HYATT: REPORT OF THE CURATOR. 
289 
average attendance being thirty. This was probably due to a 
revival of general interest occasioned by Professor Davis’s lectures. 
An annual examination was held, at which eighteen candidates 
were present, and the results were entirely satisfactory. Teachers 
have learned that no amount of cramming will enable them to 
handle the test of specimens laid on the tables, and only those who 
have faithfully attended the lessons attempt the examination. 
The Trustee of the Lowell Institute, in order to enable the School 
to issue certificates to those who passed the examinations in the 
different .departments, very generously paid for the engraving of 
the necessary plate and for the printing of the first edition of the 
certificates. These will be issued only to those who have passed all 
of the examinations in each complete four years’ course of from 
one hundred and twenty one hundred and forty hours of lectures 
accompanied by laboratory work. 
The Trustee of the Lowell Institute, acting upon the suggestion 
of persons interested in the improvement of the teaching of geog¬ 
raphy in the public schools, requested the Curator to invite Prof. 
W. M. Davis to give a course of eight lectures on geography in 
the autumn and winter of 1897-98. The subjects treated were 
selected from among those presented in Professor Davis’s course 
on geography in the Harvard Summer School, as affording material 
most directly applicable to the work of grammar school teachers. 
These lectures were given in Huntington Hall, in the Rogers 
Building of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, at 11 
o’clock, on Saturdays, and at the end of each meeting opportunity 
was given for individual conference on questions suggested by the 
lectures. The first lecture was more largely attended than any 
single lesson given in our school since the opening one delivered 
by Professor Niles on the same subject in the year 1872. There 
were over seven hundred persons present, and the average atten¬ 
dance of the whole course was between four and five hundred. 
There has not been, since the beginning of the school, any course 
which has excited more interest among teachers, or one which has 
had more solid results. It is consequently a severe disappointment 
to hundreds of public school teachers of the very highest class, and 
a serious loss to the public interests of science, that the Trustee of 
the Lowell Institute does not feel able to continue this course. 
