NATURAL HISTORY.-STUDY OF ZOOLOGY.

PROF. T. H. HUXLEY, in a Lecture before the Science Classes at the South Kensington Museum, remarks:

Natural History is the name familiarly applied to the study of the properties of such natural bodies as minerals, plants, and animals; the sciences which embody the knowledge man has acquired upon these subjects are commonly termed Natural Sciences, in contradistinction to other, so called "physical," sciences; and those who devote themselves especially to the pursuit of such sciences have been, and are, commonly termed "Naturalists."

Linnans was a naturalist in this wide sense, and his "Systema Natura" was a work upon natural history, in the broadest acceptation of the term; in it, that great methodizing spirit embodied all that was known in his time of the dis-. tinctive characters of minerals, animals, and plants. But the enor nous stimu lus which Linnæus gave to the investigation of nature soon rendered it impossible that any one man should write another "Systema Naturæ," and extremely difficult for any one to become a naturalist such as Linnæus was.

Great as have been the advances made by all the three branches of science, of old included under the title of natural history, there can be no doubt that zoölogy and botany have grown in an enormously greater ratio than mineralogy; and hence, as I suppose, the name of "natural history" has gradually become more and more definitely attached to these prominent divisions of the subject, and by "naturalist" people have meant more and more distinctly to imply a student of the structure and functions of living beings.

However this may be, it is certain that the advance of knowledge has gradually widened the distance between mineralogy and its old associates, while it has drawn zoology and botany closer together; so that of late years it has been found convenient (and indeed necessary) to associate the sciences which deal with vitality and all its phenomena under the common head of "biology;" and the biologists have come to repudiate any blood-relationship with their fosterbrothers, the mineralogists.

Certain broad laws have a general application throughout both the animal and the vegetable worlds, but the ground common to these kingdoms of nature is not of very wide extent, and the multiplicity of details is so great, that the student of living beings finds himself obliged to devote his attention exclusively either to the one or the other. If he elects to study plants, under any aspect, we know at once what to call him; he is a botanist, and his science is botany. But if the investigation of animal life be his choice, the name generally applied to him will vary, according to the kind of animals he studies, or the particular phenomena of animal life to which he confines his attention. If the study of man is his object he is called an anatomist, or a physiologist, or an ethnologist; but if he dissects animals, or examines into the mode in which their functions are performed, he is a comparative anatomist or comparative physiologist. If he turns his attention to fossil animals, he is a paleontologist. If his mind is more particularly directed to the description, specific discrimination, classification, and distribution of animals, he is termed a zoologist.

For the purposes of the present discourse, however, I shall recognize none of these titles save the last, which I shall employ as the equivalent of botanist, and I shall use the term zoology as denoting the whole doctrine of animal life, in contradistinction from botany, which signifies the whole doctrine of vegetable life. Employed in this sense, zoology, like botany, is divisible into three great but subordinate sciences, morphology, physiology, and distribution, each of which may, to a very great extent, be studied independently of the other.

Zoological morphology is the doctrine of animal form or structure. Anatomy is one of its branches, development is another; while classification is the expression of the relations which different animals bear to one another, in respect of their anatomy and their development.

Zoological distribution is the study of animals in relation to the terrestrial conditions which obtain now, or have obtained at any previous epoch of the earth's history.

Zoological physiology, lastly, is the doctrine of the functions or actions of animals. It regards animal bodies as machines impelled by certain forces, and performing an amount of work, which can be expressed in terms of the ordinary

forces of nature. The final object of physiology is to deduce the facts of morphology on the one hand, and those of distribution on the other, from the laws of the molecular forces of matter.

My own impression is, that the best model for all kinds of training in physical science is that afforded by the method of teaching anatomy, in use in the medical schools. This method consists of lectures, demonstrations, and examinations.

The object of lectures is, in the first place, to awaken the attention and excite the enthusiasm of the student; and this, I am sure, may be effected to a far greater extent by the oral discourse and by the personal influence of a respected teacher, than in any other way. Secondly, lectures have the double use of guiding the student to the salient points of a subject, and at the same time forcing him to attend to the whole of it, and not merely to that part which takes his fancy. And lastly, lectures afford the student the opportunity of seeking explanations of those difficulties which will arise in the course of his studies.

But for a student to derive the utmost possible value from lectures, several precautions are needful.

I have a strong impression that the better a discourse is, as an oration, the worse it is as a lecture. The flow of the discourse carries you on without proper attention to its sense; you drop a word or a phrase, you lose the exact meaning for a moment, and while you strive to recover yourself, the speaker has passed on.

The practice I have adopted of late years, in lecturing to students, is to condense the substance of the hour's discourse into a few dry propositions, which are read slowly and taken down from dictation; the reading of each being followed by a free commentary, expanding and illustrating the proposition, explaining terms, and removing any difficulties that may be attackable in that way, by diagrams made roughly, and seen to grow under the lecturer's hand. In this manner you, at any rate, insure the co-operation of the student to a certain extent. He cannot leave the lecture-room entirely empty if the taking of notes is enforced; and a student must be preternaturally dull and mechanical, if he can take notes and hear them properly explained, and yet learn nothing.

What books shall I read? is a question constantly put by the student to the teacher. My reply usually is, " None: write your notes out carefully and fully; strive to understand them thoroughly; come to me for the explanation of anything you cannot understand; and I would rather you did not distract your mind by reading."

But, however good lectures may be, and however extensive the course of read. ing by which they are followed up, they are but accessories to the great instrument of scientific teaching-demonstration. If I insist unweariedly, nay fanatically, upon the importance of physical science as an educational agent, it is because the study of any branch of science, if properly conducted, appears to me to fill up a void left by all other means of education.

All that literature has to bestow may be obtained by reading and by prac tical exercise in writing and in speaking; but I do not exaggerate when I say, that none of the best gifts of science are to be won by these means. On the contrary, the great benefit which a scientific education bestows, whether as training or as knowledge, is dependent upon the extent to which the mind of the student is brought into immediate contact with facts-upon the degree to which he learns the habit of appealing directly to Nature, and of acquiring through his senses concrete images of those properties of things, which are, and always will be, but approximatively expressed in human language.

The great business of the scientific teacher is, to imprint the fundamental, irrefragable facts of his science, not only by words upon the mind, but by sensible impressions upon the eye, and ear, and touch of the student, in so complete a manner that every term used, or law enunciated, should afterwards call up vivid images of the particular structural, or other facts which furnished the demonstration of the law, or the illustration of the term.

What is the purpose of primary intellectual education? I apprehend that its first object is to train the young in the use of those tools wherewith men extract knowledge from the ever-shifting succession of phenomena which pass before their eyes; and that its second object is to inform them of the fundamental laws which have been found by experience to govern the course of things, so that they may not be turned out into the world naked, defenceless, and a prey to the events they might control.

A boy is taught to read his own and other languages, in order that he may

have access to infinitely wider stores of knowledge than could ever be opened to him by oral intercourse with his fellow men; he learns to write that his means of communication with the rest of mankind may be indefinitely enlarged, and that he may record and store up the knowledge he acquires. He is taught elementary mathematics, that he may understand all those relations of number and form, upon which the transactions of men, associated in complicated societies, are built, and that he may have some practice in deductive reasoning.

But, in addition, primary education endeavors to fit a boy out with a certain equipment of positive knowledge. He is taught the great laws of morality; the religion of his sect; so much history and geography as will tell him where the great countries of the world are, what they are, and how they have become thus. The system is excellent, so far as it goes. But if I regard it closely, a curious reflection arises. I suppose that, fifteen hundred years ago, the child of any wellto-do Roman citizen was taught just these same things; reading and writing in his own, and, perhaps, the Greek tongue; the elements of mathematics; and the religion, morality, history, and geography current in his time. Furthermore, I do not think I err in affirming, that, if such a Christian Roman boy, who had finished his education, could be transplanted into one of our public schools, and pass through its course of instruction, he would not meet with a single unfamiliar line of thought; amidst all the new facts he would have to learn, not one would suggest a different mode of regarding the universe from that current in his own time. And yet surely there is some great difference between the civilization of the fourth century and that of the nineteenth, and still more between the intellectual habits and tone of thought of that day and of this.

Modern civilization rests upon physical science; take away her gifts to our own country, and our position among the leading nations of the world is gone to-morrow; for it is physical science only, that makes intelligence and moral energy stronger than brute force.

Physical science, its methods, its problems, and its difficulties, will meet the poorest boy at every turn, and yet we educate him in such a manner that he shall enter the world as ignorant of the existence of the methods and facts of science as the day he was born. The modern world is full of artillery; and we turn out our children to do battle in it, equipped with the shield and sword of a gladiator. It is my firm conviction that the only way to remedy it is, to make the elements of physical science an integral part of primary education. I have endeavored to show you how that may be done for that branch of science which it is my business to pursue; and I can but add, that I should look upon the day when every school-master throughout this land was a centre of genuine, however rudimentary, scientific knowledge, as an epoch in the history of the country. SIR CHARLES LYELL, the eminent geologist, in his evidence, remarks substantially respecting physical science and natural history: These branches of knowledge have been ignored in our educational system. Their neglect in the schools is owing to the fact that the chief rewards, prizes, and honors of the universities are given for proficiency in other studies, where preparatory work must be done in the schools, and all the instruction in these institutions is based on the idea that these pupils are all to go to the universities, whereas a majority of these pupils do not, but pass at once into business without any special preparation therefor. The teachers, too, of the public schools, have all been trained in the universities, and are themselves ignorant of the sciences which touch all the mechanical and mercantile interests of the state, and do not appreciate even their educational worth.

The universities do not, relatively, give as much attention to these subjects now as they did two hundred years ago, and this grew out of the revolution in the academical system at the time of the Reformation, when the separate colleges, each with an inadequate teaching force, were forced each to undertake the whole work of the university, and they have not since been able to keep up with the progress of the new sciences.

If these subjects are ever to go into the universities with advantage, the grammar of each must be matured in the schools. The amount may be moderate, but the elements must be mastered, and the tastes for one or more developed, if it is afterward to be pursued with a strong option.

The time can be gained by diminishing the quantity of Latin and Greek, except with those to whom these branches are to be specialties.

NATURAL HISTORY.

RICHARD OWEN, F. R. S., and Superintendent of the Natural History Department of the British Museum, and author of works of high reputation in comparative anatomy, paleontology, and kindred subjects, in his evidence before the Public School Commission, says:

I have long felt a great desire to see the time arrive when our larger educational establishments for youths, particularly the great public schools, to which the sons of the wealthy and territorial families in England are sent, should possess the means of imparting to them the elements and methods of natural history, either in botany or zoology, or both.

I am not aware of any arrangement or organization for a systematic instruction of the youths in those elements and methods at our great public schools, nor that they receive the smallest amount of natural history instruction. If I were to select a particular group it would be the governing and legislative class, which, from the opportunities I have had of hearing remarks in conversation or debate, appears to be least aware of the extent of many departments of natural history science, of the import of its generalizations, and especially of its use in disciplining the mind, irrespective of its immediate object of making known the different kinds of animals, plants, or minerals. Grammar and classics, arithmetic and geometry, may be the most important disciplinary studies; we know the faculties of the mind they are chiefly calculated to educe; but they fail in bringing out those which natural history science more especially tends to improve. I allude now to the faculty of accurate observation, of the classification of facts, of the coördination of classes or groups; the arrangement of topics, for example, in their various orders of importance in the mind, giving to a writer or public speaker improved powers of classifying all kinds of subjects. Natural history is essentially a classificatory science. Order and method are the faculties which the elements and principles of the science are best adapted to improve and to educe.

Natural history would represent, zoology, relating to animals; botany, to plants; mineralogy, to minerals. Of course it branches off into collateral subjects, as anatomy; some knowledge of that, indeed, would be necessarily acquired, because boys could not learn the classification of animals without getting some idea of the general principles of their construction. And so with regard to the classification of plants. Zoology and botany are both based on anatomy, or that which relates to the construction of animals and plants. With respect to geology, that would be too complex, and not necessary, I apprehend, for the main aim in view. All the disciplinary effect would be got by the lectures on natural history, which might be limited to one of the three classes, but I would recommend the branch relating to vegetables or animals.

Chemistry is a good subject to be taught. It induces, in the first instance, dexterity and nicety in the use of the fingers, besides caution in making a comparison of experimental results. No doubt there are useful faculties of the mind brought out well by chemistry. At the same time, there are the practical difficulties of the apparatus for experiments, and if I were to refer to age in regard to the teaching of natural science, I should be induced to raise the age in reference to the applicability of chemistry as a disciplinary science. The elder boys would be more careful and less mischievous, and therefore more likely to obtain a benefit from the laboratory in chemical teaching, without being so subject to its accompanying evils.

The modern languages I should be disposed to place first in importance, natural history next, chemistry last. With regard to astronomy and mechanics, these, I think, are already in part provided for in the illustrations of geometrical and algebraic teaching.

I think the uniform practice in the continental schools where natural sciences are taught is, to begin with natural history. The students learn the elements of zoology or botany first before going to chemistry and higher sciences.

I should be sorry to advocate natural history to the entire exclusion of chemistry or natural philosophy; but I do not think it would be wise to omit

natural history in any great school and consider chemistry as its substitute chiefly on the grounds before stated; and partly for this reason, that in every community of two hundred or more youths, there must be some few, the constitution of whose minds is specially adapted to the study of natural history, to the work of observation and classification, who, consequently, are impelled by innate aptitude to that kind of study, but who are not at present afforded the slightest opportunity of working their minds in that way; so that it may happen that the faculty or gift for natural history, if it be not actually destroyed by exclusive exercise in uncongenial studies, is never educed. What is the result? in all our great natural history movements, we have looked in vain, since the death of Sir Joseph Banks, for any man having a sufficient standing in the country to fraternize with us, to understand us, to help us in debate or council on questions most vital to the interests of natural history. It has often occured to me to ask how such should be the case, and my answer has been, that in the education of the noblemen and gentlemen, the great landed proprietors of England, of those destined to take part in the legislation and government of the country, there has been complete absence of systematic imparting of the elements of natural history, no demonstration of the nature and properties of plants and animals, no indication of the aims and importance of natural history, no training of the faculties for which it affords the healthiest exercise; consequently they have not been educed. I cannot doubt that this must have been the effect of the present restricted system. There must have been, by nature, many Sir Joseph Banks since he died, but they have been born, have grown up, and passed away without working out their destined purpose; their peculiar talent has never been educed, their attention has never been turned to hose studies, but they have been wholly devoted to classics. It must be remembered that minds of this class are usually very averse to classical studies and mere exercises of memory and composition; they never take to them; they get through them as well or ill as they can, doing little or nothing to the purpose, and they fail to achieve that for which they are naturally fitted from the want of having their special faculties educed. I consider it a loss to the nation that, in our great educational establishments for youths, there should be no arrangements for giving them the chance of knowing something of the laws of the living world and how they are to be studied.

Prof. Jukes, in opening the business of the Geological Section of the British Association, over which he presided at Cambridge, remarks:

"The natural sciences are now considered as worthy of study by those who have a taste for them, both in themselves and as a means of mental training and discipline. In my time, however, no other branches of learning were recognized than classics and mathematics, and I have with shame to confess that I displayed but a truant disposition with respect to them, and too often hurried from the tutor's lecture room to the river or field to enable me to add much to the scanty store of knowledge I had brought up with me. Had it not been, then, for the teaching of Professor Sedgwick in geology, my time would have been wasted." So that it was just the accident, so to speak, of one short course on a branch of natural history, grafted through an old bequest upon the main studies of his university, that led Professor Jukes to his appreciation of the method of study and value of the science which owes so much to his labors. I cou'd also, with your permission, adduce a higher authority on the main point, and that is Baron Cuvier's, who, in the preface to the first edition of his clementary book on Natural History, expresses himself as follows:

"The habit necessarily acquired in the study of natural history, of mentally classifying a great number of ideas, is one of the advantages of this science, which is seldom spoken of, and which, when it shall have been generally introduced into the system of common education, will perhaps become the principal one; it exercises the student in that part of logic which is termed method, as the study of geometry does in that which is called syllogism, because natural history is the science which requires the most precise methods, as geometry is that which demands the most rigorous reasoning. Now, this art of method, when once well acquired, may be applied with infinite advantage to studies the most foreign to natural history. Every discussion which supposes a classification of facts, every research which requires a distribution of matters, is performed after the same manner, and he who has cultivated this science merely