Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 49.djvu/193

Rh supporting those in limited circumstances to intrust them with the delicate and most responsible duties of training the young for their life's work, and so future generations will undoubtedly regard it.

As we said in the beginning, we present this co-ordination and correlation of our educational institutions as an ideal scheme, toward which we should ever aspire, but which we can not expect to see realized by any sudden or violent changes, or, indeed, in full operation within the next quarter of a century. But that something analogous to that which is here presented will be found feasible and practicable, and to harmonize fully with the institutions of this free country of ours, and enable us to attract students from abroad in great numbers instead of sending them, as now, to complete their education in Germany, France, or England, we are most thoroughly convinced. And the more hopefully do we look forward at this time to such a consummation now that the favorite scheme of Washington and our other early Presidents for a great national university at Washington, as the crowning glory of our educational institutions, is likely to be realized at an early day and provided for by an adequate endowment.



URING the last half century or more, and especially during the latter part of this time. Science has made use of a variety of natural objects and living animals in her laboratories to demonstrate the laws and facts of biology. The fundamental phenomena of plant and animal life have been taught by Huxley by placing before his students in the laboratory such material as yeast, and such types of vegetable and animal organization as protococcus, proteus animalculæ, bacteria, molds, stoneworts, ferns, bean plant, bell animalculæ, polyps, mussels, crayfish, and frogs. Foster and Balfour wrote an entire work upon the elements of embryology, using for the purpose only the egg and chick of the common barnyard fowl. For what is true of the hen's egg and its complete development is true in the main for the eggs and development of all forms of animal life, from the highest mammal to the lowest vertebrate known. In the selection of these types for work in the scientific laboratory, teachers have been chiefly guided in their choice by the accessibility of the form selected to the largest number of students of all countries, and by taking an animal of the widest geographical distribution. Thus Cuvier selected the perch as a type for the study 