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SPENCER

SPEKM

to express his own thoughts. The last-named method is the best test of ability to spell.

With the usual elementary-school child, below the seventh or eighth grades, it is now preferable to teach homonyms (to$ too) separately and without reference to each other. Word-analysis and word-study as aids to spelling are passing from the course of study. They are good ways of helping the child to guess at the spelling of a word from its linguistic derivation when there is no dictionary available, but good spelling in the elementary school now demands a precise, direct and authoritative spelling made habitual by practice.

Spen'cer, Herbert, an English philosopher, was born at Derby, April 27, 1820. His father was a teacher, and the son inherited a taste for natural science, keeping collections of insects and making drawings of them as a boy. His first work was that of a civil engineer, in which he was engaged for about eight years, publishing articles in The Civil En*

gineers* and Architects' Journal. From 1848 to 1853 he was an editor of The Economist. His first important publication was Social Statics in 1850. His great plan was the working-out of a system of philosophy based on the doctrine of evolution, the theory that the world is the result of a long series of changes, produced by force acting on matter and resulting in motion. In applying evolution to the study of man in society Spencer employed assistants to collect and arrange all sorts of facts in regard to customs, worship, government etc. of savage tribes, ancient and modern races. His philosophical writings are very numerous, Principles of Psychology, First Principles, Principles of Biology, Data of Ethics and volumes of essays being among the best known. His brilliant power of drawing conclusions from a vast array of facts, his great knowledge of science and his wealth of illustration made him popular as well as gave him a high position among philosophers. (See FISKE, JOHN.) His most popular works are a small book on Education and The Study of Sociology, He died on Dec. 8, 1903.

Spencer, Mass., an early settled town embracing a group of villages in Worcester County, formerly was a part of Leicester, It is on the Boston and Albany Railroad, ten or twelve miles west by south of Worcester. Here are Sugden Library, an

industrial home for children. Spencer Park, other parks, many churches, schools and other public buildings. Industries include wire-articles, woolen, and underwear goods, boots and shoes. Population 6,740.

Spenser, Edmund, an English poet, was born at London about 1552, He studied at Cambridge, obtaining considerable knowledge ^of Latin and Greek literature, as is seen in his works, and making a friend of Gabriel Harvey. In 1579 appeared his first work, The Shepherd's Calendar, the first note of ^ the great Elizabethan poetry. It was dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney (q. v.}, one of his stanchest friends, whose acquaintance he had made probably through Harvey. Through Leicester, Sidney's uncle, doubtless, he was appointed secretary to the lord-deputy of Ireland, which thus became his home. The country was in rebellion, and Lord Grey suppressed it so cruelly as to be recalled, and Spenser learned the lesson of massacre ana extermination, which he afterward advocated, making his name hateful to the Irish nation. His great work, The Faerie Queene, was begun in England, but the larger part was written in Ireland. The first three books were published in 1590 and brought great fame and a small pension, but no political preferment, as he had hoped. Two more cantos and two stanzas were published in 1596, leaving the poem unfinished. The first two books are those usually read and give the best idea of the beauty of the poem, which places him in the first rank of English poets. Of his other poems, Colin Clout's Come Home Again perhaps is the best known. In 1598, after returning from London to his Irish home at Kilcolman Castle, in an insurrection his home was burned, and he fled with his family to London, which he reached exhausted and desti*

tute. There he died soon after at a tavern in King Street, Jan. 13, 1599. He was buried beside Chaucer in Westminster Abbey. See Spenser and His Poetry by Craik andSpenser by Church, in the English Men of Letters Series.

Sperm (in plants), the male cell which unites with the egg in the process of fertilization. Antherozoid and spermatozoid are terms applied to tb.0

HERBERT SPENCER

Antheridium of a Fern discharging the Coiled Multiciliate Sperms.