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  SCIENTIFIC CULTURE,
  _AND OTHER ESSAYS_.

  BY
  JOSIAH PARSONS COOKE, LL. D.,
  PROFESSOR OF CHEMISTRY AND MINERALOGY, IN HARVARD COLLEGE.

  _SECOND EDITION; WITH ADDITIONS._

  NEW YORK:
  D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
  1, 3, AND 5 BOND STREET.
  1885.



  COPYRIGHT, 1881, 1885,
  BY JOSIAH PARSONS COOKE.



  TO
  MY ASSOCIATES
  IN
  THE CHEMICAL LABORATORY
  OF
  HARVARD COLLEGE
  THIS VOLUME
  IS
  AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED.




PREFACE.


The essays collected in this volume, although written for special
occasions without reference to each other, have all a bearing on the
subject selected as the title of the volume, and are an outcome of a
somewhat large experience in teaching physical science to college
students. Thirty years ago, when the writer began his work at Cambridge,
instruction in the experimental sciences was given in our American
colleges solely by means of lectures and recitations. Chemistry and
Physics were allowed a limited space in the college curriculum as
branches of useful knowledge, but were regarded as wholly subordinate to
the classics and mathematics as a means of education; and as physical
science was then taught, there can be no question that the accepted
opinion was correct. Experimental science can never be made of value as
a means of education unless taught by its own methods, with the one
great aim in view to train the faculties of the mind so as to enable the
educated man to read the Book of Nature for himself.

Since the period just referred to, the example early set at Cambridge of
making the student's own observations in the laboratory or cabinet the
basis of all teaching, either in experimental or natural history
