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.