No. 4.] LOVE AND STUDY OF NATURE. 145 



meteorology, but instead the juvenile mind is introduced to 

 this subject by the Latin names of clouds, the dynamics of 

 the air, the laws of trade winds, the chemieo-physics of pre- 

 cipitation and tedious measurements of rainfall, the compo- 

 sition and pressure of the air, measuring refraction, the 

 physics of cyclones, the equations of pressure, laws of the 

 transmission and absorption of heat, the geological origin 

 of atmosphere, with perhaps practical rules for ventilation. 

 These matters are of course of the greatest scientific impor- 

 tance, and have their place; but my contention is that they 

 should come late, and not first, in this field of education. 

 Here, as everywhere, the technical should be preceded and 

 long preceded by the human interest-generating studies out 

 of which these grew, and without this propaedeutic they have 

 no depth of soil in \v T hich to strike their roots. 



Again, in physics, which we have now forced into unnat- 

 ural precedence over subjects that deal with life, especially 

 in high school and college preparation, the natural interest 

 in steam engines, batteries, color tops and the countless 

 mechanical toys which illustrate nearly every great principle 

 and awaken a deep and spontaneous interest in the boy mind, 

 have been forced into the background by precocious insistence 

 upon the exact, if not even the mathematical, elements at the 

 very < mtset. Even the general conceptions of vortexes, ether, 

 vibrations and force in general, and speculations on ether 

 and perpetual motion, and other highly theoretic problems, 

 have more interest in them and appeal to the scientific imagi- 

 nation far more strongly than the accurate studies of the 

 pendulum, lever, the determinations of specific heat, meas- 

 urements of light intensity, the mathematics of reflection 

 and refraction, etc., which constitute the material of most of 

 our elementary text-books in physics, — although it must be 

 admitted that in this science the evil is not so bad, and there 

 seems to be slow but sure progress in the right direction. 



Almost the same may be said of chemistry. There is a 

 wealth of historical matter in this science, beginning with 

 alchemy, which is calculated to develop interest, but which 

 is too often neglected even in colleges. Boys are interested 

 in atoms and molecules, and can follow the teacher to the 

 very frontier of speculative knowledge, where the adult 



