Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/596

578 As a protest against a too narrow view of natural history, biology attracted a large number of advocates in this country, who hoped that the new, or, if you please, the newly named science, would not only enlarge the views of professional and amateur naturalists, but would also furnish a valuable aid in the education of the young. It is not my purpose to speak of the changed aspect of professional and expert studies, viewed from a biological stand-point, but merely to consider the effect which has been produced on elementary instruction in colleges and schools. Within the last ten years a large number of books and papers has appeared in print, intended to show teachers how to teach and students how to study plants and animals. Some of them are excellent, and certainly, as far as books go, they leave little to be desired. They all start with the advice that a beginner should study plants and animals themselves, rather than-what has been written about them. In other words, the first thing is to learn to observe. In inculcating the importance of observation the modern biologists are only repeating the advice of the naturalists of the old school, although it must be said to the credit of the former that they have insisted upon observation with a frequency and urgency previously unknown. But how is one to begin? The biological method suggests a careful study of a few types which will give the beginner a general acquaintance with the essential structure of both the animal and vegetable kingdoms; whereas, by the older method, it was the fashion to study rather minutely the external characters of a considerable number of species of certain groups of plants or animals, and the general view of the two kingdoms was obtained, if obtained at all, from lectures, and not from an actual study of specimens in the laboratory.

As I have said, the new mode of study has been more or less in vogue in our leading schools and colleges for about ten years, and we ought to ask, with what success? Has it accomplished what was expected? Or, if not, what is the reason? It has been my lot to teach one branch of biology to college classes, and, as my experience seems to me to show that, in some respects, the result is disappointing, I should like to state some of the difficulties which have presented themselves in my case, not that I have lost faith in the system at all, but because my experience apparently shows that considerable improvement must still be made before the best results can be attained.

The students who come under my charge, about thirty-five annually, are probably in intelligence and industry good representatives of the average student as found in our colleges. They come from all parts of the country, and while many of them have been fitted for college at the different classical schools, where the great object is to prepare boys to answer certain examination questions, education as such being considered of very slight importance, others are fitted in schools where natural science is ostensibly taught, and others still