478 



POrrLAR SCIEXCE MONTHLY 



dent. Before he occupied this chair, he 

 was eirgaged in the work of the Nautical 

 Almanac, and founded The Mathemat- 

 ical Monthly in 1859. He took a 

 prominent part in introducing manual 

 training, not only in the institute, but 

 also in the schools of the country. 



SUMMER LABORATORIES AND 



SCHOOLS. 



Education in America owes much to 



Louis Agassiz, and one of its greatest 



debts is the summer school of natural 



history established by him on the 



natural a long vacation both in schools 

 and colleges. But it seems to be no 

 longer the case that college students 

 commonly spend the long vacation in 

 a profitable manner, and it has been 

 discovered that teachers have in their 

 holidays great opportunity for study 

 and culture. The conditions have led 

 to a complex and rather heterogeneous 

 provision for education and research 

 during the summer months. We have 

 the Chautauqua movement, based 

 mainly on religious interests, in which 

 manv denominations under one name 



.^»vxa3tttV^j^ ^ ^#tv. 



BlILDINCIS of TliE MARINE BIOLOGICAL LaBOKATOKY, V\ OODS HOLE. 



island of Penikese in 1873, the year 

 before his death. The school did not 

 long survive its founder, but it may 

 be regarded as tlie beginning of the 

 summer schools and laboi'atories which 

 now play such an important part in 

 the educational and scientific life of 

 tlie country. Our college sessions have 

 followed the precedent of Oxford and 

 Cambridge in allowing long summer 

 holidays. Formerly many of the stu- 

 dents worked on the farm or otherwise 

 during the summer montlis, and the 

 heat of the season seemed to make 



I or another have taken part. The 

 school on Martha's Vineyard repre- 

 sented an extension of the teachers' in- 

 stitute, leading the way to tlie uni- 

 versity summer schools. There have 

 been schools for agriculture, for modern 

 languages, for philosophy and of other 

 kinds. But the two movements now 

 the most wide-reaching and likely to 

 be the most permanent are the labo- 

 ratories of biology and the summer 

 sessions of the universities. 



There are obvious reasons for pursu- 

 ing the study of botany and zoology 



