as plants. Not only, however, is this unnecessary, but other methods will give useful and pleasing variety. An occasional dissection of some organ before the class, or the study of single bones, or of complete skeletons is very well, and even necessary to give a true notion of comparative anatomy. But for humane and æsthetic reasons, the attention should be mainly directed to entire animals, their outward forms, coverings, habits, movements, food, habitations, voices, and such parts of their structures as can be seen without mutilating them. Here is an opportunity for bright pupils to make the pleasant acquaintance of such authors as Wilson, Audubon, Agassiz, Lubbock, Wallace, Thomas Edwards, and Gilbert White, and visits to Zoological Gardens and Museums will be invaluable. As to the use of textbooks, except as a guide to the instructor, the objection here, as in other departments of science, is that they are apt to leave the powers of percep tion and comparison untrained, and all the knowledge acquired is at second-hand. Textbooks may serve as occasional help and for verifying the observation, and the works of the great naturalists as source of inspiration; but the school work should be practical and by the inductive method. To help in the work the pupils should be led to note the arrival and disappearance as well as the habits of birds and other animals, and to write descriptions of breeds of horses, dogs, fowls, and cattle.

V. CHEMISTRY.

As chemistry illustrates, perhaps, the best methods of experiment, and as the pupil has now arrived at his third year of scientific study, he should be required to take part in preparing materials for the class lessons. Under the teacher's direction, then, he bends and fits tubes, weighs materials, makes triturations, solutions, filtrations, and decantations, and by degrees becomes acquainted with other processes of the laboratory. From the numerous subjects the science presents, a selection is made of the most useful, for the teacher to develop in experimental and conversational lectures, in which the main points are to be carefully taught, and the important manufactures depending upon them described, -as of soda, iron, steel, glass, white lead, and illuminating-gas. The following topics are suggested as appropriate to such a

1. Apparatus and materials. 2. Illustrations of chemical ac

tion. 3. Water and hydrogen. 4. Oxygen. 5. The atmosphere and nitrogen. 6. Chlorine. 7. Sulphur. 8. Phosphorus.

9. Carbon. 10. Silicon.

ments.

11. Combustion. 12. Chemical ele

13. Chemical compounds. 14. Chemical equivalents and stochiometry. 15. Potassium. 16. Sodium. 17. Calcium. 18. Magnesium. 19. Aluminum. 20. Iron. 21. Zinc. 22. Copper. 23. Mercury. 24. Lead. 25. Silver. 26. Other metals. 27. Alloys. 28. Analysis. 29. Mineral poisons and their antidotes. 30. Organic acids. 31. Fermentation.

VI. GEOLOGY.

At this stage of his progress the pupil is advanced enough to understand something of the theories of geology; and a few lectures with charts and sections will be of much service, lectures on glaciers, mineral veins, earthquakes, etc. But such lectures should be a sequel or incidental to the course itself, which in its details must depend, as that in botany, on circumstances of place and time. In cities a mineralogical and geological cabinet would furnish opportunity for most useful lessons, each pupil having a specimen of the substance studied, and determining and recording its physical character. First the simple minerals should be examined, afterwards the igneous rocks, and lastly the stratified formations. A similar course is even more practicable in the country, where visits to river-beds, railroad cuttings, and quarries, will add much interest to the lessons. Specimens should be collected and labeled for cabinets, exchanges set up with other schools, and study made of the features of the landscape and the nature of the soil depending on geological causes.

It is not necessary to give a detailed statement of topics for the two remaining branches of science. Electricity will be pursued chiefly through experiments and astronomy by observation, and in the latter, care must be ensured that through evening lessons acquaintance be made with the principal stars and constellations.

Is it objected that the method here presented makes too heavy demands upon the teacher? To prepare for each day's classwork, to conduct the lessons and to criticise the pupil's papers, calls, indeed, for much time and labor, especially the first season it is undertaken. But many of the details can be turned over to the more active, advanced, or willing pupils; a good textbook

will save him much trouble, and the method itself is elastic enough to allow, without harm, a good deal of variety.

Let us see how a lesson in science may be conducted by this method, taking for a subject The Pendulum, from the course in mechanics.

The teacher hangs to a hook a weighted cord three or four feet long, and drawing it to one side allows it to swing several times back and forth, and asks the pupils what they have observed. One replies that the weight is carried each time nearly to the height of the starting-point. Another, that the swinging is in one vertical plane. A third, that the speed of the downward motion increases and that of the upward diminishes. A fourth, that the time of oscillation is constant. These replies are all considered and noted down; but the last one is emphasized.

for

What causes this regularity? Perhaps the amount of the weight. So cords with various weights but of equal length, the necessity of altering only one condition at a time has been made familiar by previous instruction, are arranged as before, and the independence of the rate of oscillation on weight is shown.

Next, the weights are allowed to swing through longer arcs, and this change is found to make no difference in the time of oscillation. Similar trials are next made with cords and stiff rods of various lengths with weights attached, and it is soon decided that the rate depends on the length of the "pendulum," as the rod may now be called.

What relation exists between the length and the oscillations? To determine this, the cord is shortened till the swing is twice or three times as fast, and lengthened till it is twice or three times as slow; and careful measurements, which the pupils should make, show that the time of vibration is proportioned to the square root of the pendulum's length. The formula TVL can then be given and explained.

Will a seconds pendulum beat seconds at all points of the earth's service? Actual cbservations can be quoted and their relation shown to the spheroidal form of the earth.

The structure of the mercury and the gridiron pendulums can next be explained with objects or diagrams, and a particular description be given of the pendulum of the Observatory Clock at Greenwich.

A suspended rod when struck horizontally moves through an

arc dependent upon the force of the blow. Through experiments to show this, the ballistic pendulum can be explained. And the principle of the metronome may be illustrated by attaching a weight at different points above the point of suspension, and observing the diminished rate of vibration.

Other simple experiments should be made by the class to find the centres of oscillation and of percussion, the right points where water should strike the floats of a water-wheel, and where a bat should receive the ball.

And, finally, problems are given to be solved, both by experiment and by computation; as, "In a swing fifteen feet long how many turns can you get in two minutes?" "How many minutes will fifty turns require in a swing seventeen feet long?" "How long must a pendulum be to give twenty oscillations in a minute?"

As the lesson proceeds, an analysis of it should be put upon the board and copied by the pupils.

It is claimed for the plan here advocated of teaching Science in Secondary Schools, that

First, it gives, at comparatively small expense, opportunity to learn the leading facts and principles of all the great divisions of Natural and Physical Science.

Secondly, it secures some knowledge of the materials used and understanding of the processes employed, in the manufacturing industries dependent upon these sciences.

And, thirdly, it leads to a love of nature, a development of the pupils' intelligence and practical powers, and, not least, the habit of investigating both the facts of the outward world and the works of the great scientists.

It is not a valid objection that this plan does not meet the scientific requirements, say, for entering Harvard College. It is a good, perhaps the best, introduction to such requirements; and a years' drill in chemistry, physics, and mechanics, will be so much the easier and more valuable after the course here presented. For such others, also, as have the taste and the time, a similar special course in laboratory work will be quite as practicable. But by the great majority of pupils in our secondary schools enough can be learned in this general course to give pleasure in the getting and satisfaction in the possession, and incitement to further investigation in a most interesting realm of knowledge.

THE NEW EDUCATION IN CALIFORNIA.

BY MRS. C. D. ADSIT.

HAT is known as the new education, is the practical development of theories expounded, principally by Pestalozzi, Froebel, and Herbert Spencer.

Pestalozzi, who is called "the father of popular education," based instruction upon the development of the human powers from within, outward, and insisted upon the self-activity of the pupil in production as well as in assimilation.

Froebel based his kindergarten system of education upon the same idea, but urged that this training must begin in infancy.

Herbert Spencer insisted that in education "the question is not the intrinsic value of knowledge so much as its extrinsic effects on others," and that the true function of education is "to prepare for complete living; not how to live in the mere material sense only, but in the widest sense, the right ruling of conduct in all directions under all circumstances; how to use our faculties to the greatest advantage of ourselves and others.

Many notable educators, have, from these theories, practically developed an educational system that trains all the faculties. The Kindergarten is established in nearly every state in the Union. In a few states manual and industrial training are incorporated in the high school and university courses of the public school system. Technical institutes offer facilities for the acquirement of a knowledge of the industrial arts. Thus has the new education advanced in the United States during the past twentyfive years, but has not kept pace with many European countries.

California has, however, had an exceptional growth in the educational work that prepares for "complete living." The history of free kindergartens in this state is full of interest. Ten years ago there was not a free kindergarten west of the Rocky Mountains. There were in 1888 over thirty in San Francisco alone. No city in the Union has made such rapid strides in educational work among the children of the poor. This is owing to the fact that many persons of wealth have been induced to study the work