tv. CONTENTS OF VOLUME EIGHT. 43 Separating the Sexes in School, 268 Paper Made from Corn Leaves, 269 277 EDUCATIONAL INTELLIGENCE. There are no Trifles, 166...Comfort at Home, 175 Annual Meeting of the Alumni Association of The Night Schools of New York, The Old Ferule......How to Think, The History of Object-Teaching, The School-Boy's Composition, Teaching, A Profession, The Teacher's Reading. 176 N. E. Yearly Meeting Boarding School 384 348 213 305 314 The Laws of Childhood, Thoreau's Writings, 225... Learn to the Last, 236 R. I. Teachers' Institute at Peacedale, The Care of the Eyes, 227 School Exhibition in North Scituate, The Normal School....National Uses of War, 231 Speech of Mr. John Swett, The First Silk Mill in England, The Story of Little Patchy, 239 Scientific Progress Made in Europe during the Year, 52....Speeches at the Inauguration 241 The Younger Days of Gibbon, 257...Success, 261 of the Liverpool School of Science, Teachers should have a Rank, The Useful and the Beautiful, The Adulteration of Bread, The Honor Due to Industry, The Dying Swan's Song. The Tools Great Men Work with, The Cramming vs. The Drawing-Out System, Teaching the Deaf-Dumb in Common Schools, The Study of Latin, 353...To Young Teachers, "Insects Injurious to Vegetation," 150 What will the War do for us in an Educational 68 The Monitor, 108......Sunlight in Houses, 251 245 The Study of Nature, 247 "Your Majesty," 296...... A New Sculptor, QUESTIONS FOR WRITTEN EXAMINATIONS. 292 Arithmetic, Funeral Services of the Late Lieut. Pierce, 126 Words to be Defined, 92, 153........Spelling, 118, 190 158 62 120 Lieut. H. R. Pierce, 119....Contributions, Report of Supt. of Providence Pub. Schools, The School Commissioner's Report, Principles Employed in Finding the Cube Root 349 95 Better than a Man, 144...... Politeness. 219, 288 146 145 62 The Little Pilgrims....Sorrows of Childhood, 143 352 MORAL CULTURE. 31 We must again put on the Harness for Labor, 185 School Ethics, The R. J. Schoolmaster. JANUARY, 1862. VOLUME EIGHT. For the Schoolmaster. The Smithsonian Report.* THE twelfth volume of the Smithsonian Contribution to Knowledge has just been completed and published. It consists of five distinct works, embraced in 537 large quarto pages: I. Astronomical Observations in the Arctic Seas, by Elisha Kent Kane, M. D. II. On Fluctuations of Level in the North American Lakes, by Charles Whittlesey. III. Meteorological Observations made at Providence, Rhode Island, for twenty-eight and onehalf years, by Prof. Alexis Caswell. IV. Meteorological Observations made near Washington, Arkansas, for twenty years, by Dr. Nathan D. Smith. 66 The record of the observations themselves occupies one hundred and seventy-nine of the largest quarto pages which can be introduced into the volumes of the Smithsonian Contributions. They comprise a record of the barometer and thermometer made three times a day, the direction and force of the wind, and the face of the sky for the same period; also, the depth of rain, together with a column of general remarks on casual phenomena. The series is terminated the first giving by a number of general tables the monthly and annual mean height of the barometer during the whole term of years; the second, the monthly and annual mean height of barometer at sunrise or 6 A. M., 1 or 2 P. M., and 10 P. M.; third, monthly and annual mean tem V. Researches upon the Venom of the Rat-peratures, deduced from the three observations tlesnake, with an investigation of the anatomy and physiology of the organs concerned, by Dr. S. W. Mitchell. We wish, in this brief article, to call the at tention of Rhode Island teachers to some de daily; fourth, monthly and annual mean temperature at sunrise or 6 A. M., 1 or 2 P. M., and 10 P. M.; fifth, monthly and annual maximum and minimum temperatures and range; sixth, the number of days in each month in which the prevailing winds came from each of the four ductions from the third of these contributions, quarters of the horizon; seventh, mean force of relative to the temperature of our State, and to the wind at the different hours of observation, institute a comparison between the temperature and for the month and year; eighth, mean of the latitude of 42° on the Atlantic coast and cloudiness of the sky at the different hours of the latitude of 34° in the Mississippi valley. observation, and the mean for the month and This series of observations made by Professor, year; ninth, monthly and annual number of Caswell will be found of great value in future days in which the weather was clear, variable, or cloudy on which rain or snow fell; the tenth, monthly and annual quantity of rain and snow in inches. *We are indebted to Hon. James F. Simmons, Senator from Rhode Island, for the "Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, for the year 1860." "From the records themselves an account of the weather on any day for twenty-eight years the data, the necessary facts for a vast amount past may be obtained. From the general tables of deductive reasoning. we can determine the connection of the varia- These deductions extend to many departments tions of the barometer with the changes of the of natural science- meteorological, chemical, weather, and deduce rules of practical import- mechanical, agricultural, astronomical. ance as well as of scientific interest. From the A valuable commentary on the well known tables of the records of the thermometer, we principle that valuable knowledge is only gained find that the mean temperature of Providence for the whole time is 48° 19', and that during fact, that by means of books each generation inby great labor, and an illustration of that other the twenty-eight years of observation the oscil- herits all the wealth of knowledge accumulated lation on either side of this, with the exception by all the past. of four years, is within a single degree." The observations by Dr. Smith were made at Washington, Hempstead County, Arkansas, lat. 33° 47', long. 16° 42' west from Washington. This place is the summit of the dividing ridge between the waters of the Red River and those of the Washita. From this ridge there is no higher level for a long distance. From the observations of Dr. Smith for twenty years the mean daily temperature is found to be 61.81°. At Providence the coldest year was 1836. M. How Wordsworth Looked Commonly. In a new English novel, called "A Family History," there is a description of Wordsworth and his daughter, which is worth copying : "He came in, a tall, gaunt man, wearing a huge pair of blue spectacles, with side goggles to them. He looked rough and weather-beaten, more, I thought, in outward appearance, like a shrewd old dale farmer than a great poet. Take off those nasty things, papa,' said Dora, going up to him, and trying to take off his spectacles; who can see what you're like in them?' At Providence the coldest month is February. He laughed and complied. Altogether, even In Arkansas the coldest month is January. The mean annual amount of rain at Providence is 40.38 inches; Arkansas, 54.70. At Providence the greatest amount of rain falls in August; and the least amount in Feb ruary. At Washington, Ark., the greatest amount falls in April; the least in September. when the goggles were removed, his appearance disappointed me. I saw nothing in his looks that distinguished him from other men, as a great genius. I could not have picked him out as the poet, as I once picked out Alfred Tennyson at a ball from among some hundred other persons, long before any print of him had ever been published. Wordsworth's features were heavy, large and coarse; his light gray eyes had no fire in them; his nose was straight, broad At Providence the coldest single month of the and massy; his mouth wide and rather sensual; whole period was January, 1857. The warmest I thought it betokened irritability. Only the month of the whole period was August, 1848; calm, high forehead indicated the lofty mind that had entranced thousands. I saw that Dora and the next warmest was July, 1838. was extremely like him, only the lines that were harsh in him were in her softened to beauty, and that she had soft, expressive and beautiful eyes. When I had had a good look at him, Mrs. Wordsworth said, There, my dear, now you have seen him as he really is. You shall see what a figure he makes of himself; you would The amount of labor necessary to these ob- hardly take him for a poet in his walking cosservations, the preparation of the tables and the tume.' More likely for a highwayman,' sugdeductions made from them, is immense. Im-gested one of the friends, who had returned agine an observer noting the thermometer, bar- with him. Yes,' echoed another, that stick ometer, wind, water-guage, &c., three times a is enough to frighten anybody.' 'Oh, ay,' said day, for twenty or thirty years; recording his he, I forgot that. I must show Miss Neville observations, averaging each month, each year, my walking-staff.' He went out, and returned and for the whole term, and we then have only with a thick knotted stick, which he showed At Washington the coldest New Year's day was 1840; the mean temperature of which was 22°. The warmest, 1846 and 1855; the mean temperature of each being 57°. The coldest day in the year is the 18th of January; and the warmest, the 15th of July. it was invaluable in climbing From "Education: Intellectual, Moral and Physical," THAT in education we should proceed from me, telling me the mountains.' led twice in Scotland. His daughter smiled, and said, Yes, papa, and as we went along, the people on the borders laughed at the "strange mon."' He explained to me, who sat at his the simple to the complex, is a truth which has right hand, 'Yes, Miss Neville, they did laugh always been, to some extent, acted upon; not professedly, indeed, nor by any means consistas me; we travelled in an open carriage; my ently. The mind grows. Like all things that eyes were bad, and so'- Dora, by a merry glance, telegraphed across the table that his eyes grow, it progresses from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous; and a normal training system, ailed nothing—so I wore a veil, as I do now, to shade them. Dora drove, and the people being an objective counterpart of this subjecused to come out of their cottages and stand tive process, must exhibit the like progression. looking after us, calling out to one another, Moreover, regarding it from this point of view, we may see that this formula has much wider "Lo'tha, lo'tha, there's a man wi' a veil! an' a applications than at first appears. For its ralass driving! tionale involves not only that we should proceed from the single to the combined in the teaching of each branch of knowledge; but that we should do the like with knowledge as a whole. As the mind, consisting at first of but few active faculties, has its later-completed faculties successively awakened, and ultimately comes to "The presence," she says, "of Mademoiselle have all its faculties in simultaneous action; it Sontag, at the Italian theatre, was fresh stimu- follows that our teaching should begin with but lus for Maria's talent, and contributed to its few subjects at once, and successively adding to perfection. Each time that the former obtained these, should finally carry on all subjects abreast a brilliant triumph, Maria wept, and exclaimed, that not only in its details should education How Musical Artists Affect Each Other. THE Countess Merlin, in her memoirs of Madame Malibran, gives a charming instance of this: • Mon Dieu! why does she sing so well?' then proceed from the simple to the complex, but in from these tears sprang a beauty and sublimity its ensemble also. of harmony, of which the public had the benefit. To say that our lessons ought to start from It was the ardent desire of amateurs to hear the concrete and end in the abstract, may be these two charming artists sing together in the considered as in part a repetition of the foregosame opera; but they mutually feared each oth- ing. Nevertheless it is a maxim that needs to er, and for some time the much coveted gratifi- be stated: if with no other view, then with the cation was deferred. One night they met at a view of shewing in certain cases what are truly concert at my house; a sort of plot had been the simple and the complex. For, unfortunatelaid, and toward the middle of the concert they ly, there has been much misunderstanding on were asked to sing the duet in Tancredi.' For this point. General formulas which men have a few moments they showed fear, hesitation; devised to express groups of details, and which but at last they yielded, and approached the have severally simplified their conceptions by piano, amidst the acclamations of all present. uniting many facts into one fact, they have supThey both seemed agitated and disturbed, and posed must simplify the conceptions of the child observant of each other; but presently the con- also; quite forgetting that a generalization is clusion of the symphony fixed their attention, simple only in comparison with the whole mass and the duet began. The enthusiasm their sing- of particular truths it comprehends that it is ing excited was vivid, and so equally divided, more complex than any one of these truths takthat at the end of the duet, and in the midst of en singly- that only after many of these single the applause, they gazed at each other, bewild- truths have been acquired does the generalizaered, delighted, astonished; and by a sponta- tion ease the memory and help the reason - and neous movement, and involuntary attraction, that to the child not possessing these single their hands and lips met, and a kiss of peace truths it is necessarily a mystery. Thus conwas given and received with all the vivacity and founding two kinds of simplification, teachers sincerity of youth. The scene was charming. have constantly erred by setting out with "first and has assuredly not been forgotten by those principles": a proceeding essentially, though who witneesed it." not apparently, at variance with the primary rule; which implies that the mind should be fice here to point out that, as the mind of huintroduced to principles through the medium of manity placed in the midst of phenomena and examples, and so should be led from the partic- striving to comprehend them, has, after endless ular to the general - from the concrete to the comparisons, speculations, experiments and theabstract. ories, reached its present knowledge of each -- The education of the child must accord both subject by a specific route; it may rationally be in mode and arrangement with the education of inferred that the relationship between mind and mankind as considered historically; or in other phenomena is such as to prevent this knowledge words, the genesis of knowledge in the individ- from being reached by any other route; and ual must follow the same course as the genesis that as each child's mind stands in this same of knowledge in the race. To M. Comte we be- relationship to phenomena, they can be acceslieve society owes the enunciation of this doc-sible to it only through the same route. Hence trine a doctrine which we may accept with- in deciding upon the right method of education, out committing ourselves to his theory of the an inquiry into the method of civilization will genesis of knowledge, either in its causes or its help to guide us. order. In support of this doctrine two reasons One of the conclusions to which such an inmay be assigned, either of them sufficient to es- quiry leads is, that in each branch of instructablish it. One is deducible from the law of tion we should proceed from the empirical to hereditary transmission as considered in its the rational. A leading fact in human progress wider consequences. For if it be true that men is, that every science is evolved out of its corexhibit likeness to ancestry both in aspect and responding art. It results from the necessity character if it be true that certain mental we are under, both individually and as a race, manifestations, as insanity, will occur in suc- of reaching the abstract by way of the concrete, cessive members of the same family at the same that there must be practice and an accruing exage-if, passing from individual cases in which perience with its empirical generalizations, bethe traits of many dead ancestors mixing with fore there can be science. Science is organized those of a few living ones greatly obscure the knowledge; and before knowledge can be orlaw, we turn to national types, and remark how ganized, some of it must first be possessed. the contrasts between them are persistent from Every study, therefore, should have a purely age to age if we remember that these respec- experimental introduction; and only after an tive types came from a common stock, and that ample fund of observations has been accumulahence the present marked differences between ted, should reasoning begin. As illustrative them must have arisen from the action of modi- applications of this rule we may instance the fying circumstances upon successive generations modern course of placing grainmar, not before who severally transmitted the accumulated ef- language, but after it; or the ordinary custom fects to their descendants - if we find the dif- of prefacing perspective by practical drawing. ferences to be now organic, so that the French A second corollary from the foregoing general child grows into a French man even when principle, and one which cannot be too strenubrought up among strangers - and if the geneously insisted upon, is, that in education the ral fact thus illustrated is true of the whole nature, intellect inclusive; then it follows that if process of self-development should be encourChildren should be there be an order in which the human race has aged to the fullest extent. led to make their own investigations, and to mastered its various kinds of knowledge, there draw their own inferences. They should be will arise in every child an aptitude to acquire these kinds of knowledge in the same order. told as little as possible, and induced to discover Humanity has progressed So that even were the order intrinsically indif- as much as possible. ferent, it would facilitate education to lead the solely by self-instruction; and that to achieve individual mind through the steps traversed by the best results, each mind must progress somethe general mind. But the order is not intrin- what after the same fashion, is continually provsically indifferent; and hence the fundamental ed by the marked success of self-made men. Those who have been brought up under the orreason why education should be a repetition of civilization in little. It is alike provable that dinary school-drill, and have carried away with the historical sequence was, in its main outlines, them the idea that education is practicable only a necessary one; and that the causes which de- in that style, will think it hopeless to make termined it apply to the child as to the race. children their own teachers. If, however, they Not to specify these causes in detail, it will suf-will call to mind that the all-important know |