you was to learn the rules of the Latin grammar in the Latin language—­that being the language you were going to learn!  I thought then that this was an odd way of learning a language, but did not venture to rebel against the judgment of my superiors.  Now, perhaps, I am not so modest as I was then, and I allow myself to think that it was a very absurd fashion.  But it would be no less absurd, if we were to set about teaching Biology by putting into the hands of boys a series of definitions of the classes and orders of the animal kingdom, and making them repeat them by heart.  That is so very favourite a method of teaching, that I sometimes fancy the spirit of the old classical system has entered into the new scientific system, in which case I would much rather that any pretence at scientific teaching were abolished altogether.  What really has to be done is to get into the young mind some notion of what animal and vegetable life is.  In this matter, you have to consider practical convenience as well as other things.  There are difficulties in the way of a lot of boys making messes with slugs and snails; it might not work in practice.  But there is a very convenient and handy animal which everybody has at hand, and that is himself; and it is a very easy and simple matter to obtain common plants.  Hence the general truths of anatomy and physiology can be taught to young people in a very real fashion by dealing with the broad facts of human structure.  Such viscera as they cannot very well examine in themselves, such as hearts, lungs, and livers, may be obtained from the nearest butcher’s shop.  In respect to teaching something about the biology of plants, there is no practical difficulty, because almost any of the common plants will do, and plants do not make a mess—­at least they do not make an unpleasant mess; so that, in my judgment, the best form of Biology for teaching to very young people is elementary human physiology on the one hand, and the elements of botany on the other; beyond that I do not think it will be feasible to advance for some time to come.  But then I see no reason why, in secondary schools, and in the Science Classes which are under the control of the Science and Art Department—­and which I may say, in passing, have, in my judgment, done so very much for the diffusion of a knowledge of science over the country—­we should not hope to see instruction in the elements of Biology carried out, not perhaps to the same extent, but still upon somewhat the same principle as here.  There is no difficulty, when you have to deal with students of the ages of 15 or 16, in practising a little dissection and in getting a notion of, at any rate, the four or five great modifications of the animal form; and the like is true in regard to the higher anatomy of plants.

While, lastly, to all those who are studying biological science with a view to their own edification merely, or with the intention of becoming zoologists or botanists; to all those who intend to pursue physiology—­and especially to those who propose to employ the working years of their lives in the practice of medicine—­I say that there is no training so fitted, or which may be of such important service to them, as the discipline in practical biological work which I have sketched out as being pursued in the laboratory hard by.