IV 



Supplement to "Nature" February 5, 190 j 



and ornithological rambles on the plains and mountains 

 of Spain or among Mediterranean islands, full as they 

 are of pleasant suggestions, and other matters of equal 

 interest — his views on protective legislation, among 

 othe rs — must be left unnoticed, if only to leave a corner 

 for the charming little word pictures painted for the 



guidance of Mr. Thorburn when drawing the pictures 

 for Lord Lilford's last beautiful work, " Coloured Figures 



of the British Birds." 



" Monumentum a_-re perennius." 



The following are specimens taken at random. All 

 are equally good. 



The first is for the picture of the storm petrel, the 

 second for the puffin. 



" It would perhaps be best lo make him skimming the 

 water with legs at their full length and toes extended ; 

 in fact, running on the water with wings extended. 

 What I want to try to get is the very striking effect of 

 these little black birds against a deep blue ocean sea 

 and foam." 



"A group in full summer dress on steep slope of short 

 turf over sea. Cliff honeycombed with burrows — rabbits, 

 sea pinks.'' 



The only objection to be taken to Mr. Trevor Battye's 

 work as editor of Lord Lilford's papers, which is 

 excellently done, is that his book is rather too patch- 

 worky to be read smoothly as a whole. The fault, if 

 fault it is, is, perhaps, in view of the nature of his 

 materials, one which could not have been altogether 

 avoided. 



A book of extracts, however carefully chosen, is like 

 the kinematograph. Unless very skilfully managed, 

 the effect is apt to be a little spoilt by jolts and jerks as 

 the moving pictures succeed one another. Mr. Trevor 

 Battye, some readers may think, has gone out of his way 

 to drop pebbles into the machinery by inserting, as 

 integral parts of the book, articles on hawking and on 

 otter hunting by other pens, between two sections of 

 Lord Lilford's own writings, to neither of which has 

 either article any special relation. 



That both papers are charming in themselves and well 

 worth reading does not necessarily imply that they are 

 good where they appear. Dirt, as someone once de- 

 fined it, is "good matter misplaced" ; but none the less 

 it is better away. 



Another small criticism, to satisfy Mr. Trevor Battye 

 that all he has written has been thought worth reading 

 carefully. On p. 144, he says Lord Lilford's preference 

 for wild pheasants was owing to "the instinctive and 

 unsportsmanlike shrinking from the idea of the non- 

 natural culture of the pheasant." Is not sportsmanlike 

 the word he had intended to write ? 



One good story, which, as Lord Lilford tells us, 

 "amused" him "vastly at the time," and this rambling 

 notice must end. A visitor to Lilford, who evidently 

 took a great interest in the birds, was just leaving when 

 he suddenly turned to his conductor and said, "By the 

 way, I saw in the paper some time ago that Lord Lilford 

 had given a very long price for an egg of the great auk. 

 I trust that he was successful in hatching it ?" 



Mr. Thorburn's pictures are, as usual, delightful. 



T. DlGBY PlGOTT. 

 NO. 1736. VOL. 67] 



THE PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING. 

 Principles of Class Teaching. By J. J. Findlay, M.A., 

 Head Master of the Cardiff Intermediate School for 

 Boys. Pp. xxxvi + 442. (London: Macmillan and 

 Co., Ltd., 1902.) Price 5*. 

 T T is a wholesome sign of our times that so many 

 *- attempts are being made by experts in education to 

 find a scientific basis for the procedure and organisation 

 of schools. Within the teacher's profession, and outside 

 of it, there is a growing conviction that education is a 

 science and not merely an art or even a fine art, but that 

 its practitioners are bound to investigate the rationale of 

 their methods, and the philosophy which underlies and 

 justifies all really effective rules of practice. Mr. 

 Findlay's book is an honest and successful effort in this 

 direction. He has somewhat needlessly, as we think, 

 restricted the aim and the possible usefulness of his 

 work by calling it the " Principles of Class Teaching," 

 Teaching in a class is, after all, teaching under one 

 particular set of conditions, whereas the principles of 

 teaching, the art of communicating, the relative values 

 of different kinds of knowledge, the fitness of certain 

 subjects for scholars at different stages of development, 

 and the influence of different studies and forms of intel- 

 lectual discipline on the formation of the tastes and the 

 moral character, are matters of large and universal 

 interest which deserve consideration in their relation to 

 teaching underall conceivableconditions, whether learners 

 are taught in a class or not. To do Mr. Findlay justice, 

 these are topics which he has not overlooked, but which 

 are handled incidentally and often with considerable 

 acumen and judgment in the course of his treatise. The 

 book is, in fact, what its title professes, and something 

 more. 



At the outset, the author discusses the constitution 01 

 a class and the number which should be found in it. He 

 says that 



"A teacher of experience will usually be willing to 

 handle a class of thirty pupils, if the thirty are fairly 

 equal in attainments ; he would be unwilling to go up to 

 forty or to fall below twenty." 



But, in fact, no such general rule as this is of much 

 practical value. The number of scholars in a class 

 should depend largely on the nature of the subject to be 

 taught. For a construing lesson, for one in which con- 

 stant appeal is needed to individual scholars and for 

 close intellectual intercourse between teacher and taught, 

 the number should be small ; while for certain forms of 

 collective teaching, for demonstrations, for music lessons, 

 for the use of pictorial or other illustrations, for telling a 

 story and for moral and hortative lessons, in which what 

 David Stow called the " sympathy of numbers" has to 

 be invoked, the numbers in a class might well be larger. 

 But, as Mr. Findlay justly says : — 



"The unit in education is not the school or the class, 

 but the single pupil. However fruitful it may be to 

 discuss the 'psychology of the crowd,' whether in school 

 or in the streets, the value of the study depends upon our 

 previous acquaintance with single individuals." 



The most serviceable and suggestive part of the book 

 is that which deals with the curriculum of instruction in 

 schools of different types, from the kindergarten to the 



