444 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
then, is in abandoning the primer and books for the first grades of the school 
room. Instead of these, use books printed on whole sheets of paper, in type as. 
large as those used for posters. These books could contain the alphabet and 
spelling lessons of two to four syllables, also the elementary lessons of arithmetic 
and geography, and should be hung up against the wall of the school room, and 
owned by the city and township organizations. ‘The letters would be so large 
that they could be seen at any distance within the school room, and would be 
considered at an infinite distance, so that the pencils of light from them would be 
practically parallel, and would require neither accommodation or convergence 
in order to bring them to a focus. 
Such an arrangement would enable the pupils to get their lessons and recite 
them without leaving their seats and without straining their eyes. The rule no 
convergence and no accommodation for the eye, for the first and second grades,. 
should be absolute. For the subsequent grades there should be a like improve- 
ment in the typography of the text books. 
The letters should be large so as to be brought easily to a focus and to make 
large images on the retina. The same object should be secured in the text books 
of the high school, and the largest text now used should take the place of notes 
and explanations, and correspondingly larger letters should be used for the gen- 
eral text. I am firmly convinced that these suggestions contain the corrective for 
the increasing deformity of near-sightedness. Every year brings a higher stand- 
ard of scholarship into our public schools, and demands increased application 
and time to text books, so that with the menace of impaired vision comes the re- 
sponsibility of so controlling the youthful studies, that with the patrimony of a 
well stored intellect, there shall not come a groping darkness as the penalty of 
nature’s violated law. 
SCAN Us WG MAS Cla EIA ING i 
RAMBLES OF A NATURALIST AROUND KANSAS CITY. 
t 
No. 2. 
BY WM. H. R. LYKINS. 
Out across the great bridge spanning the Missouri—out into the cool and 
quiet shadows resting on the clean yellow sands—is a pleasant change from the 
thronged and dusty streets of the busy city. The south wind murmurs pleasantly 
through the tall tree tops, and the air is fragrant with the perfume, not of flowers 
—but of a fungus. A small white mushroom, growing upon dead trees, evolves 
from the decaying timber a pleasant odor something like that of a ripe May ap- 
ple (podophyllum). Persons wandering through the woods often meet with the 
