more valuable and practical than much now given. Third, it answers 

 the purpose of a right training of faculties, according to natural and 

 acknowledged laws. This answers a second aim of education ; it 

 answers the demand for a method which shall be in accordance with 

 the natural development of the mind. Attention, observation, per- 

 ception, discrimination, comparison, deduction, induction. Attention 

 is first culled to sensible objects. To train the senses then is impor- 

 tant. What studies do it? Do we not need keen senses? Prof. 

 Chadbourne says, "the material world is the means which God has 

 appointed first to arouse the mind of man to action, and the only 

 foundation for the highest processes of thought in the boundless field 

 of mental speculation. It is only through the senses that this out- 

 ward world can reach the mind, to excite its action or furnish it with 

 materials." Here, then, is the first work of natural history in educa- 

 tion, to educate the senses. Is not the introduction of drawing into 

 our schools a testimony to the demand for educated senses as well as 

 educated tastes ? 



Not only do natural history studies educate the senses to observe, 

 but to compare and lead the mind to judge, and in other ways train 

 the highest mental powers. As the matter now stands much of our 

 work is a pyramid set upon its apex; we deal with babes in intellect 

 as with grown men and women. To ring the changes upon percep- 

 tion and observation and then assign abstruse problems in induction 

 is too common. To sharpen razors on a grindstone and wonder they 

 will not shave is no worse. Nature kicks at it, scholars don't like it 

 and rebel, mothers and fathers wonder what's the matter and worry 

 because children are oi-owded so. 



A part of the trouble is due as much to bad methods in arithmetic, 

 grammar and geography as to the wrong position of those studies, 

 or the expectation that they will do the work for the young mind that 

 is not suited to them and is suited to natural history. 



The speaker disavowed any claim for natural history as a panacea 

 for all the ills the educational flesh is heir to, but thought that fresh 

 air from the natural world was a necessity for healthful lungs and 

 minds, and that this subject put naturally into the primary schools 

 would remedy much of the difficulty in our foundation work. 



The movement of education is evidently in the direction more 

 favorable to natural history. Sup't Harris' masterly scheme of study 

 in this department for the St. Louis schools, from lowest to highest, 

 was an early wave, and the recent introduction of books on nature 

 into the Boston schools and into those of other progressive cities 

 and towns is significant. 



It will soon be quite the fashion to study natural history. Salem 

 will come to it, and Peabody and Beverly and Wenham and Essex 



