POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



425 



origin of the seeds. Dr. Clevenger, of Chi- 

 cago, thinks that the soil has been substan- 

 tially exhausted of the constituents favor- 

 able to the growth of the original timber, 

 and has become more suitable for the sup- 

 port of other or complementary sorts ; but 

 as against this, evidence of the supposed 

 exhaustion seldom exists, and the origin 

 of the seeds is still unaccounted for. Mr. 

 John T. Campbell, of Rockville, Indiana, a 

 practical woodsman, supposes that while 

 most forest-seeds are not ready to grow in 

 the leaf-fall of the parent tree, other seeds 

 and nuts are transported for long distances 

 and in great numbers by crows, woodpeckers, 

 6quirrels, etc., and that these are the seeds 

 from which the new growth arises. This 

 theory must depend largely upon whether 

 nuts are actually transported in such num- 

 bers as it requires, by the agencies men- 

 tioned. Mr. Campbell adduces an incident 

 that occurred under his own observations, 

 in which, if not the identical thing, some- 

 thing very like it was done. 



Work and Play in Instruction. School 

 Superintendent B. A. Hinsdale, of Cleve- 

 land, Ohio, remarks, upon a precept laid 

 down by President Eliot in one of his ad- 

 dresses that " a subject is good for a child 

 precisely in proportion to his liking for it, 

 or, in other words, to his taste and capacity 

 for it," that a capital distinction should be 

 made between work and play. The object 

 of education is to learn to do work. This 

 fact should not be lost sight of, even though 

 the road to the end be made to lead, at 

 times, a little way through play. " The 

 child has a spontaneous nature that should 

 be harnessed to studies and to the whole 

 work of life. Automatic attention is that 

 state of the mind in which its energy is 

 given to a thing from some native affinity 

 or attraction ; volitional attention, that state 

 in which its energy is given by act of choice. 

 The development of volitional attention is 

 one of the highest results of discipline. 

 Now, in training the child the spontaneous 

 attention must be rallied to the support of 

 the volitional, which is weak or does not at 

 first exist at all, but as time goes on the 

 volitional attention should grow and become 

 more and more independent of the sponta- 

 neous. Humor has been likened to the 



lever, by means of which we raise great 

 weights with a small force. Love and en- 

 thusiasm are also powerful motives. There 

 is a large suggestion for the teacher in the 

 fact that a little boy who has complained 

 bitterly of the wearisomeness of walking 

 will, when put astride of his grandfather's 

 cane, and told that it is a horse, scamper 

 away all forgetful of his previous com- 

 plaints. But somewhat of life consists of 

 walking when one is weary, and no boy is 

 fitted for life who can not walk. The child 

 should indeed be led to the hard by the way 

 of the easy, but the man has no real train- 

 ing or character who can not, on due occa- 

 sion, collect his powers to do a multitude of 

 things that he considers hard and disagree- 

 able. The spontaneous powers keep us 

 alive in infancy, and death comes when they 

 wholly fail us, but the highest end of edu- 

 cation is the fullest development of the 

 judgment, the moral sense, and the will. 

 Hitch the spontaneous forces to your wagon 

 by all means, but, if you have no other 

 horses, you should not be surprised to find 

 that you drive a balky team. ... It is not 

 true that nothing is good for training that 

 is not hard, but it is true that no training is 

 complete that does not involve much severe 

 and vigorous labor. It is not true that men- 

 tal exercise is useful only when it is repul- 

 sive and distasteful, needing a dead-lift of 

 the will, but it is true that a good many of 

 such ' lifts ' have to be made, and the child 

 must be got ready for the lifting. ... In a 

 word, my whole contention is that the child 

 must be brought, progressively, of course, 

 to measure his full powers with the labors 

 and. difficulties of life." 



How the Structure of Rocks is deter- 

 mined. Mr. George F. Becker, in a paper 

 pertinent to some differences of opinion 

 between himself and Messrs. Hague and 

 Iddings, of the United States Geological 

 Survey, concerning the rocks of the Washoe 

 district, remarks that, given the chemical 

 constitution of an eruptive magma, the min- 

 eralogical results are dependent solely on 

 the physical conditions to which it is sub- 

 jected. It is not a question, therefore, 

 whether, if similar magmas are subjected 

 at different times to similar temperatures 

 and pressures, similar mineralogical results 



