Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/266

252 and the flowers bloom; and there must be a collection of the common stones and rocks.

The teacher should prepare for his lesson by observation of the specimens which he is to show; the children should examine, describe, compare, and classify. They should not consider in one lesson all the apetalous families, but should learn to know the gilliflower, the violet, the blossom of the oak, all which they may gather for themselves. They may perhaps be ignorant of diseases of the bone and the operations they require, but they will know the furnishings of a cat's mouth and the peculiarities of the rabbit's, and what distinguishes them both from ours. At the end of the year they will have a very small burden of natural history, but they will have acquired good habits of mind, their intellectual faculties will be developed, and, what is even more important, they will love science and will have a taste for learning. The habit of observation will be exercised out of school hours, and even after they have graduated they will experience an increased pleasure in their walks which will react upon their physical and moral health.—Translated from the Bulletin de la Société Zoologique de France, tome 20.



AST summer it was my fortune to spend the vacation on a unique trip through Michigan. My chum and I went down to Berrien Springs to try our hand selling books, but a week of this kind of life sufficed to show us that the rapid road to fortune did not lie here, as the advertisements would lead us to believe, and we abandoned books, bag, and baggage and joined the great army of men "on the road." Our outfit was very simple. We bought a coil of steel wire, a pair of pliers, and a wooden frame to bend the wire over to make tidy-holders. This was our means of support. Besides this we had a small satchel containing an extra shirt apiece, two clean collars, and other things which we might otherwise find necessary to buy on the way. When we traveled we commonly shipped our goods by freight to some point about a week in advance on our route and then made our way there as best we could, supporting ourselves en route by selling our tidy-holders. On these occasions we varied our costumes somewhat. We buttoned our clean collars to our collar buttons in the back of our shirts so that they hung down our backs under our vests, and carried them there until we needed them, when we made a change. We also wore overalls, which served to keep our 