rather than a loss. There is abundant evidence in support of this statement in our colleges for women. In them experience has shown that not a few of the students who have displayed marked aptitude for scientific work in their collegiate education, and some of those who have successfully carried on individual research, have had very little instruction in science before entering college. On the other hand, students whose choice in collegiate work is non-scientific, whether their choice be mathematics, classics, or modern languages, find that, unless their early training has been prolonged and thorough, the difficulties in the way of their ultimate success are almost insuperable.
If it is agreed, then, that scientific instruction under the present methods already consumes time which should be devoted to letters, it is evident that reform in these methods can not be instituted at the expense of the non-scientific side of education. There is, therefore, but one road to a better state of things. The existing system must be reorganized in such a manner that the whole, or at least a large part, of the time that justice allots to natural knowledge shall be spent on not more than two branches of science. This is really the only way in which a student can derive any training of the eye, the hand, or the deductive faculties, and, as the benefit which a student derives from such training is largely dependent on her being of an age to profit by it, the instruction must be given during the last two years of her school life. Five to six hours a week is, as was said before, the minimum amount of time from which good results can be obtained; and if this time were divided into not more than three periods, it would be possible to arrange something of the nature of laboratory work. Under such a system it is almost impossible that a pupil should not make real progress toward the end in view—that is to say, her mind would be brought into direct relation with Nature at the period of her school life when she is most responsive to the stimulus of such contact.
Already I feel my elbow jogged by the men of liberal minds, who urge that such a method as that just described would permit students to enter into life halt and blind as regards those of the physical sciences which were not selected for instruction. There is an element of truth in their argument that no girl ought to be in such complete ignorance of any natural science that she is unable to comprehend an incidental allusion to it. But this theory of the purpose of scientific knowledge can be carried out with a very small expenditure of time. The facts which the student needs to grasp are not many, and they ought to be encumbered with as little detail as possible. If, during the two school years immediately preceding those in which systematic instruction in science is to be given, one or two simple lectures were delivered each week on the outlines of
