SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 



849 



In this way they saw the imperial infant and passed through the throne 

 room, where the crown jewels were displayed, on the day of the coronation. 

 They were put out of this room with a courtesy that they found everywhere 

 unfailing among Russian officials an officer chatted with them a few 

 moments, and then politely offered to send some one to show them the 

 way to the diplomatic tribune. Mr. Lognn tells also of the feast, the 

 juggling shows, and other things suited to their tastes that were pi-ovided 

 for the common people. He finds that the lower classes have many privi- 

 leges and a great deal of liberty, and that they have as intense a loyalty as 

 their heavy natures are capable of. The occurrence at the people's /efe on 

 the Khodynskoe Plain, which threw the only cloud over the joyousness of 

 the coronation, was not an unmixed evil, for it gave Nicholas II an oppor- 

 tunity to show kindness to his people that justified them in calling him 

 " the Little Father." There is much more in this book than we have space 

 to enumerate. The illustrations deserve more than the word we can give 

 them. There are nearly fifty pictures of buildings, interiors, distinguished 

 personages, and types of the population, besides which there are colored 

 portraits of the emperor and empress and views of the cathedrals of St. 

 Basil and of the Assumption in Moscow. 



GENERAL NOTICES. 



An Experiment in Education* is a sug- 

 gestive little volume setting forth, in about 

 two hundred and fifty pages, the experiment 

 of a thoughtful teacher in introducing young 

 children at once into the elements of knowl- 

 edge along novel lines of instruction ; and it 

 touches furthermore on the principles under- 

 lying the experiment. Readers of Appletons' 

 Popular Science Monthly are already familiar 

 with the main ideas of the book, two of the 

 chapters dealing with the actual experiment 

 in Boston and in Englewood, 111 , having ap- 

 peared as separate papers in previous issues 

 of the magazine. The author, after teaching 

 for ten years in high and normal schools, 

 found that from " one half to one third of 

 the time allotted to a subject had been spent 

 in teaching the student how to use his mind, 

 to use books, specimens, etc. in other 

 words, how to study. This waste was irri- 

 tating and pitiable in view of the short time 

 allowed to subjects, and I could not be recon- 

 ciled to the notion that an adult mind must 

 so generally lack power to work economical- 

 ly, trustworthily, and discriminatingly." To 

 overcome this deficiency, and to ingrain into 

 the mind of the child from the very start 



* An Experiment in Educati(^n. also the Ideas 

 which Inspired it and were Inspired by it. By 

 Mary R. Alliug-Aber. New York : Harper & 

 Brothers, 1897. Price, $1.25. 

 VOL. LI. 62 



habits of accurate observation and inde- 

 pendence of judgment, became the object of 

 the teacher ; and natural- science studies, as 

 lending themselves most readily to object 

 lessons, where the child could be taught to 

 observe facts and to verify his experience, 

 were made the basis of instruction. Read- 

 ing and writing were taught by means of the 

 blackboard, and the children constructed their 

 own primers and copy-books out of the mate- 

 rial drawn from their science lessons. Thus, 

 instead of wasting time over the mere tools 

 of learning or trite facts of everyday life, they 

 from the very start became familiar with 

 the elements of knowledge. In place of 

 text-books, the Socratic method was applied 

 drawing out of the children by skillful 

 questioning the facts they were to observe. 

 Instead of taxing the memory with useless 

 lumber, the eye was trained to see and the 

 mind to form independent judgments. The 

 experiment in Boston was made with the 

 children of the primary department in a 

 private school, and was highly successful as 

 far as it went. That the principles could be 

 equally well applied to larger classes was 

 proved in some of the public schools of En- 

 glewood, 111., where they found enthusiastic 

 adherents in many of the teachers. 



The ideas underlying the experiment are 

 explained in the second part of the book, 



