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Metals and Minerals. 



The metals may be made the subjects of a large number of 

 lessons. The lessons may be upon the properties and the uses of the 

 metals, such as are found in the house, in the car, in the shop, and 

 wherever the pupil may discover them. Following these, there 

 may be in some of the grades a limited number of lessons on 

 the ores of some of the metals, the location of mines, methods of 

 mining and extracting the metals. 



Provide for work with the metals: a file, a hammer, a thick 

 piece of iron to use as a small anvil (a flat iron, sometimes with 

 the smooth side up and sometimes with the pointed side up, will 

 serve well), a knife with a strong blade, a large iron spoon, and a 

 large alcohol lamp, or other method of getting a strong heat. 



Begin the lessons with lead, copper, zinc and iron in the 

 form of strips, or of thick wire. These may be examined care- 

 fully in respect to the appearance of each, then each tested with 

 the above instruments by the pupils; their properties, the relative 

 hardness, flexibility, action under hammer, file, and knife, and 

 ease of melting. Very small wires of each would allow the com- 

 parison of strength of each, If rods of equal sizes are equally 

 heated at one end, the pupils may easily detect, by holding the 

 other ends of the rods, the relative quickness with which they arp 

 heated. Allow them to find, also, which tarnishes or rusts most 

 readily. When the properties of each are well seen, have the pupils 

 peek in the next few days' experience the places where these 

 metals are used, and why they are so used in the positions in 

 which they are found. 



Of course in some cases properties which the pupil has not 

 discovered, such as its relation to electricity, or such considera- 

 tions as economy, may have led to the use of the metal in some 

 particular position. 



