It is only by studying a thin section of a bone that we can realize that it is not a hard compact body and that its growth and nutrition depends upon its porosity and the flow of the blood and lymph through it.

Nerve cells and nerve fibers, sections of the retina, the composition of the blood, the characteristic structure of lung tissue, of hair and finger nails, of epidermal cells, etc., all afford valuable and interesting information.

With these examples as illustrations I believe I have sufficiently indicated the character and scope of the work that can be done by high-school students in the study of the natural sciences that are usually included in the curricula of secondary schools.

Another subject that has not yet been accorded a place in such a curriculum but which, on account of the wonderful advances that have been made in it and also for the reason that a great deal of ignorance and error prevail in the public mind regarding the nature of the organisms which have been the subject of these investigations, should receive attention. is bacteriology. I know that I am venturing upon debatable ground when I broach this subject but I feel that no more practical information than a course of this kind can furnish our pupils can be found.

The labors of Pasteur, Koch, Bering, and a host of other investigators, have established, beyond a doubt, that nearly all infectious diseases are due to bacteria. It is further a well-ascertained fact that bacteria are living organisms and therefore subject to such limitations as food, temperature, light, and moisture. Every bacterium is the offspring of a pre-existing one, no matter how favorable the conditions for its growth and development are. No disease germ can come into existence without a progenitor. Filth and dirt cannot breed disease germs before a germ has been planted in them. But all bacteria are not harmful, the fact is that only a few of them are really dangerous to health. However their distribution in nature is so universal and they enter into our household economy at so many points that a knowledge of their nature, the conditions under which they live, their growth, and the means that can be used to counteract them should be in the possession of every intelligent person.

Now, I take it that it is the function of the high school to prepare the students for practical life, to put them in possession of all those facts that shall enable them to protect themselves against agencies that may handicap their usefulness, not only in the community in which they live, but also themselves and their families. Good health is essential to our happiness and well-being and depends largely upon wholesome food.

We know that all putrefactive fermentation is the result of bacterial activity and that bacteria are the chief source of the changes that make food deleterious to health.

It is said that seeing is believing and that nothing so effectively impresses itself upon our mind than an ocular demonstration.

By the aid of a properly prepared culture medium, a number of experiments can be made before the class that will not only be highly interesting and instructive but will also put in the possession of the pupil a knowledge of the character of bacteria and their work in the economy of nature that cannot fail to be of great value to him in after life.

As an illustration, I will briefly state some of the facts that can thus be learned. The student can be shown that bacteria are in the air everywhere, that dust is the means of spreading them. That they are found in ice and that this is therefore a source of danger in drinking-water and iced tea.

Milk is especially favorable to their growth and hence can be readily infected with discase germs.

The success in modern surgery depends wholly upon the care of the surgeon in excluding them from open wounds. It is a well-known fact that touching an open wound with dirty fingers or even picking a pimple with an unclean pin has been the cause of bloodpoisoning.

It can be shown that the common house fly may be the cause of spreading an infectious disease such as typhoid fever and consumption by coming in contact with our food.

Bacteria are found in the saliva and on our teeth thus causing their decay.

The whole process of sterilizing can be made clear and practically illustrated. The nature of disinfectants and how they affect disease germs, the effect of boiling, of freezing, and of light, all can be demonstrated by experiments.

These examples, which can be greatly multiplied, seem to me are a sufficient justification of my plea for a course of practical bacteriology to be given with every course in human physiology in the high school. That the knowledge thus gained is of great practical value cannot be denied. That it can be done has been proved by the experience of those who have undertaken it.

IV. MISCROSCOPIC PROJECTION IN BIOLOGY

C. T. WRIGHT, DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY, HIGH SCHOOL, REDLANDS, CAL. Equipment

College bench lantern with right-angle arc.

Four condensing lenses 6", 7", 7", 9" focal lengths.

Water-tank to intercept heat.

Microscope stage with micrometer stage attachment for fine focus, three objectives, 1", 1", and ", two concave lenses for amplifiers, and substage condenser for highpower illumination.

Smooth white plaster for permanent screen.

Semi-transparent screen of tracing cloth mounted on a frame.

Drawing-board and crayons.

Slides, microtome, stains, etc., for temporary slides.

Operation

(1) Project the object with rather low power to get general outlines and to locate part of special interest.

(2) Use higher power for details, using substage condenser for strong illumination and micrometer stage attachment for fine focus. A field glass or opera glass previously focussed on the screen is useful. For close study of details with high power use screen of tracing cloth, students grouped close on both sides.

(3) Substitute drawing-board for screen and trace the part that is to be reproduced in notebooks. This may be done in the light while students are working on other things by surrounding the drawing-board by a large box painted black on the

inside.

(4) Measurements are made by using a black piece of an old negative, cut to the size of a slide on which millimeter and fractional millimeter lines have been scratched by a needle mounted on the microtome. The length of a millimeter is indicated by an arrow on each tracing and also its length in millimeters which is the magnifying power.

After the student has made his drawing to any convenient size he measures it in millimeters and using it as the numerator and the length of tracing as denominator he multiplies this fraction into the power indicated on the tracing and indicates this result as the actual magnifying power of his drawing.

Advantages

(1) One microscopic attachment and one extra microscope for teacher's use is sufficient for the whole class.

(2) One slide of each subject and all working on the same thing at once instead of as many sets of slides as there are students in the class, or each student on a different topic.

(3) No eye strain.

(4) No time wasted studying air bubbles and unessential parts.

(5) The subject can be thoroly demonstrated before the class before the student begins his work on it.

(6) Teacher is sure that he and the pupil both see and discuss the same thing.

THE RELATION OF HIGH SCHOOLS TO INDUSTRIAL LIFE E. W. LYTTLE, INSPECTOR, NEW YORK EDUCATION DEPARTMENT, ALBANY, N. Y. The West is large; so is our topic. The industries that have created the West and the interest of the West in schools have no parallels in history. Therefore our topic needs not to apologize for its presence.

Enrolling 1 per cent. of the total population, employing upwards of 36,000 of the most skilled, tho not of the most learned of our teachers, costing in public support, in the private maintenance of pupils, and in the withdrawal of pupils from the industrial activity, about $200,000,000 annually, secondary education in the United States appears already to occupy no small place in our industrial life.

Moreover, the high-school industry is a growing one. Between 1890 and 1904 public high schools and high-school enrolment each increased over threefold. This increase was unusually large because of the rapid conversion of academies into public high schools, and recently has been checked by the unusual demands of business and a high wage scale; yet the report of the commissioner of education for 1904 shows an annual increase of over 5 per cent. of high-school enrolment. Today over 86 per cent. of these secondary pupils are in public high schools.

that as

If one may find the prophecy in present tendencies, it is safe to say soon as the high school can be more perfectly adjusted to life thru the adoption of better courses of study and better methods thru the establishment of evening high schools and continuation courses, 5 or 6 per cent. of our population will be enrolled in secondary schools.

It has been intimated that our high schools are imperfectly adjusted to life. Wherever high-school courses are planned almost exclusively for the onethird of the graduates who prepare for college, and ignore the claims of the other two-thirds, that criticism will have value tho it is less valid than a materialistic age and a commercial spirit conceive it to be.

As high-school principals, we must crave the indulgence of the public for a while yet. We have been so busy growing that we have had little time for careful adjustments. Moreover, from the beginning, the public high school has been the football of the educator politician and of the college professor whose little German is a dangerous thing. Without collusion or mutual agreement, these two have been kicking toward the same goal. Each would make the high school a university, the one by enlarging the curriculum to include everything useful, the other by insisting that everything useful shall be taught in a perfectly useless way. Apparently neither has comprehended the educational axiom of the great apostle to the gentiles, "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I thought as a child, I understood as a child." Under the stimulating efforts of these two friends, our educational system has so increased in stature that it appears today like an overgrown schoolboy whose trousers and waistcoat have parted company by several inches.

• Our secondary teachers have been so isolated in their work, they have had to teach so many things in so many different ways, that they have had little opportunity for co-operation or for reflection. It would be interesting to know just what per cent. of our high-school principals, even in the wildest flights of imagination, ever planned a course of study from the view-point of the needs of their student body.

Today the three greatest industrial interests, commercial, manufacturing, and agricultural demand a share of attention from the high school. Their demands are not only just, but they have a compelling power behind them. Properly heeded, these demands may save the high school from becoming a caste school. Lacking proper control, these same demands will despoil the high school of all that is best in it; for it still needs believing more than ever that "the life is more than meat." The high school is a large part of our industrial life, but it is something far more. It is a large part of our political life. It was no accident that Andrew Jackson and Horace Mann were contemporaries. Neither was that second revival of educational activity which followed the Civil War an accident. Future historians may find it profitable to turn aside from wars and treaties and congresses long enough to note some of the less obvious but more vital factors of a great nation's growth. Some day it may not seem presumptuous to claim that our public-school system is as much blood, bone, and sinew of the Republic as if it were recognized in the written constitution. If our present presumption is not really presumption, then, in future, college influence may not crowd out history to enlarge the boundaries of linguistic studies.

The high school is also a large part of our social life. The rapid growth of the free high school is due in largest measure to the desire for social uplift. If there is any one thing that marks the difference between the secondary school in America and the secondary school in Europe, it is the wholesome social spirit of the American high school. In our small cities and villages, especially, the high school has become a center of social interest second to none.

The social aim of the high school is thought by many to be the creation of an aristocracy. Yes, but of such an aristocracy as the world has never seen. Its aim is not and must not be the creation of an aristocracy of culture. That were little better than an aristocracy of birth or an aristocracy of wealth. Founded on a democracy of labor, the high school can only aim at an aristocracy of service.

Again, the high school is and must be a preparatory school for institutions of higher learning. It needs the college and the university above it, as the tree needs leafage and fruit. There are enrolled in colleges, universities, and professional schools of all sorts, nearly one-third as many students as are in our high schools. The high school is, therefore, bound to the college by ties that it could not sever if it would. But while the more thoughtful college instructors are everywhere recognizing the general truth that the high school is entitled to its own view-points and must meet its own psychological neces

sities, practically thru textbooks, thru syllabi, thru entrance examinations, and thru instructions given in summer schools, these same college professors or their colleagues are trying to clothe David in Saul's armor.

Without going into details, we wish, for instance, to teach science as it should be taught to high-school pupils, and we direct attention to the painful fact, that, while the utilities of science have been greatly multiplied in our daily life during the last ten years, the study of science in our high schools has steadily decreased and is decreasing.

Decry informational study as we may, it still has a place and no small place in the high school. The technical school may be content to send out well-qualified architects who say that the Romans knew little about architecture; the college of liberal arts may send out excellent teachers of English who say that iron rust is a vegetable growth; but the high school should not be satisfied with any such products.

Many of the difficulties that beset the makers of high-school curricula are due to the fact that the high school should be at the same time a school of integration and a school of differentiation. As a political and as a social organism, as a school of general culture, the high school like the elementary school must seek a product more or less uniform. It must aim to make wellinformed, honest citizens, and capable, industrious, and moral men. But in its relations to industry, the great work of the high school must be differentiation. It must send the scholar to college, the mechanic to the shop, the merchant to the store, the farmer to the field. The large cities can differentiate their high schools and some have done so. That is an easy and a cheap solution of the problem. It shifts responsibility from the school to the parent. It may be questioned whether such a solution is a wise one even in the largest cities. In small cities and in villages, such solution is impossible.

Heretofore many schools have made a serious mistake in trying to differentiate too soon, thereby cheapening and materializing high-school education; but the greater number of high schools at present are making the mistake of permitting themselves to be simply a sieve to separate the scholarly from the non-scholarly.

From the magnitude of its work, it must appear even to the amateur, that the high school needs more than four years to properly accomplish its purposes.

What about the cost of all this education? pertinently asks the tax payer. It may become too great a burden. Probably it will become too burdensome for public support and private philanthropy combined. That might be no calamity for the high school. If a way were found to engage high-school pupils for a part of the day in productive industry and for a part of the day in school, it is not improbable that both scholarship and industry would be greatly benefited. At any rate, indications are not wanting that thoughtful men are working out a solution of these possible difficulties.