that they are competent to carry it on.
Now, the result of such an alliance as is here proposed could not be other than salutary upon the institutions themselves. The effect of giving them a certain definite and responsible scientific work in their localities, the results of which would be brought to the test of public criticism, would inevitably be to elevate and sustain the standard of instruction in their laboratories and lecture-rooms. It is a grave difficulty with these higher institutions that their work cannot be brought to judgment and submitted to fixed and recognized tests. They are often the places for careless, slipshod, and aimless work. Mental results are not easy of inspection or valuation; sham and cram are showy and telling, and the constant temptation is to put them in the place of solid attainment; and, when college authorities can constantly fall back upon the pretext that their aim is discipline, and that knowledge is a quite subordinate matter, they open a door which allows any amount of loose and slovenly work, and at the same time permits the teachers to escape responsibility and criticism. But if a college were publicly placed in the scientific charge of the region in which it is situated, and required to make such reports thereof as could be accepted for guidance by the community,and brought into conspicuous comparison with similar work in other localities, the whole being under the supervision of able superintendents, a standard would be introduced that could not fail to give a high and authoritative tone to the work of the place.
But the effectual carrying out of the plan now proposed would not only insure able and qualified men as professors, but much more; it would call the students to the work, and secure the grand object of scientific education by bringing their minds into direct and systematic relation with natural phenomena. It would bring them out of their dormitories and class-rooms into the field, and, while favoring health and cultivating a sympathy with natural things, it would bring to bear the stimulus of curiosity and the love of search, while the intellectual work, being of the nature of independent observation and discovery, would be promotive of self-education—the best of all education. It is as notorious as it is deplorable that the scientific teaching of our colleges is grossly defective. Geology, botany, chemistry, physics, and zoology, are taught from books like Latin and history, with the aid, perhaps, of a few demonstrations by the lecturer. The information acquired is superficial and second-hand, and does not deserve the name of scientific knowledge. We believe the effect upon students of bringing them into close mental relation with surrounding Nature, of putting them in charge of a district, and requiring them to observe, classify, and describe its various objects, under the incitement that their useful work would have fair recognition, would be to give inspiration to study, solidity to acquirement, and the highest possibilities of usefulness to subsequent life.
An important consequence of such a plan would be, the growth of scientific museums which would represent the character and resources of the locality. As there is no educational appliance more important than a good museum, so there is no educational process more valuable than the formation of it. Those crude, miscellaneous, rubbishy collections of curiosities, and odd things gathered by accident, that are often thrown together, without method, in some unappropriated corner of an institution, are not entitled to the name of museums. Specimens are nothing except as illustrating ideas, and they require to be so arranged as to teach the science to which they belong. As we ordinarily find them, museums are hardly more instructive than so much blank space. A
