THE ART OF OBSERVATION.
To observe properly in the very simplest of the physical sciences requires a long and severe training. No one knows this so feelingly as the great discoverer. Faraday once said, that he always doubts his own observations. Mitscherlich on one occasion remarked to a man of science that it takes fourteen years to discover and establish a single new fact in chemistry. An enthusiastic student one day betook himself to Baron Cuvier with the exhibition of a new organ—a muscle which he supposed himself to have discovered in the body of some living creature or other; but the experienced and sagacious naturalist kindly bade the young man return to him with the same discovery in six months. The Baron would not even listen to the student’s demonstration, nor examine his dissection, till the eager and youthful discoverer had hung over the object of inquiry for half a year; and yet that object was a mere thing of the senses.—North-British Review, No. 18.