Febeuaky 7, 1902.] 



SCIENCE. 



239 



that through the generosity of a friend of the 

 Museum, who desires to have his name with- 

 held from the public, six groups have recently 

 been added to the very attractive and instruct- 

 ive series representing birds amid their nat- 

 ural surroundings which are to be seen in the 

 halls of the Ornithological Department. The 

 new gToups represent the American dipper, or 

 water-ousel, the osprey, the yellow-headed 

 blackbird, the coot, Wilson's phalarope and 

 the wild pigeon. The material for the first- 

 named was gathered by Mr. Frank M. Chap- 

 man last summer on the banks of a rushing 

 icy stream issuing from a glacier in the Sel- 

 kirk mountains of British Columbia. The 

 rocky bank of the stream, the nest in the cleft 

 of the rock and the birds in and about the nest 

 have been reproduced with lifelike fidelity in 

 the Museum exhibition case. Mr. Chapman 

 collected the specimens and accessories for the 

 osprey group on Gardiner's Island, off the 

 eastern end of Long Island, and those for the 

 blackbird, coot and phalarope groups at Shoal 

 Lake, Manitoba. The twelve specimens in- 

 cluded in the wild-pigeon group were secured 

 with much difficulty from collectors and deal- 

 ers throughout the country, the surprising 

 fact being incidentally developed that a species 

 which, within the last fifty years, was one of 

 the most abundant native birds of this coun- 

 try, is now so rare, not only in nature, but also 

 in collections, that specimens of it are prac- 

 tically unobtainable. Each of these new 

 groups is designed to illustrate not only the 

 hatints and habits of a species of birds, but 

 also some fact of general biological interest. 

 This feature will be fully set forth in the la- 

 bels accompanying the cases. 



At the annual meeting of the Mathematical 

 Association, London, Professor A. Lodge read 

 a paper introducing for discussion the subject 

 of improvements in the teaching of elementary 

 mathematics. According to the report in the 

 London Times he explained that the special 

 object in bringing the whole question forward 

 now was to enable the Association to cooperate 

 with the British Association committee formed 

 for the purpose at the Glasgow meeting last 

 year. Many teachers had been for a long time 



aware that the teaching of geometry in this 

 country was suffering from its being based on 

 a fixed ancient model which, however excellent, 

 was not in many respects satisfactory as a 

 text-book for beginners. The efforts hitherto 

 made had been powerless to make any appreci- 

 able effect on the action of the great examin- 

 ing bodies in the country, and without their 

 cooperation much progress was not possible. 

 Now, however, with the powerful leverage of 

 the British Association to assist them, the As- 

 sociation might confidently look for real and 

 lasting progress. The best method of teach- 

 ing geometry would, no doubt, be the question 

 which would require most attention, as that 

 was a matter in which all, teachers and exam- 

 iners, must move together if at all. Men came 

 up to engineering colleges who were slow and 

 inaccurate in computation, who did not know 

 the contracted methods of multiplication and 

 division, who were as likely as not to put the 

 decimal point in the wrong place. They want- 

 ed boys taught to be ready and rapid com- 

 puters, to be able to make rough checks on 

 their own work so as to avoid gross errors, to 

 cultivate common sense in connection with 

 problems, and to be in the habit of verifying 

 answers. It had to be remembered that the 

 pupil's mental equipment was chiefly arith- 

 metic and algebra, and his geometry should be 

 built on these notions as much as possible, in- 

 stead of being carefully divorced from them, 

 as was done in so many text-books. It would 

 be advisable at the outset to adopt some French 

 text-book as our model. The Americans had 

 done so already, and the chief points in their 

 books were: (1) The more orderly arrange- 

 ment of propositions; (2) the entire separa- 

 tion of theorems from problems of construc- 

 tion, hypothetical constructions being used in 

 proving a theorem; (3) the closer asso- 

 ciation of a proposition and its converse when 

 both were true; (4) the adoption of arithmet- 

 ical notions and algebraic processes; (5) the 

 early introduction of simple loci; (6) insist- 

 ence on accurate figures drawn by accurate 

 and practical processes; (Y) practice in exer- 

 cises from the very beginning. It had been 

 suggested that he should add, 'Attention paid 

 to the various phases of a theorem as the figure 



