Alexandria Gazette

STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY.—For many years it has been one of my constant regrets that no schoolmaster of mine had a knowledge of natural history, so far at least as to have taught me the grasses that grow by the wayside, and the little winged and wingless neighbors that are continually meeting me with a salutation which I cannot answer, as things are. Why didn't somebody teach me the constellations too, and make me at home in the starry heavens, which are always over head, and which I don't half know to this day? I love to prophesy that there will come a time when, not in Edinburgh only. but in all Scottish and European towns and villages, the schoolmaster will be strictly required to possess these two capabilities, (neither Greek nor Latin more strict,) and that no ingenious little denizen of this universe be thenceforth debarred from his right of liberty in those two departments, and doomed to look on them as if across grated fences all his life ! Carlyle.