ON THE CULTIVATION OF NATURAL HISTORY. 
Mr. Coquand, whose residence and scientific labours in the Pyrenees are so 
well known and so much admired, has opened a gratuitous course of lectures on 
Natural History, at the college of St. Bertrand, under the direction of Mr. Cabal. 
The ardour which his young pupils already begin to exhibit in collecting and 
learning the names of the different natural productions met with in their walks, 
and the emulation which this delightful pursuit imparts to all their other studies, 
sufficiently demonstrates the great utility to be derived from establishing, in every 
public or private seminary, similar elementary courses for young persons. But 
let the heads of these establishments carefully avoid the danger that may arise and 
frustrate all their best and most earnest intentions, if the professor to whom this 
instruction is confided does not avoid all theoretical considerations of me¬ 
thod and of classification, which, at the outset, would inspire repugnance, disgust 
them from a study apparently surrounded with insurmountable difficulties, and 
make a laborious task of that which may be rendered a mental relaxation for the 
young or old. Let him, on the contrary, confine himself to instructing his pupils 
in the technical and common names of the objects they meet with—let him point 
out the strong indications nature always furnishes, more or less distinctly, of her 
own undeviating system—let him, so far as he can, at the same time furnish his 
scholars with the most familiar facts regarding the uses and applications of natural 
objects to domestic economy, the arts, &c. Let him point out, as a constant guide, 
the natural affinities of creation, so as to enable the young student to approximate 
and class together, from his own ideas, the genera and families of animated crea¬ 
tion—let him describe the cheapest and simplest method of forming an infant 
Hortus siccus , of displaying and preserving the first capture in entomology* or 
arranging the pupil’s geological specimens; and this study will soon present daily 
increasing charms, more fascinating, more varied, than any other of their juvenile 
pleasures : they will imperceptibly acquire that love of observation—of order—of 
research—and above all, when properly directed, that reverence of the great archi¬ 
tect of nature—which will influence their future lives, affording them a source of 
consolation and mental enjoyment in the midst of the anxious cares of life, and 
their relative future positions in civilized society; it will also, at an early period 
of life, prevent the fatal consequences of idleness or ill-spent leisure, but too fre¬ 
quently, morally and physically, exhibited in large schools. 
These remarks may not, probably, be considered novel; but why has no atten¬ 
tion been paid to them ? Eminent men concur in advising such a step. The 
system of present education fully sanctions the introduction of the study of Natural 
History, as being instructive to the youngest person; yet no measures are generally 
taken to promote it in our juvenile schools or colleges, where, if it is adopted, it 
is only recommended to pupils of a certain age, whose advance in learning has 
