Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1888 [PAGE 163]

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166

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS.

The students are likewise exercised in the determination and. description of species in the most important groups. A students' "laboratory guide" has been prepared by Professor Garman and myself. The special disciplinary results of the study are sought partly in such field and laboratory work as may serve to train the student to the skilled interrogation and interpretation of nature, and partly in a progressive complication of the subjects of study, made by requiring regularly elaborate comparisons between each group or subject studied and related or contrasted subjects preceding, these comparisons being so directed as to compel the student to arrange the facts of his knowledge in another order from that in which he has acquired them. I t is hoped that zoology may, by such methods, be made a means of mental discipline not less efficient and valuable than the classical and mathematical studies, and of a sort not to be divided so readily from any other subject. Our students now lack opportunity for practical field work and for the study of living animals, especially of the lower orders. This deficiency I hope to supply indirectly and in part by establishing upon the Illinois river or upon some of the Illinois lakes an observing station of the State Laboratory of Natural History, to be kept supplied during the summer months with every thing necessary for continuous and elaborate studies upon the structure and development of aquatic animals. This observing station I propose to open to such advanced students of the University aswill devote some or all of their vacation to it. No students were due in the biological work for this year, but those who reported to me last year spent their first term in ^ork intended to bring their zoological course up to the grade of that now in operation, and the second term in special study preparatory to the graduating thesis. The first term in biology will hereafter be devoted by my students chiefly to laboratory histology and to practical work on the embryology of the chick and selected invertebrate forms, supplemented by a course of reading on these subjects and on the. general principles of biology. Concerning the work of the classes in entomology and in general zoology, I have nothing new to report at this time. Certain tentative changes have been introduced, but the work in neither class can be said to have reached its final form. The course in general zoology, taken chiefly by the literary students, consists of one hour's work a day for a single term. I t labors under the disadvantage of insufficient time for so extensive and elaborate a subject as modern zoology has become. Divided as this now is into several branches, each of which is as extensive and difficult as all zoology was not many years ago, it is not easy to select from such a^ wealth of material even a fairly sufficient outline for presentation in a single term. I meet the requirements of this general course as well as I can, by providing enough laboratory practice to give reality to the instruction; by giving ini lectures the more important and interesting features of the com-