MANUAL OR INDUSTRIAL TRAINING. 397 



dispensable grammar of its kind, found easier, more attractive, and 

 especially more practical, than the beautiful series of definitions 

 in honored Brown's or other memories. 



4. In handling objective grades in elementary lessons on Na- 

 ture, the teacher can with the same facility and with probably 

 more profit select his illustrations in plants, stones, metals, from 

 popular and locally well-known kinds than by rambling over 

 the tropics, etc., for the ideal botanical or other type. 



He thus introduces the essential materials of construction, and 

 early establishes in the mind of his pupil standards of compari- 

 son, so much the more important as, taking the ease of their mi- 

 nute study into consideration, they can really be well and correctly 

 understood. In physics or elementary mechanics an actual simple 

 screw, a wheel, an axle, a real wedge, balance, etc., may be em- 

 ployed at that age with more benefit than the expensive microme- 

 ter apparatus. In this way a public-school pupil would finally be 

 found in possession of considerable practical information and 

 available knowledge. He would recognize the trees in the forest, 

 the stones in the fields, and feel an interest in our every-day 

 appliances, that would otherwise leave him entirely unaffected. 

 In this way also, and connected with his arithmetic, elementary 

 mechanics under their popular names may be successfully in- 

 troduced, the pupil as well as the teacher being able to use im- 

 mediately a stick for a lever, any plank for an inclined plane, any 

 rubber or leaden pipe for a siphon, instead, as used to be the 

 common practice in our various seats of learning, public and 

 other, starting with the definitions of the undefinable force and 

 matter, puzzling over Newton's laws, and finally trying, generally 

 in vain^ to remember the formulas of the p, the lo, the /, etc., gen- 

 erally not mentally present, on account of the slight acquaintance 

 with them. Add to this the letters, syllables, words, and sentences 

 of our cosmopolitan short-hand, drawing, taught simultaneously 

 with the correctly spelled vernacular, and we are ready for the ex- 

 ercises with tools, as every one of them is but an illustration of the 

 principles of the now known lever, inclined plane, wedge, etc. The 

 seven types then can be appreciated ; they cease to represent sim- 

 ply pieces of steel. The pupil recognizes in them the material for 

 many interesting problems requiring solution. He alternatively 

 combines them or tries their identification in their various com- 

 binations, as presented to him by manifold machinery. He re- 

 peats the previously mentioned automatic movements ; it is true, 

 he passes through the graded series of exercises we have enu- 

 merated, but with what a difference in spirit and results ! His 

 mind, inert previously, is now full of activity, and the new kind of 

 inertia, to which it is subject, that of motion, carries him steadily 

 onward to future improvements and discoveries. 



