PBACTICAL EXERCISES IN GEOGRAPHY 63 



fested in many healthy ways. There is the frank recognition by the 

 teachers of deficiencies in their preparation ; there are strong efforts 

 to make up the deficiencies by outside study or by attending sum- 

 mer courses in which laboratory work and field excursions are in- 

 cluded, and I may say that no classes that I have ever had have 

 shown a better spirit than those composed chiefly of school teachers 

 in the summer vacations. Superintendents and principals manifest 

 the same interest in progress by devoting specially assigned space in 

 new school buildings to work of this kind, by making inquiry as to 

 the necessary outfit, and by planning schedules in which hours for 

 outdoor work have due consideration. Educational journals reflect 

 the general interest in the practical aspects of geography by publish- 

 ing a good number of articles that are devoted to this branch of the 

 subject ; the Journal of School Geography, for example, in the thirty 

 numbers issued for 1897, 1898, and 1899, contains many articles bear- 

 ing on field and laboratory methods, some of them being prepared 

 by the editors in direct response to questions from the subscribers. 



Relation of Practical Exercises to Text Book. — It is desirable that the 

 practical work of a course on physical geography in the high school 

 should be closely parallel with the book work, for the reason that the 

 main outline of the subject is best presented defi,nitely and specific- 

 ally in printed form ; but it must be recognized that many obstacles 

 stand in the way of the easy attainment of this ideal. In the first 

 place, exercises on certain subjects must be very deliberately carried 

 on, requiring even a whole school year for their proper inductive de- 

 velopment. These must either anticipate the high-school course or 

 they must advance independently of the text in which their equiva- 

 lent is stated in printed form. The study of the weather finds some 

 of its best applications in observation of storms and other special con- 

 ditions at the time of their occurrence. These must l)e taken up in 

 the order of their happening, and reference must then be made for- 

 ward or back to their systematic treatment. Our climate is such that 

 the open field season comes in the fixll and s})ring, while many topics 

 under the important heading of land forms will often l>e taught from 

 the book in the winter, when field work is difficult or impossible. 

 Indeed, even in fall and spring, an excursion, well ])lanned to illus- 

 trate the text in hand at the moment, may have to be postponed on 

 account of bad weather, thus disorganizing our best intentions. It 

 is true that lal)oratory work may often supplement or i'ei)lace field 

 work, but not sufficiently to smooth out all the difficulties noted 



