SCIENCE TEACHING IN ENGLAND. 
139 
or physical but biological, so Biology should form an 
inherent and all important part of his preliminary training. 
The third of my principles is this:—In any education spread¬ 
ing over a term of years, including a series of steps, each of 
which has to be successfully taken before arriving at a 
definite and necessary goal, the weeding, if it has to be done at 
all, should be done on the very threshold. It is cruel kindness 
to allow a student to pass the earlier grades easily, because 
they are not so technically important, and then, after perhaps 
three or four years, to stop his career and compel him to start 
life afresh, and handicapped by several years of age. If this 
is permitted, too, it serves as a constant temptation to the 
soft-hearted examiner (and, in spite of the probable personal 
experience of every one of us, examiners can be soft-hearted) 
to forget his duty to the public by passing through the 
ultimate gates of the profession men of whose scientific 
competency he has doubts. I know that all the pecuniary 
inducements of examining bodies, and the system of com¬ 
position fees, are against the adoption of the course I urge, but 
on that account so much the more necessary does it appear 
to urge it. 
Side by side with these changes in the aspects of scientific 
teaching has progressed that remarkable outburst of belief 
in the need of the higher scientific education and of faith in 
its efficacy, which has found expression in the establishment 
of a series of local colleges of lofty and far-reaching purpose, 
within the walls of one of which we hold this meeting; and 
upon these colleges the first of the changes to which I have 
referred, namely, the creation of a new conjoint field of study 
under the name of Biology, has had a remarkable effect. 
But fully to understand the nature of this it is necessary to 
point out that not merely did Professor Huxley believe in the 
unity of the subject, but, though probably not from belief, 
he practised the unity of the teaching; in other words, he 
himself conducted the whole of the teaching, botanical and 
zoological alike. The result of this is to be easily found in 
the nature of the teaching. Huxley is a zoologist. Rather 
less than one-tliird of the space, and very considerably less 
than one-third of the time, in this conjoint course is devoted 
to the botanical side of the subject, while of the types 
selected, though some are admirable, others are selected rather 
for their ease in acquisition than for their suitability as types, 
and the “jumps” are far too great. The other great 
biological teacher of the decade, Dr. Michael Foster, followed 
at Cambridge on much the same lines. Here, again, the 
teaching was done entirely by zoologists or zoo-physiologists, 
