158 Second Conference 



original properties of coal, are illustrated by actual 

 museum specimens, mostly of the children's own 

 collection. 



The methods by which these nature lessons are 

 dealt with are elaborated in Newtnann's Object Lessons 

 in Nature-Study, in which the admirable treatment 

 given in the Teachers' Leaflets issued from the Cornell 

 University in the U, S. A. is introduced into English 

 schools. Here, as the audience knows, pedagogy is 

 brought to a very high state of proficiency: we may 

 be content in England to learn something (and it can 

 easily be made a great deal) from our transatlantic 

 confreres on this subject. 



There is another department of nature-knowledge 

 which in Urban schools can be greatly improved by 

 English teachers. I am deeply convinced that the 

 subject of geography should be based on physiography 

 and elementary geology, and that the principles of 

 the latter are capable of being illustrated to classes 

 of even very young children. Natural phenomena of 

 rain, brooks, rivers, ponds, pools, and lakes and hills lie 

 ready to the teacher's hands, and are of great interest 

 and educative value to the child. A delta formation 

 can be amply explained and illustrated in the open 

 air by appeal to the track left on a slope by a rain- 

 stream, with the detritus deposited on a roadside 

 traversed in its course; or by the similar deposit on 

 the edge of a pool subsequently dried up. 



With regard to this mode of illustration, I would 

 strongly insist that children, in their own sand-trays 

 and with their own hands, should turn plains into 

 hills, mainland into islands, peninsulas into islands, 

 gulfs into bays, and conversely. It is only in this 



