GRAINS AND STARCHY TUBERS. 251 



the observing and reflecting faculties of children. While I have 

 seen the time v^hen it might have been considered an unwarrant- 

 able innovation and encroachment upon the exclusive domain of 

 " the three R's " for a teacher, in one of the New York public 

 schools, to bring a microscope into the class-room ; yet, under the 

 more intelligent administration of our present School Board, such 

 a step may now not only be taken with impunity, but possibly be 

 even regarded with favour. 



In some of the schools in this city there has been established 

 within the last few years a course of instruction in manual train- 

 ing, in which the boys, under teachers especially qualified, are 

 instructed in designing and working various simple devices in wood, 

 and the girls are taught sewing and cooking. In the last art it is 

 wisely provided that the teacher shall not simply be a cook, but a 

 person thoroughly skilled in such scientific and technical know- 

 ledge as may enable her to give intelligent instruction regarding 

 the nature and nutritive value of the various articles used for food. 

 She is also required, in the language of the school manual, to 

 explain and make clear to the minds of her young students in 

 cookery such (to them) abstruse subjects as the "Germ Theory, 

 and the Causes of Decay and Decomposition in Organic Bodies." 



By what process of instruction the teachers were expected to 

 develop in the minds of pupils, from twelve to fourteen years of 

 age, clear ideas of these subjects without the use of the micro- 

 scope is quite incomprehensible. Such an instrument as the 

 microscope has never been on the list of school supplies. Possibly 

 it was supposed that these very young people could attain this 

 scientific knowledge by the same process of intellectual develop- 

 ment that has, in times gone by, been pursued in regard to all 

 other subjects taught, and that is, by committing to memory the 

 explanations to be found in properly prepared text-books. 



An additional motive for presenting this subject is an occur- 

 rence in my own late experience. Happening to visit the cooking 

 teacher's class in my school one day, I found her engaged in 

 explaining to the pupils the relative nutritive value of the various 

 kinds of flour, dependent upon different processes in milling the 

 wheat. While the teacher's explanation was sufficiently lucid, the 

 difficulty of fully conveying her meaning to the minds of these 



