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IMPORTANCE OF ENTOMOLOGY. 
thus awakened there gradually develops, under proper guidance, a 
scientific study of these creatures which captivates the child’s 
mind for a longer time, and enriches it with useful knowledge. In 
the scientific instruction of no school, therefore, should be 
wanting the study of insects and especially of butterflies. All the 
prominent schoolmasters of to-day are agreed that the object 
of modern education should be, not the copiousness of positive 
knowledge, often obtained by senseless exercise of memory, 
but mental power. Whenever, therefore, in estimating the 
educational value of the various school subjects, logical practice 
of the mind without senseless loading of the memory is 
made the standard, then, with the exception of mathematics, 
no subject is better fitted for the attainment of this 
end than the organic sciences—botany and zoology. But, if the 
instruction in these subjects is to be of real use, it is necessary that 
the objects themselves should be placed in the hands of the pupils 
for examination and comparison ; our native plants and insects are 
easily managed, and form just the material for the purpose: on 
them the student may practise, and improve his acuteness and 
powers of observation. His chief gain from this occupation will be 
the habit of proceeding systematically or logically in all subsequent 
practical and scientific questions. Later, he is to learn how to 
determine the name and place of the natural object in the system 
from comparison and generalisation. By this method, the imagin¬ 
ative faculty, the powers of observation and judgment, acuteness, 
conscientiousness, and thoroughness, are trained in a high degree, 
while the determination of objects represented in pictures is of but 
little use, since it favours guessing and trifling. Like mathematics, 
entomology affords an inexhaustible variety of exercises which show 
endless gradation in difficulty: while the determination of a 
Lyccena , Erebia, or Lygcena is about as difficult as to learn 
the first conjugation in Latin, or to prove the theorems concerning 
similar figures, that of many Noctua and Geometridce, especially of 
Eupithecice, does not rank far behind the difficulty of a tragedy of 
Sophocles, or of a differential equation. 
“ However, the study of natural science, and especially that of 
March, 1893. 
