stead of being, as at present, merely confused by their
multiplicity. For example, the grand ornithological gallery at the
British Museum contains between two and three thousand species of birds,
and sometimes five or six specimens of a species. They are very pretty
to look at, and some of the cases are, indeed, splendid; but I will
undertake to say, that no man but a professed ornithologist has ever
gathered much information from the collection. Certainly, no one of the
tens of thousands of the general public who have walked through that
gallery ever knew more about the essential peculiarities of birds when
he left the gallery than when he entered it. But if, somewhere in that
vast hall, there were a few preparations, exemplifying the leading
structural peculiarities and the mode of development of a common fowl;
if the types of the genera, the leading modifications in the skeleton,
in the plumage at various ages, in the mode of nidification, and the
like, among birds, were displayed; and if the other specimens were put
away in a place where the men of science, to whom they are alone useful,
could have free access to them, I can conceive that this collection
might become a great instrument of scientific education.

The last implement of the teacher to which I have adverted is
examination--a means of education now so thoroughly understood that
I need hardly enlarge upon it. I hold that both written and oral
examinations are indispensable, and, by requiring the description of
specimens, they may be made to supplement demonstration.

Such is the fullest reply the time at my disposal will allow me to give
to the question--how may a knowledge of zoology be best acquired and
communicated?

But there is a previous question which may be moved, and which, in
fact, I know many are inclined to move. It is the question, why should
training masters be encouraged to acquire a knowledge of this, or
any other branch of physical science? What is the use, it is said, of
attempting to make physical science a branch of primary education? Is it
not probable that teachers, in pursuing such studies, will be led astray
from the acquirement of more important but less attractive knowledge?
And, even if they can learn something of science without prejudice to
their usefulness, what is the good of their attempting to instil that
knowledge into boys whose real business is the acquisition of reading,
writing, and arithmetic?

These questions are