200 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. I. No. 8. 



ions that could be unscrewed and removed 

 after they were no longer needed. It occu- 

 pied three men about one-half of a day to 

 put them up and take them down and store 

 them away from a lecture room accommo- 

 dating five hundred persons. The seats in 

 this room were the ordinary distance apart 

 and were not constructed especially for the 

 purpose of giving additional room for these 

 tables. Similar tables have also been built 

 and used successfully in several different lec- 

 ture rooms. 



The lecturer leads his hearers to observe 

 with the specimens in hand certain facts, 

 and he may if he chooses go far beyond 

 these simple observations in his remarks, and 

 he very often does this, but the specimens 

 are dead weights upon his flights into the 

 empyrean of fancy or theory. The objects 

 are there ; they demand constant atten- 

 tion, and the teacher cannot keep away 

 from their consideration, nor can his audi- 

 ence lose consciousness that they are the 

 subjects upon which the work is to be 

 done. 



The principal difficulty is to acquire the 

 habit of carrying on the thread of the dis- 

 course, directing it to some definite morpho- 

 logic point, or whatever the lecturer may 

 choose, weaving the facts shown by the 

 specimens into a demonstration of this point, 

 and at the same time keep, the pupils at 

 work upon the specimens to such an extent 

 that most of them actually see the needed 

 facts. 



The field capable of being illustrated and 

 taught in this way is necessarily limited, 

 and there are in each branch of science 

 certain series of facts requiring elaborate 

 apparatus or rare specimens that cannot be 

 used in sufficient numbers. ]S"evertheless, 

 the limits in each department are not so 

 narrow as one at first thinks, and the field 

 covered grows continually broader in pro- 

 portion to the ability and experience of the 

 instructor. 



The first expense is not large ; the cost 

 of the Geological and Mineralogical speci- 

 mens was about ten dollars for each lecture, 

 and for Botany about fifteen, and Zoology 

 twenty to twentj^-five for audiences of five 

 hundred. 



But before entering upon the second part 

 of mj' subject, the application of this method 

 to smaller classes, permit me to say that 

 diagrams were used in order to direct the 

 attention of the audience to the facts to be 

 observed, and thej^ were encouraged to make 

 notes and sketches and instructed in the 

 use of a cheap magnifier costing from sixty 

 to seventj^-five cents. The lectui-er was 

 allowed also to place objects simDar to 

 those in the hands of the audience upon his 

 table and platform and on the tables in the 

 body of the lecture room, and whenever 

 practicable these were liviag representatives 

 of the preparation. 



It is needless to say to this audience that 

 no claim is made here to the discovery of a 

 royal road to knowledge. The system itself 

 is an ancient one and was used before I was 

 born by many persons. The habit of ob- 

 serviQg accuratelj^ cannot be formed by an 

 hour or two of work on Saturday afternoon, 

 even with the use of specimens. The 

 method has, however, a valid claim to con- 

 sideration in so far as it possesses great 

 advantages over the subjective methods of 

 the ordinarj' lecture, when illustrated solely 

 bj' diagrams or stereopticon pictures, and 

 its results are far more satisfactory. 



All lessons or lectures away from the act- 

 ual presence of the objects described or dis- 

 cussed throw the individual back upon his 

 own mental processes, unless he already 

 has experience and knowledge of the facts 

 treated. Illustrations in the shape of dia- 

 grams or stereopticon pictures are substi- 

 tutes of one dimension ; they have the su- 

 perficial attributes of length and breadth, 

 but their apparent thickness and solidity 

 are artistic shams. People who are taught 



