n which they
live is perhaps not flat, but actually round, like a ball. It is
debatable doctrine, to be sure, but we must not forget that Signor
Columbus, recently dead, found land off to the west which is probably a
part of the Asiatic continent. If the earth be indeed a ball, then the
sun and stars whirl clear around it in twenty-four hours, travelling
thus at an astonishing speed, for the sphere in which they are fastened
is situated hundreds of miles away. The sun must be a really great ball
of fire--perhaps a mile even in diameter. The moon, as is plain to see,
is nearly as large. The stars, of course, are only sparks, though of
great brilliancy. They are fixed in a different sphere from that of the
sun. In still other spheres are the moon, and a small set of large stars
called planets, of which latter there are four, in order that, with the
sun, the moon, and the other stars, there may be made seven orders of
heavenly bodies--seven being, of course, the magic number in accordance
with which the universe is planned.

This is, in substance, the whole subject of astronomy, as that first
professor must have taught it, even were he the wisest man of his time.
Of the other sciences, except an elementary mathematics, there was
hardly so much as an inkling taught that first class of students. You
will find it appalling, as you muse, to reflect upon the amazing mixture
of utter ignorance and false knowledge which the learned professor of
that day brought to the class-room, and which the "educated" student
carried away along with his degree. The one and the other knew Greek,
Latin, and Bible history and doctrine. Beyond that their minds were
as the minds of babes. Yet no doubt the student who went out from the
University of Jena in the year 1550 thought himself upon the pinnacles
of learning. So he was in his day and age, but could he come to life
to-day, in the full flush of his scholarship, yonder wood-vender, plying
her saw out here in front of the university building, would laugh in
derision at his simplicity and ignorance. So it seems that, after all,
the subjects of John the Magnanimous have changed more than a little
during the three hundred and odd years that John himself, done in
bronze, has been standing out there in the market-place.

THE CAREER OF A ZOOLOGIST

Had one time for it, there would be real interest in noting the steps
by which the mental change in question has been brought about; in
particular to