How to teach, we must study; how to stimulate, correct, reprove, and thoroughly ennoble our pupils. A great man has told us that a teacher must have in himself all that he would see re-appear in his pupils. Let us each bear with him, as a spell, St. Paul's hint to the young professor of preaching, "Let no man despise thee.”

Let us keep ourselves in contact with the world at large. Let us keep in advance of our work, remembering Goethe's profound saying, "Unless a man is a little too good for his work, he is not quite good enough for it.”

Living men are. wanted for the profession of teaching. No scholarship so thorough or complete, no taste so delicate, no enthusiasm so ardent, no love so strong, that it should not be consecrated to the service of public instruction.

Socrates and Plato, Longinus and Aristotle, were teachers. Why, in that elder day, to be a teacher was greater than to be a king. If a teacher be a man among men, a thinker and a doer, he will command respect. Shut out from rostrum and from pulpit, he may still temper the eloquence of the one, and put a nobler manhood into the other, Some one calls us short-lived suicides. Well! a short life, but a noble one!

Let us carry with us, as we leave this discussion, the true and loving words of the noblest of ideal

women: "When the hour of trouble comes to the mind or to the body, and when the hour of death comes, that comes to high and low, then it isna what we hae done for oursels, but what we hae done for ithers, that we think on maist pleasantly."

LECTURE III.

THE PLACE OF NATURAL HISTORY IN A COURSE OF INSTRUCTION.

BY ISAAC F. CADY.

AMONG Some objects that I was, several years since, examining with the microscope, was the parachute of a dandelion seed. I had, of course, always been familiar with this interesting but neglected flower. In a pasture crossed by a footpath, there was a spot where they grew in unusual abundance. The cattle that grazed the pasture eagerly sought it when the suns of April first clothed the hill-sides with verdure. The closely-shaven grass, more thickly set in consequence of its early croppings, formed a carpet soft and beautiful as velvet. But, in spite of all this grazing, the dandelions grew there in such profusion that, when they came fully into bloom, they covered the ground as with a yellow snow-shower. The microscope revealed to me the means by which they succeeded in growing in a spot so unlikely to give them support. In my

THE PLACE OF NATURAL HISTORY, ETC. 177

childhood, I had often seen the seeds of this humble plant floating like little balloons in the air, in search of a place in which to grow. But, when I placed between two slips of

the little parachute, flattened

glass, in the focus of the microscope, a thrill ran tingling to my fingers' ends; for I then made the discovery that the Creator, when he planned the universe, had not forgotten to devise the most effective means for planting the seeds of a dandelion. Each of the diverging fibres that composed the fairy parachute, was barbed, from end to end, with spines directed towards the outer extremity; so that, when the seed had once fallen among the grass, every subsequent motion served to carry it further down towards the moist earth; while its myriads of barbs prevented the winds from driving it away.

We may regard this little specimen of study in natural history as an epitome of the general process. Curiosity is first excited. This leads to observation and the use of the perceptive powers. The discovery of an interesting fact calls into exercise the memory in such a way that it will never allow the fact to escape. The reason is called into action by the spontaneous inquiry, What purpose is subserved by the peculiarity of structure discovered ? and there follows an irresistible conviction of intelligence and design in the author, attended by a feeling of reverential admiration of the Infinite

Being who gives equally careful attention to the minute as to the vast.

Most parts of this process are as possible for a child of five or six years of age as for an adult. Hence, the study of natural history is suited to the wants of pupils in our lowest grade of schools. It is adapted, more perfectly than any other branch of study, to the cultivation of habits of observation, which are not only of the most important character, but also are more easily and successfully formed in youth than at any other period. Curiosity is a prominent characteristic of the juvenile mind, and needs to be carefully directed to objects worthy of its exercise. Such objects are furnished without limit in the natural world, and are always accessible. They can be studied, too, in such a way as to prove no hindrance to the acquisition of other knowledge. In fact, they may be made an efficient means for its promotion.

I was much impressed, several years ago, by an account of the mode of teaching the alphabet by a teacher in one of the German gymnasia. It was given before this Institute, by Geo. B. Emerson, whose opinion in matters of education, I need not say, is a recognized authority. The teacher was represented as a man of thorough education and varied culture; and, for this reason, one of the most suitable teachers possible for children; for I