NATURE STUDY. 313 



NATURE STUDY IN THE PHILADELPHIA NORMAL 



SCHOOL. 



By L. L. W. WILSON, Ph. D. 



~TTT~HEN it was first proposed to me to write for the Popular Sci- 

 V V ence Monthly a brief account of the biological laboratories in 

 the Philadelphia Normal School, and of the Nature work carried on 

 under my direction in the School of Observation and Practice, I felt 

 that I could not do justice either to the place or the work; for, in 

 my judgment, the equipment of the laboratories and the work done 

 in connection with them are finer than anything else of the kind 

 either in this country or abroad — a statement which it seemed to me 

 that I could not make with becoming modesty. But, after all, it is 

 not great Babylon that I have built, but a Babylon builded for me, 

 and to fail to express my sense of its worth is to fail to do justice to 

 Dr. "W. P. Wilson, formerly of the University of Pennsylvania, to 

 whom their inception was due; to Mr. Simon Gratz, president of the 

 Board of Education, who from the beginning appreciated their value, 

 and without whose aid they never would have taken visible form; to 

 the principals of the two schools, and, above all, to my five assistants, 

 whose knowledge, zeal, and hard work have contributed more than 

 anything else to the rapid building up of the work. 



The Laboratories and their Equipment. — The rooms occupied 

 by the botanical and zoological departments of the normal school 

 measure each seventy by twenty feet. A small workroom for the 

 teachers cuts off about ten feet of this length from each room. In the 

 middle of the remaining space stands a demonstration table fur- 

 nished with hot and cold water. Each laboratory is lighted from the 

 side by ten windows. From them extend the tables for the students. 

 These give plenty of drawer space and closets for dissecting and 

 compound microscopes. Those in the zoological room are also pro- 

 vided with sinks. Each student is furnished with the two micro- 

 scopes, stage and eyepiece micrometers, a drawing camera, a set of 

 dissecting instruments, glassware, note-books, text-books, and general 

 literature. 



The walls opposite the windows are in both rooms lined with 

 cases, in which there is a fine synoptic series. 



In the botanical laboratory this systematic collection begins with 

 models of bacteria and ends with trees. In other cases, placed in the 

 adjoining corridor, are representatives, either in alcohol or by means 

 of models, of most of the orders of flowering plants, as well as a series 

 illustrating the history of the theory of cross-fertilization, and the 

 various devices by which it is accomplished; another, showing the 



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