800 NOTES. 
smaller classes, so that each teacher will be able to use specimens 
and carry out completely the system of object teaching. 
committee hope by so doing, and furnishing the schools, wherever 
practicable, with type specimens, to meet the immediate wants of 
teachers, and by introducing them to practical laboratory work, to 
induce them to pursue for themselves some special branch of natu- 
ral science. The committee have been greatly assisted in their 
efforts by the masters of the public schools, especially the chair- 
man of the masters’ committee, Mr. Paige, and also by the super- 
intendent of public instruction, Mr. John D. Philbrick. The ex- 
periment owes its support at present entirely to the generosity of 
one of the committee, Mr. John Cummings. 
The aims of the committee (consisting of John Cummings, Esq., 
and Professors A. Hyatt and W. H. Niles) who have projected the 
entire movement, are wholly practical and will be to a large extent 
governed by experience. They intend if possible to meet the daily 
wants of the teachers now, and in the coming winters of 1872 and 
°73 to develop such a plan as will insure the permanent introduc- 
tion of the teaching of natural science in the public schools of 
Boston at least. 
We congratulate the Boston Society on so successful an inaugu- 
ration of science teaching, and believe that it has assumed the 
most practical form by which teachers can be fitted to teach the ru- 
diments of science. We look forward to similar courses in other 
cities in connection with the local scientific societies, and thus a 
defect in our system of education will gradually be remedied. 
We may divide the German Museums into—(1) Those founded 
with the intention of exhibiting objects of Natural History to the 
general public; and (2) those established for educational pur- 
poses. There are not many of the former class. To it belong the 
Museums of the formerly independent ‘“ Reichsstadte,” Hamburg, 
Bremen, and Frankfort-on-the-Main, one of the Vienna Museums, 
and the collections in Stuttgart and Darmstadt. There are others 
like that in Mayence, but they have more the character of well-ar- 
ranged local country museums. Although originally founded for the 
purpose of exhibiting curiosities, they soon took another position 
by receiving objects in which the general public takes a very lim- 
ited interest (as, for instance, botanical, geological, or mineralog- 
ical specimens), and by systematically collecting materials for the 
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