Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 43.djvu/73

Rh whose laboratories and lecture rooms occupy almost the whole space. The zoölogical laboratory is at the western end of the front, the mineralogical and geological at the eastern, and between them are the physical laboratory, storerooms, and lecture rooms for these sciences. The botanical and chemical laboratories are in the east wing. The zoölogical laboratory—extending thirty-two by fifty-six feet, flooded with light by a row of southern windows, lined on its northern side by spacious glass-fronted cases of specimens, at its eastern end a large tank for the storage of working materials, on the floor tables, and along the southern side a broad shelf, sufficient in all to furnish room for a hundred workers—wins the heart of the zoölogist. It has a full supply of dissecting apparatus and small microscopes for elementary work, and a fair equipment of large microscopes with accessories for more advanced work. The botanical laboratory is twenty-eight by forty feet. The other laboratories furnish working facilities for forty pupils each. The furnishing of the chemical laboratory is noteworthy for the convenience of the tables, apparatus, and water supply. In the largeness and fineness of the home provided for the natural sciences in this building, as compared with the crowding of these subjects into two or three small rooms in some recently erected normal-school buildings, there is a fit expression of Oswego educational ideas.

The art room on the fourth floor is forty-four by fifty-two feet, admirably lighted, and furnished with fine facilities for teaching drawing. Two of the three literary societies of the school—the Athenean and Adelphi—have private rooms neatly fitted up and furnished by themselves. The rhetorical and literary work of the school is largely done in connection with these societies. The Adelphi and Athenean lay out their own work and conduct their business in their own way. Alternately, about once in two weeks, they give public exercises in the Normal Hall. The Keystone, which embraces the lower classes, is in charge of members of the faculty and occasionally gives a public exercise.

On the ground floor is the workshop, provided with engine, lathes, circular saws, tools, benches, and facilities for various kinds of woodwork. In this the normal students learn to make the simpler pieces of scientific and other apparatus, and get some skill in using tools. In the class in familiar science each pupil constructs his own apparatus for illustrations and thus becomes provided with the necessary apparatus for teaching the elements of science in public schools. A room for clay modeling and one for free-hand drawing is also supplied for the manual training work. The Normal School Gymnasium is on the ground floor of the west wing. Daily exercise is required of all students, and is considered important, both for its immediate effects upon health and