662 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



however, probably were in part of a like origin ; and should at 

 last reach coarsely crystalline rocks, in which, while occasional 

 sediments would be possible, the majority were originally igneous, 

 though modified at a very early period of their history. This 

 corresponds with what we find in nature, when we apply, cau- 

 tiously and tentatively, the principles of interpretation which 

 guide us in stratigraphical geology. I have stated as briefly as 

 possible what I believe to be facts. I have endeavored to treat 

 these in accordance with the principles of inductive reasoning. I 

 have deliberately abstained from invoking the aid of " deluges of 

 water, floods of fire, boiling oceans, caustic rains, or acid-laden 

 atmospheres," not because I hold it impossible that these can have 

 occurred, but because I think this epoch in the earth's history so 

 remote and so unlike those which followed that it is wiser to pass 

 it by for the present. But, unless we deny that any rocks formed 

 anterior to or coeval with the first beginning of life on the globe 

 can be preserved to the present time, or, at least, be capable of 

 identification — an assumption which seems to me gratuitous and 

 unphilosophical — then I do not see how we can avoid the conclu- 

 sion to which we are led by a study of the foundation-stones of 

 the earth's crust — namely, that these were formed under con- 

 ditions and modified by environments which, during later geologi- 

 cal epochs, must have been of very exceptional occurrence. If, 

 then, this conclusion accords with the results at which students 

 of chemistry and students of physics have independently arrived, 

 I do not think that we are justified in refusing to accept them 

 because they lack the attractive brilliancy of this or that hypothe- 

 sis, or do not accord with the words in which a principle, sound in 

 its essence, has been formulated. It is true in science, as in a yet 

 more sacred thing, that " the letter killeth, the spirit giveth life." 



NATURAL SCIENCE IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS.* 



By J. M. AEMS. 



THE question before the educators of our country is a practical 

 one, involving important and far-reaching results. Shall 

 science lessons be given in elementary schools ? It is a question 

 which can be answered affirmatively or negatively only by con- 

 sidering wliy and hoiv such lessons shall be given. What I have 

 to say on the subject will be more practical than theoretical, as 

 whatever views I hold are based wholly upon ten years' experience 

 in teaching natural science to young people from five to twenty 

 years of age. This being the case, my remarks must be neces- 

 sarily more personal than I would wish. 



* Read at the "National School of Methods," Saratoga, August, 1888. 



