POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



57i 



rnent and the decline of peoples ; and what 

 constitutes ' a people,' and shapes its destiny, 

 is the very business of ethnology to explain. 

 So likewise in hygiene and medicine, in ethics 

 and religion, in language and arts, in paint- 

 ing, architecture, sculpture, and music, the 

 full import and often unconscious intention 

 of human activity can only be understood, 

 and directed in the most productive channels, 

 by such a careful historical and physical 

 analysis as anthropology aims to present." 



Science Teaching in Preparatory Schools. 



The report of the Committee of the Amer- 

 ican Society of Naturalists on Science Teach- 

 ing in the Schools embraces the answers from 

 the colleges and preparatory schools in the 

 North Atlantic States between Maine and the 

 District of Columbia, to a circular of ques- 

 tions respecting what they require of scien- 

 tific instruction. Of sixty-nine colleges from 

 which answers were received, only eighteen 

 require science for admission to the course 

 for the degree of Bachelor of Arts. Eleven 

 other colleges require science for admission 

 to the scientific course, while forty colleges 

 offer no recognition of the place of science 

 in the pre-collegiate course. Of twenty-one 

 institutions catalogued as scientific schools, 

 ten do and eleven do not require some sci- 

 ence for admission. Of one hundred and 

 forty-one preparatory schools, ninety-eight 

 include science in the course preparatory for 

 the classical course in colleges. These facts 

 seem to indicate that the academies and high 

 schools are in advance of the colleges in the 

 recognition of the claims of science. The re- 

 port, analyzing the courses of instruction of 

 the schools, shows that the plea that time can 

 not be found for scientific study in the four 

 years of preparatory school instruction is not 

 well founded. The greatest difficulty in se- 

 curing the right kind of scientific instruction 

 in the schools arises from the lack of properly 

 trained teachers. This difficulty is vanishing, 

 and the number of teachers is increasing who 

 possess an acquaintance with science which, 

 though limited in scope, is in considerable 

 part sound in method. " Let it be clearly 

 recognized that the teacher of science de- 

 manded even in the primary schools is not 

 one who has committed to memory some ver- 

 bal propositions about science, but one who 

 has learned to observe and experiment, to 



compare and reason, and the conditions are 

 already in existence which will not fail to 

 supply that demand." 



Miss North and her Animals. Miss Mari- 

 anne North, a British naturalist and traveler, 

 whose death we noticed several months ago, 

 exhibits in her recently published " Recollec- 

 tions " a happy appreciation of the individual 

 eccentricities of animals. A favorite dog of 

 her father's, which was implicitly trusted, 

 when left one day in a room with a tempting 

 pigeon pie, could not resist stealing a pigeon, 

 but replaced the bird with the blackened 

 sponge which Mr. North used to wipe his 

 pens. Miss North made friends with the sa- 

 cred baboons in the Indian temples, " who 

 came and sat by her side to criticise her 

 drawing, or who, after breaking out in the 

 tricks of their unregenerated monkey nature, 

 would suddenly fold their arms and relapse 

 into pious imbecility, as if they had been dis- 

 ciples of Buddha, and were meditating on the 

 Nirvana. She commemorates her first im- 

 pressions of the Queensland kangaroos, when 

 she saw fifty come hopping down hill in sin- 

 gle file, ludicrously manoeuvring as if moved 

 by machinery, and using their big tails for 

 balancing rods. Shortly afterward she saw 

 a bear taking a siesta in the fork of a tree, 

 who merely cocked his great ears and yawned 

 when her attendants shied stones at him. He 

 knew he was out of harm's way. He took 

 his constitutional only at night, and was not 

 going to alter his habits to please anybody. 

 She tells a capital story of a cockatoo, brought 

 up in a zoological garden, and taught to say : 

 'Walk in, ladies and gentlemen; don't all 

 come at once one at a time.' The bird es- 

 caped, and was found with a troop of wild 

 cockatoos attacking it. It was lying on its 

 back, fighting beak and claw, and scream- 

 ing out : ' Come on, ladies and gentlemen, 

 come on; not all at once, one at a time.' 

 She heard of a South African baboon, who, 

 having taken to brigandage, had assailed a 

 musician returning from a dance, and capt- 

 ured his accordeon. Examining his prize, 

 there was a dismal discord, followed by a 

 hideous howl, and the robber vanished in a 

 panic, leaving the booty behind. She encum- 

 bered herself with a family of opossum mice, 

 and this cost her endless trouble and anxiety." 

 But these mice proved extremely serviceable 



