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NEWS AND SUNDRIES. 
efficient maintenance and continued extension of the *tnuseUm, it should receive 
support from the State, as an institution intimately connected with the progress 
of biological science in this country.” (IX., 397.) For further evidence on this 
point I quote again from Prof. Huxley: 
“Without doubt there are no helps to the study of biology, or rather to some 
branches of it, which are, or may be, more important than natural history 
museums; but in order to take this place in regard to biology, they must be 
museums of the future. The museums of the present do not by any means do 
so much for us as they might.” (17, XV., 219.) 
A writer in Nature remarks: “We see no reason why museums themselves 
should not be occasionally converted into lecture rooms, where teachers could 
bring their zoological, geological and other science classes, and find well-arranged 
material for illustrating their lessons.” (20, XV., 276.) 
But the true function of our medical museums, in addition to providing for 
public instruction, should be to afford facilities for a course of instruction 
which will give medical students an opportunity to personally observe facts , and 
the impressions which follow will be clear, definite and permanent, and hence far 
more valuable than any plagiarized information which they can gain from books 
or even lectures. Huxley has said that students in the laboratory under the 
guidance of competent demonstrators “should work out facts for themselves and 
come into that direct contact with reality which constitutes the fundamental dis¬ 
tinction of scientific education.” (20, XIV., 546.) 
It has been said upon good authority that the most effective teaching is that 
which makes the pupil teach himself. Miss Youmans has w T ell remarked that: 
“ Observation is the starting point of knowledge, and the basis of judgment 
and inductive reasoning. In the chaos of opinions among men, the conflicts are 
usually on the data , which have not been observed with sufficient care. Dispute 
is endless until the facts are known, and, when this happens, dispute is generally 
ended.” (23, 297.) 
From the above it is obvious that the best and soundest way of giving in¬ 
struction is by that method which elicits the “ native” powers of the student and 
makes him take an active part in the process by which knowledge is acquired. 
If this kind of training which it is so desirable that every medical student 
should have, can be obtained by a graded and systematic course of observational 
study upon those forms, a knowledge of which has a direct and practical bearing 
upon the professional duties for which he is trying to fit himself, I think the 
evidence is prima facie, that the time is now ripe when at least the first tentative 
steps towards its realization should be taken. 
( To be continued .) 
NEWS AND SUNDRIES. 
Foot and Mouth Disease lias again appeared in several dairy 
districts of England. 
Appreciation. —It is with great pleasure that we note the 
uniform praise that is given the American Veterinary College 
by agricultural and stock journals. 
