pertained. It related in but a very minor degree to field and pond-to that nature with which the universe is alive. The teaching lacked the vital element; there was none of that eager impulse that follows personal contact; and the students went thru life believing that off somewhere in earth or sea or sky are more wonderful things than most men have dreamed about. Of their own parish they were unfortunately ignorant. And this was the old school which some of us have occasion to remember; happily passing into the great beyond.

And the second type is the opposite extreme; the university graduate who has been trained in microtechnique and who is possessed with the idea that high-school pupils must of necessity be interested in whatever interests their teacher. There is a pond near at hand, but material for class use is purchased from a marine supply-house because such a proceeding lends an air of dignity and superiority to the transaction. The course is planned to lead to the mastery of the microscope; the study of cell, chromatophores, crystal, rudimentary tissue, soft tissue, thick-angled tissue, stony tissue, milk tissue, sieve tissue, tracheary tissue, groups of tissue, etc., exact measurements and drawings. Of the local flora and fauna; their life history, adaptation, and classification the student knows almost nothing. He does know much about the use of the microscope and microtome and is able to use these instruments to some advantage. Such teaching is the result of an impatient zeal on the part of an over ambitious teacher. The students have certain advantages. Their markings are accepted without question, but one is prone to feel, after all, that there is something foreign and irrelevant for the majority of the student body.

Happily we have come to that state where, if our heads must be in the clouds, we realize that we must keep our feet on terra firma. The third type of teacher attempts what Cicero denominates the "golden mean." The archaic teacher, intent on the text, makes no use whatever of the microscope. The budding specialist makes it his vade mecum, the cardinal point about which all knowledge revolves, the be-all and end-all of the secondary course in biology. It was to be expected that we would swing from one extreme to the other, but since the balance has ceased to vibrate it is easy to approximate the correct position of this instrument. Field work has a most fundamental place in the study of biology. Beginning with a clear distinction between organic and inorganic, it is the adamant upon which future comprehensive training must be built. The work of the student in the secondary school must, of necessity, be introductory. He must be taught a method of work; must know how to study; must appreciate the value and utility of materials. He must know the local field and work thru it. He must know something of distribution and its causes; must know adaptation; must have such a training in types as will enable him readily to arrive at an approximately correct determination of a form's systematic position among the orders. He must know something of the relationship existing between plants and animals and between the different groups of each respectively; must be able to reason from structure to function; must know morphology and physiology, and whatever purpose the microscope may serve in such a course will constitute its legitimate field. The extent to which it is used must depend in a large degree upon the locality and the view-point of the individual instructor. If material is abundant, and if the instructor believe that emphasis should be laid upon some special branch whose representatives are prevalent, such as the arthropods or phenogams, the work with the microscope may be limited to the study of slides representing gross structure. Such a course may well proceed from the study of individuals through family, order, class, and branch to the conception of a kingdom and embrace a systematic and logical body of knowledge. Or an equally logical and more extended course may embrace a knowledge of the leading characteristics of the chief branches of animals and plants, and thruout the course the microscope may be a daily necessity to the working student. Such courses are logical; their pedagogical content intensive; and in either the microscope has reached a sphere of usefulness that is at once proper and legitimate.

Primarily, and aside from the discussion of prevailing methods and the proper position

of the microscope there are at least four major fields which embrace the proper use of this instrument.

I. It introduces the student to a new world.-There is a world beyond the range of the unaided senses and into it the microscope ushers the student. It has been well said that the purpose of education is always the same but that the means vary according to our conceptions of life. The microscope is one of the means to an end. Thru the avenue of the eye we acquire most of our information concerning the things about us. Try as we may, all our senses are limited, the perfectly-developed eye being no exception. The microscope supplements artificially the eye. It illustrates how man takes up and carries forward nature's work. All of our native senses are blundering, inaccurate, and crude. With all our boasted knowledge and skill the great mass of physical phenomena lies beyond the range of human sense. It has been said that the vast extension of human knowledge since the days of Galileo and Newton, grouped broadly under the name of science, has been chiefly the exploration of the world that lies beyond our primitive senses. The microscope is the tool that introduces us to that "unseen, unheard, unfelt, universe whose fringe we are just beginning to explore."

II. It affords training in muscular control.-The student comes to this instrument after the greater muscles have acquired a large degree of growth. All his life the student has done things that called into service the larger muscles. Where use is made of them expression is fairly accurate and creditable. The mind is gradually seeking to bring the finer and more delicate human mechanism under proper control. It is training in skill versus strength; the light stroke at tennis versus the battering ram of the gridiron. Whether the student is proceeding analytically from the whole to the related part, or synthetically is constructing the whole from the parts, he is at work in a field where delicacy, accuracy, and precision are required, and the results will depend upon the age, maturity, and efficiency of student and teacher and upon the proper handling of the tool with which they must labor.

III. It affords technical training in precision.-Carl Snyder is authority for the statement that the aim of all scientific endeavor is to "describe natural phenomena, including all visible and invisible things, matter, life, and mind, by simple mechanical laws expressible in simple mathematical equations." To this end instruments of precision are absolute requirements. The period in the world's history during which the greatest relative progress has been made in science extends over a comparatively brief interval and coincides with the period in which instruments of accuracy and precision have been invented and used in experiments and exact measurements. In the brief span of a few hundred years more has been learned in the way of definite knowledge than in all the half-hundred centuries that preceded them. Industrial inventions, mechanical appliances and instruments of precision, underlie all modern scientific progress. They have made exact knowledge possible. Chief among them is the microscope. By means of it we have been able to establish, verify, and reduce to a mathematical certainty much of that vast body of classified knowledge known as science, and the ability properly to use this instrument marks genuine progress in the precise methods of modern research.

IV. It trains the pupil to discriminate between what is and what seems.-This lies at the basis of all training in science and leads to the higher processes of thought; comparison, abstraction, generalization, and critical definition. Isolated facts are of little value. It is only when they stand in their proper relation to each other, when each assumes its proper place in a chain of experiences, that it flashes into full significance. The adolescent has a tendency to overconfidence, to undue egoism, a state of mind that the critical study of nature is sure to relieve. Emerson may mean one thing to this student, another to that, and each with an apparently equal degree of certainty. A certain event in history may admit of several interpretations and each may appear equally worthy of credence. Critical scientific training eliminates that trait of mind that leads to undue confidence in a mere opinion and to this end the proper use of the microscope contributes a large share. With it.

the student works his way from the known to the unknown; candidly ignorant; frankly teachable; critically exact; the attitude of mind that led Kepler to outline seventeen different hypotheses and seventeen different sets of laboratory observations and computations before he was ready to announce to the world that he had discovered the "shape of the path of the planet."

II. THE PURPOSE OF THE MICROSCOPE

J. B. LILLARD, TEACHER OF BIOLOGY, WILLIAM MCKINLEY HIGH SCHOOL,

ST. LOUIS, MO.

One who has taught nature-study in the grades, biology in the high school and the university, and has worked with candidates for advanced degrees in the subject, sees the value of the microscope varying from zero to one hundred. In the grades, where the work is mainly extensive, its use is hardly to be thought of. Possibly in the last two years of the high school and surely in the university, its use is all-important. In the last instance biology would be a farce without it. But in most of the high schools of this country zoology, botany, and human physiology are presented in the first two years of the course.

The purpose of the microscope whenever used is obvious. Our high schools are not for the purpose of training pupils to become experts in the use of microscopes. I say this fully realizing that it has revealed a great body of biological facts, and that even those facts and principles which are not the direct result of microscopic study are nevertheless intimately linked and fused with the revelations of the lenses. I realize, too, that microscopic study is distinctly a biological method. In any scientific study the methods of the science are of great value. In some cases they surpass in value even the facts and principles of the subject itself. The omission of microscopic observation, when the child is mentally ready for it, would find a parallel in the study of chemistry by totally disregarding qualitative tests or by completely eliminating the use of balances.

In the first two years of the high-school course we are dealing with children. We must employ many means of approaching the subject. We must take into account the child's experiences and previous preparation. Dissections, models of whatever kind, physiological demonstration, experiment, and observation, fieldwork, textbooks, illustrations, figures, lantern slides, lectures, recitations, question boxes, microscopes-simple, dissective, and compound-and what not, may all be used to advantage. But in every case it must be remembered that each of these and perhaps many other devices are simply means to an end in the study of life. Not one of them should be used for its own sake, but only as a tool absolutely subservient to the needs of the course.

I have seen the energy, time, and enthusiasm of a class dissipated in the search for something that could not be found. On the other hand, I have seen the indifference of the same class suddenly transformed into intense eagerness as soon as a little obstruction had been removed by a single glance thru the eyepiece of a microscope.

The purpose of the microscope is to reveal what is essential to a clearer understanding of the subject. Whenever it becomes necessary to complete a chain in the development of a subject by supplying the microscopic link, then use it. This link will be pluralized (if I may coin the expression) as we go from the first to the fourth years in the course because the character of the work will necessarily change as the pupil develops. But the "big eye" as it is termed in college slang, must lead us out of chaos not into it; it must be a helper, not a burden; it must be looked thru and not at. In a word it must be a means and not an end.

THE USE OF THE MICROSCOPE

Assuming that biology is given in the first two years of the course (and my high-school experience in the subject has been limited to this), I am compelled to discourage a wholesale use of the instrument.

Pupils entering from the grammar schools find difficulty in orienting themselves for reasons obvious enough to one who has had any practical experience in secondary-school work. Taking it for granted that the pupil has learned how to manipulate the instrument and that there is plenty of time for the purpose, he may grope about for hours, yes even days, in the vain endeavor to find anything. I have spent a great deal of time showing the pupil what I wanted him to observe only to discover later that he had wasted much valuable time on a bubble. It is a pedagogical crime to presume that the Agassiz method can ever be used on a child at work over the microscope. It is my honest opinion that it would be disastrous even in the senior year of the high school. However, this has not been verified by experience. Very few first- or second-year pupils have the power of sorting out the essential details. If the teacher finds it is possible he can always handle the exceptional case. If the teacher is alive to the situation and employs the individual method as we do in the McKinley High School, this exceptional case will in no way disconcert him.

Referring again to the inability of the average, yes, even the vast majority, of our firstand second-year pupils to sort out essential details, I would say that even as grown-ups we form a mental picture and draw an interpretation rather than an accurate representation of the things we are studying.

I have found that manual-training pupils have some advantages over their fellows in seeing fractional values. But this advantage is after all only slight. And, as yet, how many actually get it? Nothing short of abnormal precocity can put a grown-up's head on a child's body.

Whenever the microscope is used the objects to be observed should be such as can be seen clearly. Much care must be used in selecting material that is not confusing. The idea that the real thing must be seen to be fully understood is good both in theory and in practice but to see the real thing, to see it as it is, and to see it in its proper relations is no easy task. When the boy or girl looks thru the eyepiece of a compound microscope he is looking into a new world. It is much more difficult than looking thru a telescope at the moon. It is much farther removed from his experience; and readjustment and reconstruction are much more difficult.

The projection microscope may be used to some advantage. Yet here again we are confronted with two handicaps: first, detail is generally eliminated; second, demonstration of minute structures is quite out of the question.

I have found the lantern to be one of the most important aids in presenting biological work to high-school pupils. The pictures are generally diagrammatic and interpretive; all unnecessary and confusing material is eliminated, and the pupil sees what is essential.

Now, all that I have said refers mainly to the anatomical side of biology, for reasons obvious enough. But I want to emphasize my belief that the physiological side has been shamefully neglected both in zoology and botany; yes, and strange as it may appear, even in human physiology.

To recapitulate: The importance of the microscope will depend very largely on the position of biology in the high-school curriculum, that is, whether it is offered in the first, second, third, or fourth year of the course; that whenever employed, whether in zoology, botany, human physiology, or whether in that phase of both the last two, known as bacteriology, it is to be used only when necessary to supply an absolutely essential link in the chain of development. I believe it is indispensable for the most effective teaching, but that the extent to which it may be used must depend on the mental development of the pupil; that it is, after all, only one of the many ways we have of giving the student a glimpse at the most wonderful thing in the world-life and of acquainting him with the most important contribution of modern biology to the philosophy of life-organic evolution.

III. THE KINDS OF MICROSCOPE WORK VALUABLE FOR HIGHSCHOOL STUDENTS

H. F. WEGENER, PRINCIPAL HIGH SCHOOL, TACOMA, WASH.

The history of the development of the microscope as an instrument of investigation is so closely related to the history of the growth of the biological sciences that, in order to understand the latter, we are obliged to make ourselves familiar with the former. The improvements in the one made possible the discoveries in the other.

Of all instruments for scientific research none has such an interesting history as that of the microscope. If we compare the simple magnifiers used in the sixteenth century with the complex instruments of today, what a wonderful change has it undergone.

With its gradual approach to perfection there was a corresponding expansion of its field of application, until today there is no other instrument of investigation that can approach it in the variety and extent of its uses.

So greatly have these been multiplied that it is difficult to name an industry or field of research in which some form of the microscope is not used.

A period of nearly 150 years intervened between the beginning of the use of the simple convex lens and the evolution of the achromatic objective. It was not until 1830 that the modern objective, in its cruder form, first began to be used. All we know about the minute structure of living organisms has been learned since that time.

It is true Lieuwenhoeck made some remarkable observations with his little globules of glass a hundred years ago and thereby drew the attention of the curious to the study of minute objects. His discoveries gave the stimulus and incentive to others and indirectly to efforts to make improvements in the instrument itself.

In this way many isolated facts were collected but no attempt to correlate this knowledge and make it a basis for scientific investigation was made until twenty years after the achromatic objective had been invented.

There was a time, in the memory of many of us, when the microscope was looked upon as merely a kind of scientific toy. Many persons interested in objects of nature and of an inquisitive turn of mind bought microscopes. For their benefit books were published bearing such titles as the following: Evenings with the Microscope, The Wonders of the Microscope, The Microscope and Its Revelation, etc.

Societies were organized in which eligibility to membership consisted in the ownership of a microscope. A national organization, called the American Society of Microscopists, was formed. This society existed for a number of years and was finally merged as a section with the American Association for the Advance of Science. A similar society, but of much earlier organization and counting among its members many men of great scientific attainments, was formed in England and called the Royal Microscopical Society. A great deal of the knowledge thus obtained was not of a scientific character. It was merely a collection of facts about objects which could not be seen by the unaided eye. They were interesting, because they were new and because they appealed to the curiosity of the observer. This sort of study had its value, however, for subsequent scientific purposes, for the students learned and discovered many facts concerning the technic of preparation of objects for microscopic study. Many of these men became experts in the manipulation of the instrument and what they thus learned later on greatly aided the scientists in their work of investigation.

A large body of facts drawn from the realm of nature had thus been accumulated before any serious attempt was made to organize this knowledge and make use of it in the pursuit of further scientific investigations directed in particular lines of research.

The introduction of the microscope as an instrument of research in high-school science in this country had its beginning with the appearance of the American edition of Huxley's Elements of Biology in 1877.

Previous to this time the use of the compound microscope was deemed impracticable