454 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



conducted by Mr. Burbank, who had in his class this year seventy- 

 five per cent of the members of the class in mineralogy of the pre- 

 vious year. This class included a large number of the busiest teach- 

 ers of Boston and vicinity, and each member of the class was pro- 

 vided with tools, consisting of a small hammer, magnet, file, streak 

 stone of Arkansas quartzite, a bottle of dilute acid, a glass rod, and 

 the scale of hardness previously used in the mineralogical course." 



In 1876 women were admitted to the Society of Natural His- 

 tory, and in that way further privileges were granted to teachers. 

 As in previous years, through the liberality of Mr. Cummings, the 

 lessons were continued, and a course of twenty-one lessons in mor- 

 phological, physiological, and systematic botany was given by Prof. 

 George L. Goodale, of Harvard University. Each lesson was illus- 

 trated by specimens which were distributed to the students. The 

 analysis of the flowers and the determination of the peculiarities 

 of floral structure were considered by Professor Goodale an impor- 

 tant part of the course. For this purpose blank forms were dis- 

 tributed to the teachers, which enabled each one to pursue his ex- 

 amination of the flow^er in hand independently, and made it pos- 

 sible for the instructor to cover more ground than would have been 

 practical by any other method. There was an unusually large 

 attendance at these lessons, averaging one hundred. The follow- 

 ing year Professor Goodale continued to teach in the school, giving 

 twenty lectures on the principles of systematic botany. Printed 

 synopses of the lectures were placed in the hands of the teachers, 

 and nearly all the large orders of plants were illustrated by speci- 

 mens or diagrams. The teachers were also provided with dried 

 and named specimens of native plants suitable for private herbaria. 

 About one hundred and fifty sets of these plants were distributed 

 during the course, at which the attendance was even greater than 

 that of the previous year. 



It was at this time that, through the efforts of Miss Lucretia 

 Crocker, the study of zoology was introduced into the high schools 

 of Boston, and the study of Nature in the public schools took a defi- 

 nite form. At this time The Teachers' School of Science attained 

 an extraordinary size and importance, a development which was 

 sudden and unexpected. The supervisor of Nature study, Miss 

 Crocker, assured the directors of the school that their assistance 

 would be of great benefit, and in fact essential, to the success of the 

 introduction of this subject into the schools. It was therefore de- 

 termined to institute appropriate courses upon elementary botany, 

 zoology, and mineralogy, if the means of paying the expenses could 

 be raised. Mrs. S. T. Hooper and Miss Crocker undertook a con- 

 siderable amount of the necessary -work, and fortunately their 



