268 Fifth Conference 



dren should receive lessons upon these instruments, 

 should learn how to consult them, and be encouraged 

 to keep a record of the changes from day to day. I 

 have seen few pleasanter sights in Geneva or in Zurich 

 than that of groups of school-boys clustered round the 

 pillar provided by the municipality and set up in a 

 conspicuous place, on which the barometric and ther- 

 mometric reading, the anemometer, and the rain-gauge 

 are displayed, with diagrams showing the daily fluctua- 

 tions and the latest meteorological forecasts, besides a 

 statement of the latitude and longitude of the town, 

 its distance from other important cities, and an out- 

 line map showing the position and the names of the 

 surrounding mountains. Boys and girls come with 

 their note-books to put down the data thus furnished, 

 and they have evidently been taught at school to make 

 an intelligent use of the information which has been 

 placed by the authorities at the public disposal. We 

 might well follow in London the precedent thus set. 

 If the County Council would erect in a conspicuous 

 place in each of our parks a similar edifice, they might 

 furnish at a small cost a valuable object-lesson, and 

 thus co-operate with our best schools in encouraging 

 the faculty and the habit of observation, and in giving 

 to the whole public a new motive for the study of 

 natural phenomena. 



But though regular instruction might well be in- 

 cluded in the school course, we must remember that 

 all the best lessons of our life do not come to us in 

 the shape of lessons. Teachers have, no doubt, some 

 reasons to object to the importunate demands which 

 are often made upon them to add a new subject to 

 their overcrowded time-table. But they may well be 



