Science-Teaching in the Schools. 899 
have had some genuine scientific training. Arrangements can be 
made whereby these teachers can now and then give a helpful lec- 
ture to the teachers of the lower schools, or give to those teachers 
the best kind of an object lesson by teaching a lesson in science to 
the children in their schools. 
The summer schools and seaside laboratories afford the means for 
teachers whose early opportunities for scientific study were scanty, to 
gain a sound (though necessarily limited) knowledge of scientific 
facts and methods. The increasing number and the increasing pat- 
ronage of such institutions is a hopeful sign. They are destined 
to be of immense service in improving the quality of science- 
teaching. 
The second objection usually urged against the introduction of 
 science-teaching in the lower schools is the lack of material facili- 
ties. The force of this objection, however, vanishes, when it is 
considered that no one proposes for the lower schools complete sys- 
tematic courses in science. Such courses wonld indeed demand 
extensive laboratories and museums. But for somewhat desultory 
lessons on judiciously selected topics in science, whose aim is prima- 
rily to cultivate the powers of observation, and secondarily to afford 
glimpses of the methods of scientific thought, no extensive mate- 
rial facilities are needed. Many of the most important principles 
of physics and chemistry can be well illustrated with no apparatus 
except what can be extemporized. A class of tolerably active boys 
can collect enough material for biological study as they go along. 
Many of the most important conceptions of philosophical biology 
can be illustrated without any specimens which are not everywhere 
accessible. A boy who has found the elbow, wrist, knee, and ankle, 
in a cat, a horse,a bat, and a hen, has learned the idea of homology, 
though he has never compared the arms of a brachiopod with the 
lophophore of a bryozoan, and never heard of the gastrea theory. 
The third objection usually made to scientific study in the schools 
—the lack of time in the crowded curriculum—hardly deserves an 
answer. Let the waste of time and mental energy be stopped, 
which is involved in attempting studies at unnatural times and in 
unnatural ways, and there will be time enough. Of all economies, 
the most important is the most neglected—the economy of mental 
effort. I believe the introduction of science-teaching in the schools 
will be felt by the pupils as a delightful recreation, rather than as 
