Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/276

266 models of simplicity, and contain a general review of the subject treated. They are intended to give just such accounts as are calculated to inspire the teacher with the truths of nature, and at the same time to teach her the simplest and best way of impressing the facts upon the minds of young pupils. In the introduction to the work on pebbles, the author says: "When properly considered, the essay is a series of suggestions, not an exact, cut and dried process. The memorizing of a single part will spoil the effect of the design. If the older scholar, when the lessons are finished, can not go through with the whole process and show what he has been taught with the specimens, it may be considered as proof that it has been done too quickly for him to fully comprehend each of the various steps by which a pebble is formed." The same plan as the one so successful in the Teachers' School has been suggested for the public schools—that each pupil be supplied with a specimen of the object, and that they be asked in turn to point out its features.

During the first few years after the United States Fish Commission was founded. Professor Hyatt spent his summers at the summer station, being allowed by the kindness of the commissioner to collect specimens to illustrate his lectures. Since then, with but one or two exceptions, his summers have been spent at Annisquam, near Gloucester, Massachusetts, where he can study in quiet seclusion. Previous to 1879 he had been in the habit of allowing a few students from the Institute of Technology to study with him in his private laboratory at Annisquam. Soon, however, the number of applications became too numerous, and he could no longer accommodate all, so that in 1879 steps were taken toward founding a general laboratory of natural history to be situated at Annisquam. Each summer the laboratory has been open under the directorship of Professor Hyatt, assisted by Professor Van Vleck, who has immediate charge of all the work. The laboratory was founded and is supported by the Woman's Educational Society of Boston, and is open to both sexes, investigators and teachers being given the preference. Each year the tables are full, sometimes there being as many as fifteen in the laboratory at a time, including some original investigators. The student is given a specimen, and is told to study it carefully and see as much as he can; then to verify his results by referring to Mr. Van Vleck at first, and then to books chosen by him. Professor Hyatt endears himself to all who study with him by his kindness and the interest which he takes in the individual work of the pupil.

A museum as large as that of the Boston Society of Natural History, under the charge of a man so full of original ideas and having the interest of science-teaching at heart, and, at the same time, having such an experience at home and abroad, must of necessity undergo important changes and become unique in its plan. To show the ideas which Professor Hyatt entertains, we quote from his annual report as