SCHOOL EXCURSIONS. 43 



take the place of the mosses, and a little farther down, 

 even on the abrupt precipice, are bushes and small, strug- 

 gling trees, with roots forced into the crevices of the rock. 



Thus, little by little, as the years and the centuries go 

 by, vegetation is slowly reaching upward and clothing the 

 rugged, naked rock, whose steep side is being slowly 

 rounded off by the irresistible forces of nature. 



Not all ledges are so conspicuous and striking as this 

 Rock Rimmon, near the city of Manchester, in New Hamp- 

 shire ; but wherever there is a naked ledge on a hillside, 

 some, if not all, of these processes are going on, and it will 

 be time well spent to take the children where they may 

 learn to spell out the story there of world making and fin- 

 ishing and the rounding of the hills. 



School Excursions. 



BY WILLIAM H. HUSK. 



There are many excursions that can be profitably taken 

 by geography classes that can hardly be called nature 

 study, but that is perhaps no valid reason why they may 

 not be mentioned in this journal. There has been in the 

 past too much dependence upon books, as if there was 

 nothing else from which knowledge could be gained. The 

 information we get from books is always and necessarily 

 second hand. Much of it cannot be obtained in any other 

 way, but this is no reason why much which can be ob- 

 tained at first hand should not come in that way. There 

 is another evil of exclusive book knowledge besides its 

 second-hand nature. It is the tendency on the part of so 

 many — too many — of the graduates of our schools to look 

 with favor only upon the so-called genteel occupations and 

 professions and with contempt upon manual labor. 



It is this dependence upon books that has made teach- 

 ers in a manufacturing cit5% for example, send their grad- 



