144 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



graphical location, etc., came in. But now astronomical 

 research is motivated by as pure and scientific a passion for 

 knowledge for its own sake as can be found ; for a great 

 astronomer has well said, in substance, that not one of the 

 marvellous discoveries in the new astronomy of the present 

 century has had the slightest practical value, according to 

 any of the current utilitarian uses of that word. We, how- 

 ever, now allow all the earliest fresh interest of childhood in 

 the physical heavens to go to waste. Astronomy is rarely 

 taught in grammar grades, high schools, or even colleges. 

 Even the latter formerly made the observatory of the early 

 part of this century, in the days of Albert Hopkins, Mitchell 

 and Burret, simply a means of uplifting of the soul. Now 

 the great observatories often do no teaching even to a few 

 experts ; and the high schools that introduce this topic begin 

 it by accurate determinations of noon marks, or superfine 

 measurements of positions and time determinations, of tides 

 and eclipses, bringing the mathematical side, which came so 

 late in race development, to the front, and entirely ignoring 

 the fascinating historical development of the subject from 

 Hesiod down, — and that despite all the popular text-books 

 which are at hand, — Ball, Peck, Langley, Serviss, Young, 

 Proctor, and perhaps we might even add Verne. 



Again, meteorolgy begins in cloud fancies. Children, like 

 savages, see in cloud forms and colors everything with which 

 they are familiar enlarged and glorified in the sky. God, 

 Jack Frost, Santa Claus, all kinds of judgment day scenes, 

 regal robes, festoons of ribbons, flags, battles, the forms of 

 heroes and demigods, the faces of just dead friends, fairies, 

 maps, etc., are seen and watched with breathless eagerness 

 and interest by children in this great school, which has had 

 more than any other to do in creating the imagination of the 

 human race, as well as its mythology, and given us gods of 

 thunder and lightning, built rainbow bridges to heaven, and 

 generated a whole body of weather lore and metaphors 

 which still dominates human moods, so that the weather 

 curve affects even crime and school discipline. The poetry, 

 and, indeed, even the crystalography of snow-flakes; the 

 music of the winds and all the phenomena of dawn and 

 evening, — all these find little place in school text-books in 



