HOME-MADE APPARATUS. 519 



Euphrates, and the Orontes have completely depopulated many 

 districts exposed to the devastations of their yearly floods. 



In America the same cause has begun to produce the same 

 effect. Not in Mexico alone, but within the boundaries of our 

 own republic, the progress of reckless forest-destruction has made 

 inundations an annual calamity, and has so impoverished the soil 

 of the denuded area that extensive tracts in the terrace-lands of 

 the southern Alleghanies now resemble the despoblados of worn- 

 out Spain. The loss resulting from the consequences of that im- 

 providence far exceeds the benefit of labor-saving machinery — so 

 much so, indeed, that the waste of vegetable mold, in our Eastern 

 cotton States alone, more than outweighs the profit derived from 

 the improvement of all agricultural implements used on this con- 

 tinent. 



■♦■» 



HOME-MADE APPARATUS. 



Br JOHN F. WOOBHULL, 



PBOFESSOB OF NATDBAL SCIENCE IN THE COLLEGE FOB THE TBAINING OF TEACHERS, 



NEW YOBK CITY. 



IT is a duty every teacher owes to his pupils to explain to them, 

 or help them to find out for themselves, the causes of the 

 natural phenomena which occur daily before their eyes. Yet to 

 undertake to teach pupils about natural objects without allowing 

 them to see, handle, hear, taste, or smell them — i. e., to come in 

 contact with them by means of their senses — is like trying to 

 teach music to a man who was born deaf, or color to a man who 

 was born blind. Although it is pretty generally conceded that 

 the teaching of the physical sciences ought to be accompanied 

 with illustrative experiments, it is rarely done in the public 

 schools, even in the larger high schools. 



The science teacher in the public schools appears to be in a 

 state of mind which might be described as hopeless. He knows 

 that it is idle to look for well-equipped laboratories in the public 

 schools. He knows, also, that even if he could hope for labora- 

 tories and apparatus, he certainly can never expect a course of 

 study which will permit of sufficient time for laboratory work. 

 Therefore, finding it wholly impracticable to carry out his convic- 

 tions, he is in a state of hopelessness. He despairingly falls into 

 the old way of assigning lessons from the text-book. Subjects 

 so full of interest as the natural sciences are thus converted into 

 useless drudgery. 



The problem is, Hoiv shall we make it practicable to teach sci- 

 ence in the public schools experimentally ? 



The first difficulty in the solution of this problem is that school 



