Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/471

Rh sent to teachers which said that lessons were to be given by "professors familiar with the object methods of teaching and skillful in the use of chalk." Seven hundred teachers signed this circular, and so signified their pleasure at the prospect of receiving such instruction.

While Mr. Cummings was generously providing these courses of lectures exclusively for the benefit of teachers, Mr. John A. Lowell, trustee of the Lowell Institute Fund, made liberal provision for free courses on different branches of natural science, to which teachers were specially invited and which were well adapted to their wants, although not intended exclusively for them. During the winter of 1872-'73, on account of the large fire in Boston and the absence of Professor Hyatt in Europe, the lessons in The Teachers' School of Science were necessarily suspended. In the autumn of 1874 they were resumed and supported by renewed donations from Mr. Cummings. Mr. L. S. Burbank gave thirty lessons on minerals, and distributed the specimens used at the lectures among the teachers. These minerals were then used in the schools



for instruction. This was virtually the introduction of the teaching of natural science in the public schools of Boston. The following winter Mr. Burbank continued his teaching by giving fourteen lessons in lithology to a class averaging ninety in attendance. One hundred sets of seventy-five specimens each were distributed, and many of these sets placed in collections of the city schools. "A supplementary course of field lessons about Boston was voluntarily