Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/790

772 without its name, but the flora of the ravines is less well provided for. Separate class-names are, however, given to the broad-leaved ever-green vegetation of the ravines and the vegetation of the plains, as a whole. Swamps are called "bad brooks." Carnivorous animals, the lion, the leopard, and the hyena, and night-birds, are regarded as evil spirits or magicians. In the stories, the lion is always spoken of as "Mr. Lion." Three color-names are known, to distinguish between white or light colors, blue or dark ones, and red, green being considered a variety of red. Notwithstanding this poverty of names, their conceptions of colors appear to be as diversified and distinct as those of other men. They have no words for sweet and sour, but whatever tastes to suit them is "piquant." They are very ingenious in the invention of nicknames and descriptive terms, which have generally some direct reference to peculiarities in the appearance, history, or character of the persons to whom they are applied. Some of the instances of their coinages in this category, which I met in my travels, were comical.—Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from Das Ausland.



N a former article published in this "Monthly" I endeavored to make prominent the essential difference between a system of education based on scientific culture and the generally prevailing system which is based on linguistic training. I maintained that there is not only a difference of subject-matter, but a difference of method, a difference of spirit, and a difference of aim; and I argued that, as the conditions of success under the two modes of culture are so unlike, there was no danger, even with the amplest freedom, that the study of the physical sciences would supplant or seriously interfere with linguistic studies. But, although the drift of my argument was plain, the passage referred to has been quoted in order to show that not only Greek, but also all linguistic study, would be neglected by the students of natural science as soon as it ceased to be useful in their profession; and my attempt to point out a basis of agreement and co-operation has been made the occasion of reiterating the extreme doctrine that there can be no liberal education not based on the study of language. It has been thus assumed that scientific culture can not supply such a basis, and in this whole discussion the value of the study of Nature in education, except in so far as this study may yield a fund of useful knowledge, has been entirely ignored by the advocates of the old system. Not only has there been no recognition of the value of the study 