EDITOR'S TABLE. 



701 



of another way of keeping water cool, which 

 I have never seen exemplified. A grain- 

 sack, such as is used by the Eastern farm- 

 ers, is painted and filled with water, and 

 hung up in a cool place where the breeze 

 strikes it. 



The olla, too, must be kept in a breezy 

 place. Wind will dry clothes or a field, and 

 so it will evaporate the water oozing through 

 an olla, or barrel, or, I suppose, the painted 

 grain-bag. The evaporation is what does the 

 cooling, according to a well-known principle 

 of physics. Henry J. Philpott. 



Pasadena, Cal., January 13, 1890. 



THE LTJCAYAN INDIANS. 

 Editor Popular Science Monthly : 



Sir: With reference to Prof. Brooks's 

 paper, " The Lucayan Indians," in the No- 

 vember number of the " Monthly," I have ex- 

 amined one or two caves during the past 

 summer, and have been intending to make a 

 more thorough search during the winter ; so, 

 if any of your readers should feel inclined to 

 adopt the professor's suggestion, I shall be 

 glad to co-operate. 



Although no doubt the aborigines of the 

 Bahamas had intercourse with Hayti and 



Cuba, the possession by them of stone imple- 

 ments does not, as Prof. Brooks supposes, 

 prove it ; for, although the islands consist 

 solely of coral rock, yet stone, identical in 

 appearance with that of which the stone im- 

 plements are usually made, is constantly be- 

 ing washed up on the northern shore of New 

 Providence, and probably elsewhere ; so that 

 the Lucayan implement-makers would have 

 had plenty of material in the archipelago. 



Also, it must not be too hastily con- 

 cluded that all remains found in caves in the 

 Bahamas are Lucayan. Negro skulls have 

 been found more than once, and in one cave 

 I found, consolidated into breccia, a number 

 of bones which a local anatomist pro- 

 nounced to be those of " some large verte- 

 brate animal." They presented an appear- 

 ance of great antiquity, and, had we not 

 known that there were no large animals in 

 these islands at the time of their discovery, 

 they would certainly have been referred to 

 pre-European days ; whereas, they were 

 probably the remains of an ox which had 

 been killed and eaten by runaway slaves, for 

 the surface of the rock showed traces of 

 fire. Yours faithfully, 



A. B. Ellis. 



Nassau, N. P., November 28, 1889. 



EDITOR'S TABLE. 



HOW TO MAKE KNOWLEDGE REAL. 



THERE was an interesting discussion 

 a month or two ago at a meeting 

 of the Chicago Institute of Education. 

 A paper had been read by one of the 

 members of the Institute, Mr. Fernando 

 Sanford, on "The Disciplinary Value 

 of Scientific Study," which is stated to 

 have been a strong and well-constructed 

 plea for the study of science by original 

 observation rather than by the ordinary 

 text-book methods. Many of our read- 

 ers would expect that unqualified as- 

 sent would have been given to the ar- 

 gument of the paper ; but it happened 

 that an eminent educationist was pres- 

 ent in the person of Superintendent 

 Howland, of the Chicago public schools, 

 who dissented entirely from Mr. San- 

 ford's thesis. He thought all this talk 

 about observation of facts and handling 

 of objects was great nonsense ; why not 

 let children learn out of books that 

 things were so and so, and commit the 



facts to memory ? What was the use of 

 all the accumulated knowledge and in- 

 telligence of the ages, if children were 

 to begin at the beginning and make over 

 again for themselves discoveries that 

 were made centuries ago ? Life was 

 too short, he held, for this kind of thing. 

 Let the pupil start with the knowledge 

 of his own day as gathered and gar- 

 nered in books, and not bother to find 

 out things for himself. Moreover, man 

 and his institutions are more worth 

 studying than all the world besides. It 

 would be a misfortune, he thought, if 

 the advice given in the paper were fol- 

 lowed in the schools. 



We take the report of this speech 

 as we find it in the columns of our 

 contemporary " Intelligence " of Chi- 

 cago, and we judge by the remarks that 

 followed that the meaning we attach to 

 it is precisely that which it conveyed to 

 those who were present. These views, 

 expressed by a man holding a most im- 



