State Geological Surveys and Practical Geography 
59 
and passive. The tracing of these relationships may be a matter 
of considerable study, but of sufficient importance to deserve the 
attention; the explanatory treatment thus given a particular phase 
of a city’s activity visited by a class is good geography. 
The school museum. The school museum as an auxiliary in 
teaching geography is of recognized value. The large permanent 
museums of certain cities and of some institutions may be of in- 
estimable aid locally, but it is a fact that such collections seldom 
make an appeal commensurate v^ith their intrinsic worth, save to 
a few investigators or advanced students. The completeness of 
such museums is both an advantage and a disadvantage. It is a 
question whether the circulating school museum as managed in 
the city of Chicago is not of greater advantage for the purpose 
designed. The plan brings the material right into the classroom 
where there are no distractions arising from strangeness and from 
the multiplicity of objects, as is the case when the class is taken to 
a museum. 
. The assembling and management of circulating museums 
might be undertaken by State Surveys. Additional appropriation 
should be procured to start the work; if not, increased appro- 
priations will surely come after an exemplification of its value to 
the schools of the State, Exchange of material between State 
Surveys would be the normal method of augmenting collections, 
particularly of natural resources. Thus rocks, ores, minerals, 
fossils, and illustrations of particular phenomena, as glacial scour- 
ing, and marine grinding of given areas, would be added to the 
collections of other States. The museums of State colleges and 
universities should be the clearing-houses for this material. 
A participatory method might be instituted by which school 
boards would pay transportation charges on the collections needed. 
Furthermore, the schools themselves, in localities where desirable 
material is to be had, might be utilized in collecting for the State, 
at the same time encouraging the schools to arrange permanent 
collections. 
Manufactured products, so far as is practicable, should have a 
large place in these collections. Every such product is either 
a response to a particular environment, or a less immediate and 
direct but no less important fact of organic geography. 
