world produced five races, the new world but one; why the peoples of India, China, and Egypt are stationary and unprogressive; and so on.

Similarly the study of history can be given greatly increased interest and vividness by illustrating its events by reference to museums. How much more fully and accurately can the Indians of our country and the conflicts of the white races with them be understood by a child who has seen representations of their culture and mode of living in a naturalhistory museum than could be the case were his ideas drawn from the average history or from Cooper's novels!

In science work in the higher grades much important work can be done in museums. Classes in botany, both systematic and economic, may find in any good botanical collection numerous opportunities for study. Such materials as woods or fibers, and collections illustrating varieties and uses of cotton, corn, coffee, etc., admit of various application to purposes of instruction, even if herbarium studies must be excluded on account of the fragile nature of the materials.

Classes in zoölogy may study collections such as those of shells, birds, or mammals, with a view to making classifications devised by each pupil which can be compared with those generally adopted. Again, profitable study may be made of collections, such as one of vertebrate skeletons, by assigning the analysis of different bones or limbs to different members of a class. To one, for example, the cervical vertebræ may be allotted, to another the fore limb, or single bones of it, to another the hind limb, and SO on. The pupils are asked to trace these bones thru the different animals and note their variations in form, size, and use. The reports of these observations are then read in the class the next day and discussed. In the Englewood High School of Chicago, mimeographed copies of an outline of study like this or others which are to be made at the museum are given, and the pupils are sent to the museum with these with instruction to make a written report at a certain imminent date. In such ways studies of variation, of adaptation, of mimicry, and of similar subjects may be made on any large collection of mollusks, birds, insects, or other animals.

In some museums, chiefly in Great Britain, regular courses of instruction in science are given in the museums by members of the museum staff. The plan seems to have been tried in this country, so far as I know, only in the Boston Museum of Natural History, and reports do not indicate that such courses are very largely patronized. The school board of Milwaukee has, however, employed for the last three years a museum lecturer, who spends his time at the Public Museum in giving talks to the public-school children on objects of nature study there found. Pupils of all grades above the fifth attend these lectures as part of their school work. The chief difficulties attending talks in a museum at the cases, or what are called in England "museum demonstrations," are the small number who can see and hear to advantage and the fatigue consequent upon

standing for any length of time. To obviate these difficulties in some museums the objects desired for use in instruction are taken to an audience hall and there exhibited as they would be in a class-room. There is some danger, however, of loss or breakage of valuable specimens by this method, and I have not found as much interest aroused when specimens are viewed in this way. Stereopticon lectures in which photographs of the specimens are exhibited answer much the same purpose, and often are to be preferred. General courses of lectures illustrated by the stereopticon now form a prominent feature of the work of nearly all museums, and their educational value is without question great.

Another way in which some museums have endeavored to aid school work is to offer prize-essay contests. Such contests have been offered in this country by the Field Columbian and Carnegie Museums, and in Scotland by the Perth Museum. The results have been most satisfactory and indicate that museums may thus distinctly aid our educational system.

Even without the stimulus of prizes, museum visits may be made to afford excellent sources of essays, written as school work in English or in English and science combined.

We thus see some of the ways in which definite museum study can be carried on. The variations of methods possible are of course endless, and dependent upon the nature of the museum and the collections in it. It is trusted, however, that from these hints the fertile-minded teacher may be able to make applications suited to his or her particular field.

My second suggestion would be to say that museum study should be diligent; and the diligence of the teacher should precede that of the pupils. A teacher would probably not think of teaching any subject in the class-room without having previously become to some slight degree acquainted with it, but museum study appears to be sometimes thought an exception to this rule. No, museum study, like all other kinds of study, requires work, work on the part of the teacher and work on the part of the pupils, in order to obtain the best results.

Given the wide-awake, earnest teacher and I have no fears that the pupils will fail in diligence. It has become a common thing at the Field Columbian Museum to see the pupils of certain teachers spending their time after school hours for weeks in succession earnestly studying some subject assigned by these teachers. The work interested them, they enjoyed it, and their diligent pursuance of it followed as the day the sun.

In the third place, museum study should be delightful. What! I hear it said: Can study of those long rows of specimens having meaningless Latin names ever be made delightful? Is there any draught of pleasure to be quaffed among the dry bones of museums? If they would contain collections of axes with which murderers have killed their victims, or of ropes with which they were hanged, or there were specimens of bicephalic calves, anastomosed trees, or cyclone-twisted lamp-posts to be seen, then

the prospect of visiting a museum might be looked forward to with pleasure.

Unfortunately to those who desire recreation of this sort it is to be said that nature is to be known by her fruits, not by her freaks, and that society has too frequently painful illustrations of the fact that the exciting of morbid curiosity is neither safe nor wise to encourage effort along this line. To arouse a healthy curiosity, however, and then provide means to satisfy it, is to my mind one of the noblest duties an educational institution can perform, and few are better fitted to do this than museums. "Knowledge begins in wonder," and the boy who goes to the museum because he believes it to be a "stuffed circus" may stay because he finds it to have a subtle stimulus. To attain this end it is certainly desirable that museum representation should be made as attractive as possible, and the observer of the times will, I think, find that the present trend of museum development is notably in this direction. Groups and group collections are, wherever possible, being made to replace tiresome and lengthy systematic series. The design and fittings of halls and cases are being made of the richest and most pleasing order possible. No material is thought too costly or precious to serve as settings for even humble specimens. Mahogany and velvet, plate glass and burnished brass, are felt to represeut true museum economy and to furnish the only kind of equipment which ought to be considered permanent. And surely, with Ruskin, we believe that "out of the millions spent to give attractiveness to folly we can spare one to show the honor in which we hold instruction."

Of the fact that museum study is found to be attractive there need be no better proof than that seen in the constantly increasing attendance on these institutions by teachers and scholars. I cannot give many figures to show this increase, for few museums have thus far kept record of such attendance, but I feel sure it is a fact. At the American Museum of Natural History the attendance of teachers and pupils for the purpose of systematic study of the collections was, in 1899, subsequent to May 20, 2,928; in 1900, 5,302; and in 1901, 5,320. The similar attendance at the Field Columbian Museum was, in 1895, 9,118; in 1896, 5,228; in 1897, 8,753; in 1898, 6,585 ; in 1899, 9,131; in 1900, 8,871 ; and in 1901, 9,640. The latter record I regard on the whole as showing a marked increase, since 1895 was the opening year of the museum and the attendance was largely to see what the museum was like. I am confident that if a measure of the real instruction and the value of the instruction received from the museum in this time could be taken this would show a still greater increase. A rather significant result of museum visits which one large Chicago institution reports is that the number of books of fiction which the pupils draw from the library has notably decreased and those on natural history increased. Increase in seriousness and earnestness of study is a result reported by nearly all teachers. The museum impresses the child with

the reality of things and the extent of the world about him of which he has as yet learned little, as books cannot.

Perhaps some to whom I am speaking willingly admit the value of museums as aids to education, and would gladly make use of them if any were accessible, but such is not the case. In answer to such I would paraphrase an old adage and say: "Either find a museum or make one." It is not simply collections of rare objects from remote corners of the globe that are required to constitute a museum; it is collections of any objects intelligently gathered, grouped, and exhibited. There is not an inhabited area ten miles square anywhere in our country of which the fauna, flora, physical features, and industries are not now undergoing changes such as will make an accurate record of them, in the shape of carefully preserved specimens, of inestimable value fifty years from now. Moreover, such collections can, during the passage of the fifty years, be constant sources of instruction as well. Efforts to form such collections must be intelligently made. Spasms of enthusiasm interspersed by long intervals of dust and decay will not bring about the desired results. Such achievements are more likely to prove horrible warnings to the coming generation. What is done must be done well and with an eye to the future. A few well-lighted, well arranged, well-labeled specimens constantly cared for are worth acres of "clutter" and rubbish, for the care of which no one in particular feels responsible. This is not the time or place to elaborate plans for projects of this sort, but I feel sure that the desirability and importance of establishing museums in all good-sized communities is coming to be appreciated, and that it is as certain that patrons of museums will arise at no distant day as it is that patrons of libraries are even now distributing beneficent influences. "Silent reformers," museums have been called by an eminent political economist, and such they are. Both as such reformers and as means for becoming acquainted with those forces of nature whose possibilities we are just beginning to understand, museums have pre-eminent value, for they have power to preserve what is good of the past and to point to what shall be good in the future.

THE PROJECTION MICROSCOPE-ITS POSSIBILITIES AND VALUE IN TEACHING BIOLOGY

AARON H. COLE, INSTRUCTOR IN BIOLOGY, LAKE HIGH SCHOOL,

CHICAGO, ILL.

We are dealing with terms needing definition, in order that we may be sure of occupying common ground. Biology, as used in this paper, includes the study of the vital phenomena of live plants and animals, as well as the details of their external morphology, anatomy, and histology.

Projection microscopes include all types of apparatus by which pictures of actual objects may be exhibited by transmitted light and under various degrees of magnification on a suitable screen. Transparent, translucent, or opaque animals and plants, or their parts, may be substituted for the picture on glass, i.e., the lantern slide, regularly used in stereopticons, and the stereopticon then becomes, in effect, a low power projection microscope. For medium and high power magnification microscope objectives are necessary, and these require a projection microscope attachment, or an ordinary microscope carefully adjusted so that its optical axis coincides with the optical axis of the system of condensing lenses.

True teaching, in biology, must attend, first of all, to the training of the student in the habit of accurate perception of objects and in the formation of correct mental images; for these lie at the very foundation both of an understanding of the phenomena, relations, and structure of organisms and of the intellectual development which results from such an exercise of the student's perceptive and reflective faculties. Whatever information the teacher is called upon to impart should be supplemental to the student's own acquisitions and tend toward directing his energies and broadening his view, never merely cramming his memory.

Three types of mind are likely to be found in any large class: First, there are the minds which are suffering from an acute attack of mental resistance and active protest against study; second, the passive victims, as it seems to them, of a necessary but useless school routine (they are intellectual putty, more or less workable); and, third, the wide-awake young investigator who has caught the spirit of the age but capers over the field of scientific thought without definite purpose or results. How to catch the eye and attention, stimulate intellectual activity, and wisely direct it in all classes of minds is the teacher's problem. Permit me to record the conviction that in the realm of biology there are the natural conditions which ought to lead to a very large, if not the largest, measure of success in conquering resistant and arousing passive minds and directing frisky pupils into definite and effective lines of work.

It is a matter of common observation that any one method will not reach all cases. Experience for a score of years with students of various grades, ranging from first year in high school to post-graduates in college, is the basis on which is founded my growing belief in the wide usefulness of projection microscopes as aids in teaching biology. Time will not permit me to enter into the details of manipulation by which the results are attained, nor is it necessary, as these details are now in course of publication.'

The most important data in reference to the possibilities of the projection microscope may be summed up in the answers to a half dozen practical questions:

Journal of Applied Microscopy and Laboratory Methods.