key to these numbers posted near by. With a few words in its favor, many pupils will study the key and learn the names, notice the major and minor peculiarities of the different plants, and learn thereby to notice more closely every object.

V.

He who teaches for the pay, is unworthy of the name of teacher. He is a business man seeking to make money. He would just as lief engage in something else, if it would pay better. They only are true teachers who magnify their calling, and prefer it, for its own sake, to any other pursuit.

VI.

We must ever bear in mind that the amount of literature, language, or mathematics which the child acquires, is no true gauge of his real development. If we aim to make him an encyclopædia of knowledge, we ought at the same time to be preparing a quiet alcove in which he may rest. Manhood and womanhood are the highest possessions which any one can secure; nobility of character, earnestness of purpose, and self-denying service to humanity, are worthy objects of aspiration; and if we inspire our pupils to seek after these, we shall secure for them the best education.

VII.

No teacher is doing his duty in its fulness unless he acts directly upon the individual pupil. He should seek, plan, contrive, to make each scholar know everything of every lesson, if the child's calibre is sufficient to receive it. He should help individuals according to their necessities, some none at all and some a great deal. Hundreds of pupils are daily disheartened by insuperable obstacles, fail in consequence on attempting to recite, and when thus overburdened another load is placed upon them. Where is the committee on cruelty to animus?

VIII.

"Be thoughtful," is an excellent motto for every teacher to promulgate to himself daily. Thoughtful in all things. Thoughtful to kindly recognize each pupil wherever met. Thoughtful to manifest sympathy for any form of trial or suffering to which the

child is subjected. Thoughtful to speak a word in due season to him who is beginning to err. Thoughtful to ease burdens of every kind. Thoughtful in word and deed and feeling of his own, that every emanation from himself shall conduce to advancement in excellence.

IX.

Confusion is not enthusiasm, neither is excitement. One of the most enthusiastic and successful teachers I ever knew has an exceedingly quiet school. His utterances seldom surpass in loudness the tones of ordinary conversation. A single word stops the beginnings of disorder, and is so gently uttered that the attention of the studious is not disturbed. Work, steady and faithful, is the record of each day. Yet some school visitors count this monotonous and profitless, while their lips are full of praise for the blustering lecturer who expounds with gesture and grimace, and in the noise he makes drowns the senses of his auditors.

X.

Query: Would not a Series of Writing-Books presenting the back-handed style of Penmanship offer superior attractions to a large portion of our pupils? Try writing in this manner, and see if you cannot maintain an easier position of head and body, keep your paper in better place upon the desk, write with greater rapidity, and read with greater readiness whatever may be written. N. E. W.

THE NEW ENGLAND MIND.

BY E. W. B. CANNING.

THEY who with eye of science read
All human mind and human deed,
Tell us that clime and country can
Leave their strong impress on the man.
Not in parched regions of the South,
Where passion shows its rankest growth;
Nor in far realms beneath the pole,
Whose frigid horrors pinch the soul
Is the best type of manhood known;

Mind finds its prime in kindlier zone.
And not e'en there, where prairie's tone
Emblems existence turned to stone
A life so calm and equable

As stagnant to become and dull;
Nor where, alone, the bald, cold rock
Stamps character like thunder shock
Harsh, rough and angular, tho' brave-
Of sheer rusticity the slave:
Nor where but ancient forests rude.
Breathe Druid gloom and solitude:
Nor yet where only sunny dell
Asks silken luxury to dwell,
And tames upon the lap of sloth
The stanch and manly to the moth;
But where due blending of the whole,
Completes the varied human soul,
And, barring of extremes the thrall,
Combines the virtues of them all.

Now read we the New England mind: Upon its tablet well-defined,

Methinks, as photographed, we trace

The features of our country's face.

Our granite mountains testify
The iron will to do or die;

The firm resolve, unused to bend,

And stern endurance to the end.

Our lofty hills of noble mould
Suggest the well-attempered bold;
While in our pastures, fields, and meads,
With fences sure as title-deeds,

The foreign eye observant reads

Our love of order and of law;

Nor would it incorrectly draw

From our snug homes among the trees,

Ideas of refinement, ease,

And grace, too, that hath skill to wear Smooth all the thorns of character.

Our streams that tumble toward the sea,
Prompt to untiring industry;

While ocean waves that gird our shore
Invite fair commerce to outpour
Rich treasures from her golden urn,
And crown each venture with return.
Not ours the land that without toil

Runs down with honey and with oil.
He that would strong and thrifty be,
Must counsel with economy.
Hence Genius gives Invention life,
And every art with skill is rife :
Our very Shibboleth is "Contrive " –
The rhyme and syonyme of live.
With our own mountain breezes free,
We drink the air of liberty:

Proof should the doubtist ask to tell,
Silent we point to Bunker Hill,
Conscious in every vein of fires
That glowed within our patriot sires.

'Tis not to be supposed that where
Action and thought are free as air,
Each sole possessor of a will
Must even passive be and still,
With Moslem's dull conceit of fate,
Whatever ills betide the State.
Alike with Yankee, Roman, Greek,
The freeman's birthright is- to speak,
Fearless of limbs by torture wrung,
Or tyrant's curb upon the tongue.
Thus, oft it falls, opinions clash,
And, like the warring billows, dash
In spray and foam upon the rock,
Till strong States quiver with the shock.
Yet, not for this, ill-boding seer,
Canst thou awake a single fear

For Freedom's hold the last, the best-
Her starry empire of the West.

Would'st thou 'twere always sultry noon,
Amid the fervid days of June?

Or, ever and anon, would'st hail

The symptoms of the rising gale

Clouds by the fiery falchion riven,

And peals that shake the vaults of Heaven.

"Tis not the page of baleful harm

Thou readest in that transient storm;

But the kind visit from the skies,

That cools, refreshes, purifies.

'Tis only by the flail, the van,
And sturdy blows, the husbandman

Dissociates the golden grain

From the abortive and the vain.
And so by conflict 'tis, alone,

Pure Truth must be from Error known;

And, when obtained, our prouder boast,
For all the trial it hath cost.

STOCKBRIDGE, Mass.

THE EARTH'S ROTUNDITY.

In addition to the ordinary proofs that the earth is round, we give the following measurements made by John Hampden and A. R. Wallace, March 5, 1870. The surface measured was a portion of the Old Bedford Canal, a distance of six miles in a straight line. An oblong signal, six feet by three, was placed at each end of the distance, and halfway between, another signal was placed; the centre of each signal was thirteen feet four inches above the water. The observations were made with a large telescope. Without burdening you with a detailed account of the measurements, which would be uninteresting to the general reader, we will simply state the results. They proved the curvature of a canal in a straight line to be twenty-two feet in a distance of six miles. This leaves less than two feet for refraction to bring it to the true theoretical curvature, which is a little less than twenty-four feet. Many people will regard this actual measurement of the curvature of the earth as more convincing than the more familiar proofs.

ALTEN.

ELEMENTARY GEOGRAPHY.

[E. C. HEWETT, of Normal University, is publishing a series of articles on "First Lessons in Geography" in the Illinois Teacher. Many of our readers will thank us for taking from that journal his No. 5, introductory to the study of maps]

LAST month I spoke of the importance of studying maps a great deal in the earlier part of our geographical work. Shall we begin with a map of the Hemispheres? or a map of Europe? or of S. America? What is a map? It is a symbol-a representation. It is intended, in a manner largely arbitrary, to bring before the mind's eye of the pupil something very different from what is