2S4 



NA TURE 



[January 6, 1910 



beauty or their intcre'-rt ; secondly, to impress that 

 principle in their childhood's education on the risings 

 generation of the white race ; and, thirdly, to spend 

 time and money to impart this doctrine to the natives 

 of Africa, making it well worth their while to 

 cooperate with us. 



Of course the Northern Game Reserve is far too 

 large. Colonel Patterson alludes to its history. It 

 was jointly instituted by two commissioners of East 

 .\frica and Uganda — Sir .Arthur Hardinge and the 

 writer of this review — as a temporary means of arrest- 

 ing the devastations of Europeans, Somalis, Goanese, 

 iSrc, until the question of game preservation could 

 be more deliberately dealt with in legislation. The 

 time has now come (since the entire reserve of 38,000 

 miles lies within the limits of the East Africa Pro- 

 tectorate) to cut up this area into (say) three 

 "national parks" of, perhaps, five thousand square 

 miles each, and provide each park with a sufficient 

 staff of eame wardens. The remainder of the 



Colonel Patterson's book reveals the existence of 

 very fine specimens of eland in British East .Africa, on 

 which the Government of that Protectorate should 

 keep an eye. It gives new information about th" 

 course of the still mysterious Guaso Nyiro river, and 

 contains interesting particulars concerning the Sam- 

 buru negroids in the northern part of British East 

 Africa. It suggests, indirectly, how much of interest 

 to the student of Africa awaits discovery and ex- 

 planation in the semi-desert regions that stretch be- 

 tween the Guaso Nyiro and the middle Juba. 



H. H. Johnston. 



PROBLEMS OF SCIENCE TEACHING IN 

 SCHOOLS.' 

 A DEFECT of intellectual character, national in its 

 •'»■ incidence, is revealed at conferences of teachers 

 and in the reports issued by associations of school- 

 masters and others concerned in educating English 



country would then be allotted to the expansion of 

 native tribes, or be prudently held in reserve for future 

 foreign settlement, if at present without human in- 

 habitants. Disappointing as this reduction might 

 seem, it would be better for the preservation of rare 

 animals to set aside three or four areas each about 

 the size of Yorkshire, in which no one, millionaire or 

 prince, soldier or civilian, was to be allowed to shoot, 

 than to mark on the map a reserve as large as Scot- 

 land, Wales, and the Isle of Man nut together, and 

 to be quite unable to control within its limits either 

 natives or Europeans. 



These reserves might be specially selected for the 

 preservation of the more important beasts ; thus one 

 could be marked out where rhinoceroses were most 

 abundant ; another to save and multiply the handsome 

 Beisa oryx ; a third for elephants, and a fourth for the 

 giraffe ; and the game wardens must be civilians 

 and biologists, men of the stamp of the Indian 

 forestry olTicers. 



NO. 2097, ■^'OL. 82I 



I , i;i ' :., ■ ■lie Nyika." 



boys and girls. In this country the teacher, like the 

 man in the street, is too narrowly "practical"; he 

 regards the discussion of fundamental principles as 

 unprofitable. Thus it is that we find details concern- 

 ing exposition {e.g. of calorimetry) receiving the care- 

 ful attention of the physics teachers of our leading 

 schools before anyone has sought to answer the ques- 

 tion, "Why teach physics?" 



We admit that there is some virtue in the insularity 

 of mind which produces this illogical treatment of 

 class-room problems. The schoolmaster savs that the 

 aim of teaching chemistrv is to teach chcniistrv, and 

 concentrates his attention upon making each lesson 

 effective, with the result that bovs are made to do some 

 definite work. Yet it can hardly be denied that 

 neglect of the wider questions infallibly narrows the 

 teacher's outlook, and that this narrowing sooner or 



1 The .American Federation of Teachers of the Mathematical and the 

 Natural Sciences. Bulletin No. 2, November, 1909. (Secretary, C. K. 

 Mann, University of Chicago.) 



