looks to the average pupil and not to special cases; geographyteaching in common schools must be general. What is taught will not answer the purpose of an active-minded man through life. Much that he learns in school the pupil will forget; geography changes (thus the political maps of Germany and Italy have been largely made over within twenty years); while special lines of reading or study create new demands. The Amazon Valley, for example, is an interesting subject of study in many ways; but the grammar school teacher should aim at nothing more than creating in the mind of the pupil an outline containing the most striking points in the vast picture. She need not teach, and should not teach, the thirteen towns on the Toocantins river, that one of the text-books calls for, or even one of them. Later in life, if business, or a projected journey, or special studies draw the pupil's attention to the Amazon, he can read encyclopedia and magazine articles and special treatises to his heart's content. It would indeed be well if he could have a taste of this reading along with his school study, but this the teacher cannot insist upon. The classical scholar devotes years to the geography of Italy or Greece, or even to the geography of Rome or Athens; but a small number of facts well chosen and well blended must answer the common-school scholar in both cases.

The above remarks about perspective will aid in determining the time to be devoted to the various subjects, as well as the order in which they are studied. About two-thirds of all the time given to geography, on the advance, should be given to our own country. Naturally the British possessions and Mexico will follow. Europe should have fully as much time as South America, Asia, Africa, and Australia put together. In handling the last four continents the teacher should constantly guard against excessive detail. earthly use can there be in burying the pupil under the innumerable mountain peaks of Asia or of drowning him among the "multitudi nous seas" of the Malay Archipelego? The stuffing process is sometimes so thoroughly carried out in these continents and seas that the Sahara, where there are only a few facts to teach, becomes interesting and fruitful in comparison.

There are larger and smaller wholes. Moreover, what is at one time a part is at another time a whole. Maine is a part of New England, and Pennsylvania is one of the Middle States. Many facts need not be learned of parts if they are first learned of the wholes that they help to make up. Here I cannot do better than to quote

from Mr. Tarbell again :

"The several parts of the work in geography might be made to

aid each other more than they usually do by omitting needless repetitions, by the discovery and utilization of resemblances and connections, which the child rarely sees, but in which he can be brought to find both help and pleasure. The dependence of political upon physical geography should be carefully shown. Develop in the pupil the power of inference. Let the inference be made and tested by the facts. If a boy has an idea of the cotton-growing belt of the United States, he need not be told that Alabama grows cotton, that cotton is raised in Mississippi, that in Louisiana great quantities of cotton are raised, that Texas produces great quantities of cotton, etc. The great agricultural products-cotton, sugar, rice, corn, wheat-are not bounded in their growth by State lines, and should not be so studied."

Many other illustrations will at once occur to the mind of the thinking teacher. The agricultural products of New England are similar throughout; these States are all extensively engaged in manufacturing, and all but one in ocean commerce. Industries depend upon soil, climate, and surface; minerals and mountains are commonly associated; lakes are most numerous in upland or mountainous regions; deep bays set into low coasts. Mrs. Partington's asso ciation of cities and rivers is trite but important. Lake Superior ore and Ohio coal are quickly and cheaply brought together at Cleve land; the result is, extensive iron manufacturing. Again, lumbering and mining are commonly found in sparse populations; manufac turing and commerce go with dense populations and abundance of capital.

Superintendent Tarbell speaks of discovering resemblances and connections, of disciplining the power of inference, and of develop ing the imagination. It is worth pointing out that no one of these most important things can be done when the fact-by-fact method of teaching is closely followed. Nor is it too much to say that the more thoroughly this method is applied the more completely are the best results of rational geographical study lost: the power of observing likeness and unlikeness, of generalizing facts, and of creating vivid mental pictures.

Something should be said of grouping facts and presenting them to the eye. I will not say that all facts can be grouped; but ten times as much of this work should be done in schools as is actually done. The teacher can hardly use too much chalk. Now, she will throw this group upon the blackboard:

I,

"Rivers of the Atlantic Slope, 2,

&c."

And then this one:

I,

"States of the Cotton Belt, 2,

&c."

Moreover, if the teacher will teach her pupils how to group facts in preparing lessons, she will have rendered them more than a special service; she will have given them an excellect lesson in methods of study.

One of the most difficult subjects to manage is the statistics— areas, populations, distances, elevations and the like. These hints will outline a method that will not overwork the memory, and that will lead to the acquisition of much useful information.

The areas and populations of the continent should be memorized by the pupil; the first to the nearest 100,000 square miles, the second to the nearest multiple of 10,000,000 human beings. Much the same may be said for the United States and Ohio. These approximate figures will answer all purposes: Area of the United States, 3,200,000; of Ohio, 41,000. Population of the United States, 50, 500,000; of Ohio, 3,200,000 (both in 1880). The approximate widths of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans should also be memorized; also the approximate lengths of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. In some educational quarters there is now an undue prejudice against what is called "mere memorizing;" however, statistical tables cannot be taught in schools. For accurate figures even well trained statisticians must go to books. Some of the figures given above, as the areas and populations of Ohio and the United States, can be used, and should be used, as standards of measurement. While statements as exact as those given are sometimes called for, approximate and relative results must suffice in most cases. In teaching maps, particularly, pupils should be taught to study the comparative sizes of units of the same kind, as States, or groups of States. Care must be taken, however, to confine such comparisons to the same map, or maps, that are constructed on the same scale. The foregoing points are deemed sufficient; the teacher can work out the method more fully, always taking pains in applying it not to expect too much detail, and to be content with comparative ideas.—Cleveland School Bulletin.

Requirements of the Model School-Room.

(1) Shape. It should be oblong, the width being to the length about as three to four, with the teacher's platform at one end.

(2) Size. For primary or grammar school, with register of 54 pupils and attendance of about 50, the room should be about 33 feet long, 25 wide, and 13 high, which gives practically upwards of 200 cubic feet and 161⁄2 square feet of floor space to each pupil.

(3) Lighting. Four windows on the left of the pupils as they sit, the tops being square and not more than six inches from the ceiling, the bottoms being at least three and a half feet from the floor, equally spaced, not grouped, with transom sashes hung at the base, above the sliding sashes. A window or two in addition at the back is admissible. The size of the windows on the side taken collectively should equal at least one-sixth of the floor space. The highest authorities in school hygiene require 300 or 350 square inches of glass for each pupil.

(4) On the side opposite the windows, two doors, with transom windows above, hung at the base, and between these transom windows and on the same line two more windows of the same kind and hung in the same manner.

(5) The wall should be slightly tinted, but not the ceiling.

(6) A blackboard may be between the doors, but a sliding blackboard, back of the teacher's platform, or a portable one on the platform, in accordance with the German idea, would perhaps be better than the profusion of wall blackboard now in vogue among us.

(7) Location of seats. The main rule to be observed in the placing of the seats is to carry them as far as possible towards the window side of the room and as far as possible from the opposite side; the aim being to make the arrangement such that the distance of the outer row of desks from the windows shall not exceed once and a half the height of the top window from the floor.

(8) Clothes rooms. There are three kinds of depositories for the pupils' clothes, all of which are more or less in vogue, namely: (1) one room for the whole school or several classes; (2) a room attached to each school-room; (3) arrangements within each school-room, either wardrobes or racks or pegs on the wall. The second kind is most prevalent and is thought by some to be indispensable; it has important advantages, but its use by both sexes is objectionable; it is difficult for the teacher to maintain supervision over it. It is an

important item in the cost of building, and proper provision for it is a difficult obstacle to overcome in planning large buildings: hence in some cases, as in that of the London school, the large common room is preferable; and provision within the room, as above mentioned, is perhaps to be preferred to the small clothes-room, where the number of scholars accommodated in a room is not large. In the Boston school, above described, the third kind is provided, as is the case in the Vienna and other first-class European schools.—City School Systems in the United States.

Keep Analysis and Operation Separate.

By T. B. PRAY.

In the "Manual on the Course of Study," among other exceedingly valuable suggestions on the teaching of arithmetic, is found the following: "All the operations required in the solution of a problem should be indicated before any of them are performed. The whole attention should be centered first on the reasoning necessary for the solution; and, second, on the operations. Cancellation should be used when it will shorten the work." The good sense of the above direction seems so self-evident as to need no argument or explanation, and hardly to need statement; but a reading of examination papers, or careful scrutiny of mathematical work in our institutes, will not tend to confirm one in that opinion. It may be well, therefore, to note some of the advantages of such a method. First should be placed the cultivation of the ability to analyze. It is a necessary step in acquiring a mastery of the science of numbers, to learn to think of an unknown quantity as ascertainable and definite, and to be able to use it, while yet unknown, as the basis of further analysis. Set any child to ascertain the cost of 35 acres of land, when 42 acres sell for $780, and he will begin, of course, by dividing 780 by 42. Now it is the sure mark of a tyro, of an unexpert dabbler in arithmetic, if he stops his analysis at this point to ascertain how much one acre costs. That cost of one acre is ascertainable, definite, though unknown, but is not called for by the question, and is of use only to be multiplied by 35. If all the operations are indicated, we have, X35, whence by cancellation the result is obtained by no more mental work with numbers than can be performed by a child who has mastered short division, and beside the