Abstract
MR. WELLS'S book is avowedly written mainly for the purpose of helping solitary workers to pass the Intermediate Science examination of the University of London, and it would therefore be unfair to criticise it from a wider point of view. The scope for originality in such a work is naturally somewhat limited, but it is a pleasant surprise to come across one which is far above the average as regards soundness of treatment and method. The author not only possesses a practical knowledge of the greater part of the subject he deals with, but also takes pleasure in it for its own sake, and has a healthy dislike of “that chaotic and breathless cramming of terms misunderstood, tabulated statements, formulated ‘tips,’ and lists of names, in which so many students, in spite of advice, waste their youth.” He states that “the marked proclivity of the average schoolmaster for mere book-work has put such a stamp on study that, in nine cases out of ten, a student, unless he is expressly instructed to the contrary, will go to the tortuous, and possibly inexact, description of a book for a knowledge of things that lie at his very finger-tips”(p. 31); and again, on p. 125, that “it is seeing and thinking much more than reading, which will enable” the student “to clothe the bare terms and phrases of embryology with coherent knowledge.” Throughout the book the importance of actual observation is insisted upon.
Text-book of Biology.
By H. G. Wells Lond., F.Z.S. With an Introduction by G. B. Howes, F.L.S., Assistant Professor of Zoology, Royal College of Science, London. Part I. Vertebrata. (London: W. B. Clive and Co., University Correspondence College Press.)
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P., W. Text-book of Biology. Nature 47, 605 (1893). https://doi.org/10.1038/047605a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/047605a0