Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/719

Rh is devoted to certain pyro-electric properties of the alloys of platinum, and the pyrometric use of the principle of viscosity is set forth at length. The monograph is copiously illustrated with cuts of apparatus, charts, and diagrams.

No. 55 is a Report of Work done in the Division of Chemistry and Physics, by Frank W. Clarke, Chief Chemist. It embraces papers recording examinations of a number of minerals, and miscellaneous analyses of various minerals and waters.

No. 56 is a paper on Fossil Wood and Lignite of the Potomac Formation, by Frank H. Knowlton, giving a history of the study of the internal structure of lignites, and systematic descriptions of silicified species.

No. 57 is a A Geological Reconnaissance in Southwestern Kansas, by Robert Hay. It gives an outline of the geological features of the region, incidentally touching upon points that have an economic bearing. The paper Is accompanied by a geologic map of southwestern Kansas, and by diagrams of sections and buttes.

is very proper that the Life of Pestalozzi should be the first biographical work to be incorporated in the International Education Series. No one, perhaps, of the devoted men who have labored for the advancement of education has singly contributed more to its improvement or left a broader mark upon its after-course than he. It is to him, says the author of this work, that we owe the reform of elementary education—a reform, however, which, notwithstanding the progress already made, is far from complete; and his history must, above all, be a history of the great idea which, in its successive stages, he sought to put into practice. This idea was the education of all the people, and that by drawing out their faculties. The conception of a learned education had already been worked out before his time, but this could only be for the few. Pestalozzi's life was an effort to realize his idea of the extension of the privileges of education. It was, Dr. Harris remarks, "a succession of experiments, each ending in a failure of some sort. These failures are followed by a period of depressive reflection, in the course of which Pestalozzi seems to become conscious of the personal weakness or unwisdom that had caused his plans to go wrong. He puts the fruits of his experience into a treatise, and is inspired to begin again a new experiment." These experiments and reflections are set forth in detail in Baron de Guimps's vivid memoir, which is prepared very largely from Pestalozzi's letters. His first experiments were made with his son, upon whom he intended to apply Rousseau's ideas. But he was compelled at every step to stop and fall back upon his own observations and the memory of the teachings of his mother, who had devoted herself with complete abnegation to the education of her children. "Struck by the child's natural need of continual activity, and by the abundance and versatility of its physical, moral, and intellectual faculties, it occurred to him that by guiding all these powers aright, and by varying work in such a way as to prevent fatigue, it would be possible to teach children not only to earn their bread, but to cultivate their intellectual and moral nature at the same time." So he projected his agricultural and manual labor institution at Neuhof, the close of which, after five years, was followed by the publication of a series of works in which his ideas were presented free from all foreign alloy. The results of his succeeding experiment at Stanz, as summed up by Morf, show forth the essential principles upon which the general reform of elementary education in the present century has been conducted. His career at Burgdorf is chiefly remarkable for the illustrations it afforded, in his method and in the books he made there, of the doctrine of sense-impressions as the foundation of instruction. The lamentable failure at Iverdun left Pestalozzi at eighty years of age with his hopes disappointed and his illusions dispelled. But it did not break his courage or stop his activity. He immediately set himself to work, and wrote the Song of the Swan, one of his most remarkable books; the Experiences of my Life, in which he blamed himself for all his misfortunes; a fifth part of his Leonard and Gertrude, and a supplement to his Book for Mothers. The story of his life, the telling of which is invested with a great deal of