ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN. 



373 



MORRIS HIGH SCHOOL. 

 A typical New York High School under the Board of Education. 



Attendance. Nearly 2,400 boys and girls, 

 in age from thirteen to nineteen years, attend 

 the school. Many of them take courses that 

 fit them to enter Columbia or other leading 

 universities and the free colleges and the 

 teachers' training schools of the City. 



Faculty of the School. The faculty of 

 ninety teachers is organized into departments, 

 each with a head to supervise departmental 

 work. The heads of department constitute 

 a cabinet which the principal of the school 

 frequently calls together for consultation. In 

 the department of biology there are nine 

 teachers. 



Courses in Biology. Throughout the City 

 a course in biology is required of every first 

 year student in the high school. The subject 

 is presented with three points of view, namely, 

 those of plant biology, animal biology and 

 human biology. It is manifestly impossible in 

 the 200 lessons (forty-five minutes each) to 

 study a large number of plants and animals, 

 so a dozen or more common forms are selected 

 to illustrate the fundamental physiological 



processes, and emphasis is constantly laid on 

 function rather than on details of structure. 



In the fourth year of the curriculum an 

 elective course (four periods a week) is of- 

 fered. Those who begin the work in Sep- 

 tember take a year's work in zoology, while 

 those who begin in February take botany. 

 From forty to fifty students elect this work 

 each year. 



Biological Laboratories and their Equip- 

 ment. The biological department occupies, on 

 the third and fourth floors, six laboratories, a 

 lecture room, a vivarium, a preparation room, 

 an office and four supply rooms. The equip- 

 ment includes ninety compound miscroscopes, 

 Leuckart charts, Jund botanical charts, photo- 

 micrographs, a stereopticon for opaque pro- 

 jection for slides and for microscopical ob- 

 jects, a hive of bees, and good collections of 

 museum preparations. 



The head of the Department of Biology is 

 James E. Peabody, A.M., and there are eight 

 biologv teachers. 



