Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/261

Rh Spencer. Can it be that they are really in such a desperate way in that camp?

volume presents a very large amount of valuable and interesting information in compact form, being in fact a history of progress in science and art for the year. The main part of the book is prefaced with a brief summary of the year's progress. The matter is presented in divisions named according to their nature, in general scientific terms, as Mathematics and Astronomy, Terrestrial Physics, and Meteorology, etc. Much important knowledge bearing directly on the ordinary affairs of life is to be gleaned from the divisions on Agriculture and Household Economy. For instance, the latter contains some valuable facts about lightning and lightning-conductors. Chimneys should be kept clean, as one lined with a thick layer of soot is dangerous, being apt to conduct the current of electricity into the house. The costly copper rods now so popular are condemned, and the ordinary galvanized iron wire, No. 4, recommended instead. A conductor, to be effective, should have no joints nor acute angles, and the lower end should rest in the ground, while the upper should be tipped with a gilded or polished point. Conductors are also likely to become impaired from use, and therefore need occasional examination and repairing. In the division of Materia Medica, a simple and effectual method is given for distinguishing real from apparent death. This is in simply tying a tight ligature around a finger of the supposed corpse; if death is only apparent, the end of the finger will shortly become red.

About meteors and comets, we are told, Prof. Proctor has concluded that comets are detached masses of matter thrown off by planets like Jupiter, Neptune, and Uranus, while in a molten condition. Meteors are fragmentary parts of disintegrated comets. The inflammatory character of meteors has also been established. In May, 1873, two men in North Germany observed a falling meteor strike against a church-tower, and rebound with loud detonation to a housetop. The house soon became enveloped in flames, which spread and destroyed several adjoining buildings. The most startling statement, probably, comes from Secchi, the great Italian astronomer. This is that the sun varies in size. Secchi's hypothesis is, that the sun's photosphere as seen by us is a gaseous envelope, continually, and perhaps periodically, changing in apparent

name of Froebel is becoming as familiar in connection with a method of child-culture called the Kindergarten, as was the name of Pestalozzi a few years ago in connection with the method of school instruction by objects. Froebel's course, like the college curriculum, runs through four years, from three to seven, of the child's life. His idea is not only to furnish objects so as to influence early impressions, but to combine action with observation, and make play-studies available in the first steps of education. Froebel, motherless from his earliest recollections, and then having the experience of a step-mother who neglected him, was drawn by a powerful sympathy to children, whom he thought are generally neglected, and was moved to do something to beautify and enrich their opening lives. That his devices were ingenious, and his own practice probably successful, may be freely admitted, and it must be acknowledged also that he dedicated himself to a noble work; but to what extent he struck the true principles of the management of children is not so clear. Certain it is that many of his followers made but sorry work in their endeavors to carry out his system. Long interested in this question of the first steps in education, and having heard much of Froebel's new dispensation, we sought out a Kindergarten school in London several years ago which was conducted by teachers trained at the feet of the master. The method was there in all its novelty, and it was obvious enough that it contained many excellent features; but, alas! the trail of the school-room was over them all. It had become a routine, and although marching, singing, and various activities, were a part of it, there was the same mechanical