478 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The study of the one dissecting map was pursued uninterruptedly 

 for six months. In a few weeks the child had learned to identify and 

 name each piece, either on her model or on other maps, and could put 

 each in its place. Before she left the map she was able to bound any 

 State with the models, or verbally ; also to make strips of successive 

 States, beginning at any point and running in any direction. With 

 the entrance upon her second year, at the age of five and a half, the 

 child began the study of maps from " Cornell's Geography." But in 

 a very little while these were exchanged for a large relief - globe. 

 From the time the child began the study of this globe it became dif- 

 ficult for me to understand how any other method could ever be em- 

 ployed. The picturesque effect of the distinctly outlined continents, 

 visible at a considerable distance, separated by vast tracts of desolate 

 ocean, in which, as the child remarked, " one could easily drown," the 

 mutual relations of parts whose perception need never be disturbed, 

 as is incessantly done when the pupil passes from map to map all 

 these effects and impressions can be obtained from nothing else but 

 from a globe of adequate size and in relief. The child, when just six, 

 began to draw maps from this globe. On a single very large piece of 

 paper would be represented whatever outlines were discoverable at 

 the maximum distance and at a certain aspect of the globe. The lat- 

 ter was then revolved somewhat, the child remaining at the same dis- 

 tance, and a new map outlined as before, and so on until the entire 

 globe had been, in the major outlines, copied by the child. It was re- 

 served for months of future study to fill in the details in proportion 

 to their successive natural, not political, importance. 



Four different spheres of thought were prepared for by this study. 

 First, and most obviously, the foundations were laid for all knowledge 

 of physical geography. This foundation was laid in vivid sense im- 

 pressions, and unalloyed with the singular mess of political, historical, 

 and commercial details, with which even the best geographical text- 

 books for children are filled, and which are quite irrelevant to the 

 main issue. When the child could with her finger trace the water- 

 courses all around the world, she received a large fundamental impres- 

 sion not easily forgotten. Incidentally in this tracing she learned the 

 value of canals at the Isthmuses of Suez and Panama. Secondly, a solid 

 foundation was laid for history. The first map drawn was of Africa, 

 on account of its simplicity of outline ; but this involved the basin of 

 the Mediterranean. The second map, passing eastward, took in the 

 strongly accentuated outlines surrounding the Indian Ocean, and indi- 

 cated the Himalaya and the high table-lands of Northern India. In 

 the future it was intended, with these same outlines under the eye, and 

 the picture of them deeply graven on the brain, to indicate the descent 

 of Aryan ancestors from these table-lands toward the Mediterranean 

 basin the germinal spot of our historical world ; thence the further 

 spread westward to the new hemisphere. The conception of an histori- 



