i S8 5 .] 
Things versus Words. 521 
with men sheer devoid of literary culture, — unable even to 
read or write, — but yet good observers who can point out 
unrecorded fadbs in Natural History, Meteorology, &c. 
But, so far as I can trace, the disposition to observe is 
less pi ominent in the- rising generation. Those who have 
been duly hunted through the “standards” seem more 
prone to study the “ penny dreadfuls ” than the Book of 
Nature. 
I am not seeking to undervalue the use and the study of 
language. It furnishes, at any rate, receptacles in which 
the lough outlines of our knowledge may be preserved. 
But it must no longer seek to maintain the exclusive position 
which it has usurped. _ It must be made to feel that it is the 
espalier and not the vine, the purse and not the money, the 
shell and not the substance. 
An American Professor of Botany not long ago contended 
that the true way to teach that science was to begin with 
the adtual plants, and refer to books merely to co-ordinate 
the fadts which the student has been led to observe for 
himself. I he text-book, as I have endeavoured to show 
above, will be definitely intelligible to the man who uses it 
in this manner, and to him only. All who begin with 
books, or refer to the adtual objedts merely — if at all — in 
illustration, will form such vague notions as a man 
might form of textile fibres if he handled them with 
gloves on. 
Another American writer who has discussed this subjedl 
puts forward a very suggestive consideration : — If language 
has been evolved, as the scientific world now believes, the 
observation of fadbs must have long preceded the elabora- 
tion of language. If, then, the evolution of the individual 
mind is to follow the same course as that of the species, 
grammar should assuredly be not one of the earliest, but of 
the latest, studies which the young should take up. 
2N 
VOL. VII. (third sdrids.) 
