2. Why are earthworms found on the sidewalks after a heavy rain?

3. Why, when the drops of water are falling through the air, does the rainbow appear stationary?

4. Why, infreezing ice cream, do we put the ice in a wooden vessel and the cream in a tin one?

5. Why does the frost remain later in the morning upon some objects than upon others?

QUESTIONS ON THE ZONES.

1. Name the five kinds of grain grown in the North Temperate zone you think of most importance.

2. Name the four domestic animals of this zone of greatest use.

3. Give the names of five important wild fruits of this zone.

4. Name seven important fur-bearing animals of the same zone.

5. What fruits are grown only in the warmer parts of the North Temperate zone? 6. What sugar-producing plant is grown in the southern part of this zone?

7. From a part of what plant, grown in the part of the zone referred to in last question, is clothing made?

8. What plant is grown for a similar purpose further north?-Canadian Teacher.

1. Cyprus, in eastern part of Mediterranean; exports cotton, wine, fruits.

2. Aden, a town (fortified coaling station) on S.-W. of Arabia; exports ostrich feathers, eggs and skins of wild animals.

ton, sugar, tea, opium, palms, silk, indigo. It comprises: the peninsula of Hindostan, Assam, Burmah, and western coast of farther India.

7. Ceylon, separated from India by Palk St. and G. of Manaar. Exports tea, coffee, cocoanuts, cinnamon, pearls.

8. Andaman and Nicobar Islands, in Bay of Bengal, are convict settlements.

9. Strait Settlements: west and south coasts of Malay Peninsula and include Singapore, Malacca, Wellesley Province, Penang. Exports sago, tapioca, spices, rice, coffee, guttapercha.

10. Labuan, a small island (coaling station) N. W. of Borneo.

11. Br. North Borneo, exports rice, sago, sugar-cane, pearls.

12. Hong-Kong, an island S. E. of China; center of British trade in eastern seas. III. In Africa.

1. Cape Colony, southern part of Africa; mixed population of British, Boers, Hottentots, Kaffirs. Exports wool, ostrich feathers, diamonds.

It includes: Basutoland between Natal and Orange Free State, and Bechuanaland, west of Transvaal.

2. Natal, N. E. of Cape Colony; exports wool and ostrich feathers.

3. Zululand, N. E. of Natal.

4. Transvaal Republic-under British protection.

5. Br. Zambesia, a wide, undefined region north of Transvaal and south of Zambesia River.

6. Br. Nyassaland between Lakes Nyassa and Bangweolo.

7. Br. East Africa from Zanzibar coast N. W., including the sources of the Nile.

8. Gambia at mouth of Gambia R. (West Africa); exports ivory, palm oil, gold. 9. Sierra Leone, exports palm oil, cocoanuts, india rubber.

10. Gold Coast, exports palm oil and gold. II. Lagos, on the Slave Coast, is the center of the palm-oil industry.

Ex

12. Niger Protectorate, a wide, undefined region including Lower Niger basin. ports palm oil, india rubber, ivory.

13. African Islands, including: Ascension, coaling station; St. Helena,

4. Socotra, an island off E. coast of Africa; is said to produce the finest aloes in the world. 5. Kuria Muria Islands, southeast of Arabia; exports guano.

6. India (Hindostan) has a population of nearly 300,000,000; chief exports are rice, cot

British from 1815 till his death, 1821; Tristan D'Acunha, in S. Atlantic; Mauritius, E. of Madagascar (sugar, coffee, spices); Seychelles, in Indian O.; Rodriguez; Amirante Islands. IV. In North America.

1. Canada, exports wheat, flour, timber, provisions, furs, cattle, dairy products; im

ports coal, metals, dry goods, and mauufactured articles and tropical fruits.

lessons on plants and minerals. We gave out three leaves to each child for a comparison of

able woods, sugar.

"Children, what have you on your desks?" we asked.

"I have three little boats!" cried Freddie. "I have three fans," said Agnes.

"I have a papa, and a mamma, and a baby," said Ethel.

"I have three plates for the Three Bears,"" said Harold.

"I ain't got nothin' but three ole leaves!" announced Pat.

Derision from the kindergarten children. Pat subsided in dismay.

Another time we gave out pieces of flint for a lesson on minerals.

"Children, what have you on your desks?" we asked pleasantly.

"I have a snowball," said Freddie. "I have a little white mouse," cried Agnes. "I have a lump of salt;" said Harold. "I have a lump of sugar," declared Ethel. "I'ist got a ole stone!" cried Pat.

"How many of you have lumps of sugar?" asked we.

At the suggestion all of them had.

"Taste it!" we commanded; and then, "Is it sugar?" we asked severely.

"No, ma'am," replied the kindergarten children feebly.

"Ye ort uv knowed it wasn't sugar!" retaliated Pat; and in our estimation Pat stepped to the head of the class.-Marion Hamilton Carter in the March Atlantic.

CONTRIBUTIONS.

THE PROBLEM OF THE SMALL TOWN.

"One of the most urgent needs of the elementary teachers of the state is a baptism of scholarship," exclaimed one of the most thoughtful and enthusiastic of our institute conductors at the last annual meeting of the State Teachers' Association. This expression meets the writer's unqualified approval, because he believes that such a "baptism of scholarship" will re-vivify the communities in which these baptized teachers may work, and inspire them to preach and to practice the gospel of hopeful work. The writer says hopeful work, because the work of the pessimist lacks inspiration. Our rural districts are capable of being transformed under the influence of energetic and intelligent teachers who are capable of grasping the elements of the problem, and of working enthusiastically towards definite ends. Enthusiasm, it has

often been said, accomplishes all the great things in this world. Pioneers in every field have been enthusiasts, and their lives have been torrents of emotion, skilfully directed by a well-balanced intellect.

But it is not my intention to comment upon the situation in our rural districts at the present time, although some phases of rural life have their analogues in the life of small towns. It is the condition of the small town to which the attention of the reader is invited.

Even a casual observer, traveling over this state, would be impressed with the lack of vitality which characterizes so many of our towns. While some small towns give one the impression of a quiet, healthy, and vigorous life, many others bear the marks of stagnation. Sidewalks are defective, gates hang on ropes, slovenly boys hang around street corners, and the whole presents a down-at-theheels appearance. In every town, no matter how dull, one can find people who are wideawake, even highly cultured, but these believe themselves so greatly in the minority that they lose heart and give up in despair. A feeling of pessimism seems to weigh them down like a cold, wet blanket. This feeling frequently is due to previous failure of plans which they had hoped to carry out with the view of infusing new life into their community. Sometimes repeated failures only could dampen the enthusiasm of these leaders. But this feeling of pessimism appears to me to be quite wide-spread, and presents one of the most discouraging features of the problem.

Perhaps there is no single factor which has contributed more to bring about this apparently hopeless situation than the lack of co-operation among the various intellectual and religious organizations in the town. Not only do churches, schools, clubs, and circles not always co-operate, but they frequently work at cross purposes. Often this lack of co-operation is due much less to a spirit of antagonism than to a lack of appreciation on the part of each of these agencies of the gravity of the situation. They seem to be drifting unconsciously whithersoever the waves of circumstance roll them. A lack of conscious purpose is so often quite apparent. Few seem even to think of the question: Are we drifting or sailing?

This situation points out an almost unlimited field for our teachers. The public school should constitute the prime co-ordinating power of all the intellectual and moral forces of the community. All the different organizations of the town pursuing other than purely material or social aims should stand in vital rela

Per

tions to the public school. This function of the school is essential, because in its proper performance lies the highest justification of our educational system. The perfunctory teaching of a few branches is only the formal side of the public school work. The vital elements in this work are found in the position which the school occupies in the community, and in the manner in which it welds together and shapes the different local factors. haps there is no single test which more clearly separates the most efficient of our graded and high schools from those which are less so, than the manner in which they perform the community side of their work; nor is there, perhaps, a single feature of elementary work which gives the capable, large-minded, and well-balanced principal or superintendent an opportunity to make himself felt than this reaching out from schoolroom into home, office, and clubroom. Parents' meetings suggest one phase of the more recent development of this work. It would be difficult to escape the conclusion that a school which does not properly perform the community side of its work must inevitably become weak in its internal organization and fail, sooner or later, to keep such a hold on its pupils as will insure successful teaching in the classroom. Persons who know our state best are inclined to assert that those schools which, taken as a unit, occupy the most influential positions in the larger life of the community, are also most efficient in formal instructional work. In other words, in case of the school as in case of practically the entire world of animate beings, isolation means death.

Bryce has told us that Americans are unreverent-not necessarily irreverent. Within limits, the Englishman is undoubtedly correct. It is an unpleasant task to show faults, yet the truth must be told. We do lack, if not reverence, then at least respect. We are inclined to speak disparagingly of our mayors, sneer at our councilmen, and laugh with the village crowd when the bully of the town relates his encounter with the marshal. We lend a ready ear to boyish tales about the "cop." It has been said that nowhere are acts of rowdyism" more common than in our small towns. Old and young alike fail to respect position. To do so is supposed to be undemocratic. We say our officials are often men whom we cannot respect. Have we ever thought seriously of making them more respectable by respecting their position? A father once said to the writer that his boy-whom we will call Harry-often, while at home, "played jokes" on the village marshal, that he got

into "scrapes" with the boys, that he assisted in transporting a picket fence, and that he worked a "tick-tack" successfully when the village council was in session, but that he expected Harry to give up all these things after leaving home. In other words, the father could tolerate "rowdyism" in Harry while he was home, but expected him to be-what he had never been before-a gentleman, away from home! This tendency to drag everything down to the level of the commonplace is one of the blemishes of American democracy, and the smaller towns, perhaps, suffer no more from it than the larger ones, yet it may be well for us to keep it in mind at a time when we are devising ways and means of improving life in the less populous places.

In a few paragraphs like these it is quite impossible to mention everything which enters into the problem of the small town. However, the writer has reasons for believing that serious thought along the lines suggested above will yield good results. He forgets neither the advantages of small towns nor the numerous difficulties of the teachers in these as well as in other schools, but he feels strongly that courage and united efforts are capable of bringing about many desirable changes and of accomplishing things which at present seem impossible.

University of Wisconsin.

B. H. MEYER.

PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS AT THE WISCONSIN ASSOCIATION.

It is comparatively easy to discern the need of educational reforms; it is possible to determine what constitute in our time and country true educational aims; these have been set forth many times and urged so forcibly as to carry conviction to every mind. While there is abundant need of the restatement of both, the real difficulty lies in working them out in practice. Because of this difficulty genuine educational reform is slow, notwithstanding the fact that there probably never was a time when its need was more sincerely felt, its pursuit more keenly undertaken.

Modern science was born when men ceased to summon facts to the support of theories already formed, and instead began to question facts in order that they might discover the causes which they reveal. Everybody now knows that this is the attitude that should be assumed and the method that should be employed by students of education in order to arrive at the cause of present failure, wherever it may exist, and introduce a practice more scientific in plan, more worthy in results.

This method is not new to this association; some of our standing committees, the most of our special committees, our present committee of six, are cases in point. The more such work we do, the more stimulating will our association become, the more enlightened our educational policy, the more vigorous and progressive our practice.

Rural Schools.

Papers and reports to which I call your attention are to be presented at these meetings, looking to the improvement of the rural schools. For this improvement there are two general plans: one, to change to a greater or less degree the existing constitution of those schools; the other to preserve them practically as now constituted, and perfect the existing agencies for their improvement. It lies with this association to determine by the exercise of enlightened judgment which of these two general plans is the better, or whether it is best to employ features of both, thus adapting them to the interests of communities differently conditioned. In the meantime there is one thing of which we may be sure—namely, that the change we unitedly urge and support will, in the future as in the past, sooner or later be made. This consideration reveals our responsibility. If the rural schools are suffering, changes can undoubtedly be begun that will result in their improvement, if this professional body can but determine what action, legislative or otherwise, it is advisable to advocate. It seems clear that our ideal of education in the past has been too much the mere getting of knowledge, and too little action. We should train the youth of this country to do something, not simply to know something. Fortunately our social need is in the line with. the great, and too often unheeded, need of children-opportunity for freeing their abounding self-activity. I believe it has not yet more than dawned upon us, how many children suffer in our schools for lack of interesting work to do, and freedom to do it in. I believe we do not yet fully realize to what an extent the duty of the teacher is that of a director of activity, nor how completely a person abdicates the teaching office who persistently suppresses the activity of children. Work, now largely or entirely neglected, may be introduced into rural schools that will furnish greater opportunity for training the activities of children. than much of the present work affords. Living in the midst of nature, but is done little to teach them to look upon it with the seeing eye, to investigate activity, with curious mind and sympathetic heart, its world of matter and of The income of a certain fund has re

life.

cently been placed at the disposal of Cornell university to be expended in making farming districts more attractive to the children and

young people who dwell there. Cornell has employed this fund in teaching teachers in institutions how to occupy children with the attractive and profitable study of nature. Some of our eastern states employ a state director of drawing for the rural schools, whose duty it is to see that this branch, so fundamental to all manual work, so helpful in every field of constructive labor, is regularly and properly taught to all the children in those schools. May I call your attention to the papers that will be presented on this and kindred topics before the drawing section this afternoon. It is quite possible that we work in too much isolation in Wisconsin, that we are too slow to discover and to emulate a good example. If these things are done in other states, if the results are good, if we believe in them, let us work for them until they are done in this state.

Enriching Grammar Grades.

Why do so many children, boys especially, drop out in the upper grammar grades of our city schools, or continue the work with only a half heart, and what can be done to prevent it, are questions that were long ago pointed out as universal and pressing in our country. The cause is undoubtedly complex, and not to be arrived at from a single point of view; but it is doubtless true that the shortening of the grammar school course in some directions and its enrichment in others, with a more vital treatment of subjects taught, would hold boys in these grades longer by increasing their interest in the studies pursued. A child that spends eight years in school should save time enough from the study of arithmetic to acquire some knowledge of algebra and geometry. His study of geography should in that time cause the nations of the earth to stand out as entities, each of which con

tributes to the life of the great world family some individual characteristics; it should teach him to be interested in, and to sympathize with the conditions under which other peoples live and work out their destiny; it should make him intelligent about the great markets of the world's commodities and the commerce by which they are exchanged; in short, it should give the human side of geography its due prominence. His study of history in that time should give him the simple story of the world from the days of Homer, or better, Abraham, to these later days in which his own young country, late upon the stage, and the heir of all the ages, has taken upon herself the regeneration of the islands of

the sea.

But here again our ideal of culture must not overbalance that of action. The average boy in our stimulating social atmosphere wants to do something; he grows tired of studying in order to learn. The true enrichment of the grammar school course will include greater opportunities for setting free and training his activity, as well as wider range and fresher treatment of studies. We undoubtedly need to work out a better course of study for these schools, to obtain a truer estimate of the amount and character of work children should accomplish in the eight years spent in them; we need to secure more vital teaching in them, teachers better equipped in scholarship and disciplinary power, and much better paid in order that they may take advantage of the opportunities for growth that cannot be improved without the means. It is quite probable that we should learn a lesson from Minnesota, and secure the appointment in Wisconsin of a state inspector of graded schools who shall be a specialist in that field. The City Superintendents' and Supervising Principals' association and the grammar school section deal with important questions concerning these schools at this association. commend their work to your attention.

Normal Schools.

I

Our normal schools have greatly increased in number in the past few years. Established in this state more than thirty years ago, it is possible for them to adhere too long or too closely to the original plan of organization. Are their present courses of study such in number, in kind, in extent, as to meet the needs of the communities to whose teaching force they do or should contribute? What shall their future policy be? Should they as many of us believe continue to offer academic instruction as well as, or as an inducement to, professional training? If so, why? What is their

province? Is it the preparation of teachers for lower grade work only? Some of these questions will be presented and discussed at the meeting of the normal section to which I bespeak your attention to-morrow afternoon.

English in Schools.

A wail comes up from all the land that the secondary schools do not make English scholars, that the young men and women who ask admission to the colleges can neither speak nor write English correctly, to say nothing of fluency and elegance. We all know this is too generally true. In the matter of maintaining the purity of our language in this country, we have some serious conditions to contend against; but probably the