Natural Science News. 



VOL. I ALBION, N. Y., AUGUST 17, 1895. No. 29 



Natural Science News. 



A Weekly Journal Devoted to 

 Natural History. 



FRANK H. LATTIN, Editor and Publisher, 

 ALBION, N. Y. 



Correspondence and Items of interest to the 

 student of any of tlie various branches of the 

 Natural Sciences solicited from all. 



TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. 



Pkice, One Dollar a Year. 



To Foreign Countries lnlthe Universal Postal 

 Union, $1.50, equal to 6 s., or 0 marks, or 8 francs. 

 Single copies, 5 cents each. 



Subscriptions can begin wilh any number. 



Remittances should be maae by Draft, Express 

 or Post Office Money Order, or Registered Letter. 

 Unused U, S. Postage stamps of any denomina- 

 tion will be accepted for fractional parts of a dol- 

 lar. Make Money Orders and Drafts payable, 

 and address all subscriptions and communica- 

 tions to FRANK H. LATTIN, 

 Albion, Orleans Co., N. Y, 



Entered at. Albion P. O. as 2nd fiass mail matter 



The Place of Museums in Edu- 

 cation. 



The most casual observer of ed- 

 ucational methods could not fail 

 to notice that the receptive mind 

 of a child or a youth learns from an 

 infinite variety of sources. We all 

 know that we begin at one end of 

 education, but there is no period 

 in life of the most aged where the 

 other end is reached. Frequent- 

 ly, again, that information which 

 does not absolutely form part of 

 the ordinary process of education, 

 but which comes from unexpected 

 quarters, is of as great service in 

 the development of the mind as 

 any set lessons can possibly be. 

 Whatever becomes suggestive to 

 the mind is of educational value. 

 That Museums have from their 

 very nature the very essence of 

 this suggestiveness is patent. It 

 may be true that of themselves 

 alone they are powerless to edu- 

 cate, but they can be instrumental 

 and useful in aiding the educated 

 to excite a desire for knowledge 

 in the ignorant. The working 

 man or agriculturist who spends 

 his holiday in a walk through any 

 well-arranged Museum cannot fail 

 to come away with a deeply-root- 

 ed and reverential sense of the ex- 

 tent of the knowledge possessed 

 by his fellow men. It is not the 

 objects themselves that he sees 

 there, and wonders at, that cause 

 this inspiration, so much as the 

 order and evident science which 

 he cannot but recognize in the 



manner in which they are grouped 

 and arranged. He learns that 

 there is a meaning and value in 

 every object, however insignificant, 

 and that there is a way of looking 

 at things common and rare, dis- 

 tinct from the regarding them as 

 useless, useful, or merely curious. 

 These three last terms would be 

 found to be the very common class- 

 ification of all objects in aM useum 

 by the uninformed and uninitiated. 



After a holiday spent in a Mu- 

 seum the working man goes home 

 and cons over what he has seen at 

 his leisure, and very probably on 

 the next summer holiday, or a 

 Sunday afternoon's walk with his 

 wife and little ones, he discovers 

 that he has acquired a new inter- 

 est in the common things he sees 

 around him. He begins to dis- 

 cover that the stones, the flowers, 

 the creatures of all kinds that 

 throng around him, are not, after 

 all, so very commonplace as he 

 had previously thought them. He 

 looks at them with a pleasure not 

 before experienced, and talks of 

 them to his children with sundry 

 references to things like them 

 which he saw in the Museum. He 

 has gained a new sense, a craving 

 for natural knowledge, and such a 

 craving may, possibly, in course of 

 time quench another and lower 

 craving which may at one time 

 have held him in bondage — that 

 for intoxicants or vicious excite- 

 ment of one description or an- 

 other. 



The craving for intoxicants or 

 excitement is often as much a re- 

 sult as a cause. The toilers have 

 few things to occupy their mind, 

 and frequently in their home sur- 

 roundings much cheerlessness and 

 discomfort. Life is for very many 

 a hard daily grind for mere exist- 

 ence, with little or no relief from 

 the daily round of the struggle to 

 make ends meet. These and 

 other conditions under which so 

 many live cannot fail to produce 

 tastes and likings which are not 

 qualified to tend to the uplifting 

 of the mind and the desires by 

 which their life is governed. 



It it only those who come close- 

 ly in contact with the more intelli- 

 gent of the working classes, who 

 know the nobility of character and 

 the earnest reaching out towards 

 higher things to be found among 

 them, who can be familiar with 

 the intense longing to have within 

 their reach institutions such as 



Museums, Art Galleries and Free 

 Libraries, to which they can have 

 easy access. That such as these 

 use the institutions which already 

 exist is most amply and conclu- 

 sively proved by the ocular de- 

 monstration of those who have vis- 

 ited the Museums in any of the 

 large towns or the country. 



The nation should never forget 

 that some of its greatest benefact- 

 ors have belonged to this class of 

 intelligent working men. James 

 Watt, the engineer, Hugh Miller, 

 the stonemason geologist, Stephen- 

 son, the collier-railway projector, 

 Arkwright, the weaver-inventor, 

 and scores of others who could be 

 named. Where, indeed, should 

 we have stood as a nation had it 

 not been for the sturdy common 

 sense of the intelligent and thrifty 

 working classes. 



Until very recently the great de- 

 fect of our system of education has 

 been the neglect of educating the 

 observing powers — a very distinct 

 matter, be it noted, from scientific 

 or industrial instruction. The 

 confounding of the two is evident 

 in many books which have from 

 time to time been published. 

 There are not a few who seem to 

 imagine that the elements that 

 should constitute a sound and 

 manly education are antagonistic; 

 that the cultivation of taste 

 through purely literary studies 

 and of reasoning through logic and 

 mathematics, one or both, is op- 

 posed to the training in the equal- 

 ly important matter of observation 

 through these sciences that are 

 descriptive and experimental. 

 There is considerable inconsist- 

 ency in any such idea, and educa- 

 tional leaders are now universally 

 recognizing the need there is for 

 not giving too much attention to 

 one class of mental training to the 

 exclusion of the rest. Equal de- 

 velopment and strengthening of all 

 are necessary for the constitution 

 of a well ordered mind. 



A consensus of opinion is now 

 apparent that this method is erron- 

 eous, and the Universities are now 

 taking the lead by emphasizing to 

 a less degree the merits of a purely 

 classical education. The con- 

 ductors of private schools, again, 

 are beginning to see the great 

 need which exists for a practical 

 acquaintance with the leading Con- 

 tinental languages, and the Board 

 school curriculum is rapidly be- 

 coming to mean a year or two de- 



