life said; " I would recommend everyone 
who wishes to know the truth about these things to learn 
himself of nature, for nature can teach in a short space of 
time more than any one can learn in a long course of years 
from many books." 
In allusion to this he entitled the great work that 
embodies his researches made in 1863-73, and that merely 
a record of what nature levealed to him Bihlice Natura ** 
4r. Attention Concentrated on Few Objects. — Again 
Swammerdam's great enterprise and great book dealt with 
but a fev^ objects, in fact, but twelve insects formed the 
subject thereof, including accounts of both domestic insects 
