In order that the sciences should be of value in our educational system, they must be taught more from things than from books, and never from books without the things. They must be taught, also, by real living teachers, who are themselves interested in what they teach, are interested also in their pupils, and understand how to direct them aright. Above all, the teachers must see to it that their pupils study with the understanding, and not solely with the memory, not permitting a single lesson to be recited which is not thoroughly understood, taking the greatest care not to load the memory with any useless lumber, and eschewing merely memorized rules as they would deadly poison. The great difficulty against which the teachers of natural science have to contend in the colleges are the wretched tread-mill habits the students bring with them from the schools. Allow our students to memorize their lessons, and they will appear respectably well, but you might as easily remove a mountain as to make many of them think. They will solve an involved equation of algebra readily enough so long as they can do it by turning their mental crank, when they will break down on the simplest practical problem of arithmetic which requires of them only thought enough to decide whether they shall multiply or divide. Many a boy of good capabilities has been irretrievably ruined, as a scholar, by being compelled to learn the Latin grammar by rote at an age when he was incapable of understanding it; and I fear that schools may still be found where young minds are tortured by this stupefying exercise. Those of us who have faith in the educational value of scientific studies are most anxious that the students who resort to our colleges should be as well fitted in the physical sciences as in the classics, for otherwise the best results of scientific culture can not be expected. As it is, our students come to the university, not only with no preparation in physical science, but with their perceptive and reasoning faculties so undeveloped that the acquisition of the elementary principles of science is burdensome and distasteful; and good scholars, who are ambitious of distinction, can more readily win their laurels on the old familiar track than on an untried course of which they know nothing, and for which they must begin their training anew.