Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/53

Rh Apart from the class visits, teachers are making a practice of sending individual pupils to look up specimens and seek information at first hand. This plan has been followed more particularly in bird and plant study. Another means of rousing interest is through competition for prizes for the best collections or reports. Last year the supervisor of nature study offered a prize for the best collection in mineralogy, and the twenty-seven sets of specimens entered were exhibited in the museum and attracted much attention. This fall prizes were awarded for the best work done in collecting and studying beetles by any pupil below high school grade. In connection with this contest, two talks were given on 'Beetles and how to collect them,' and two excursions were conducted under the auspices of the museum. Ten children presented collections numbering in all 1,806 beetles. The prize winner had collected 202 species and 28 food plants. A number of rare specimens were among those presented, and the results showed that the young people had spent much time on the work with genuine interest and careful thought. There are many profitable lines on which such contests may be conducted.

Pupils from the high school are encouraged and guided to use the museum in connection with the study of zoology, botany, mineralogy and physiography. Teachers in the high school draw freely on the resources of the collection for specimens and are allowed under simple conditions to take out specimens for use in recitations and lectures.

Cooperation between schools and museums has been worked out in detail in many places in England, notably in Liverpool, Leeds and Manchester, and with excellent results. The director of the Liverpool Museum, Henry 0. Forbes, in a special circular dated July, 1902, reaches the following conclusion: 'That these efforts to interest children in nature study are producing good results is strikingly demonstrated by the way in which school children avail themselves of holidays to voluntarily visit our museum—the fact of a school holiday being of late always unmistakably indicated by the invasion of the museum by school children who evince a growing interest in the exhibits.'

Each year definite class-work is conducted in the Springfield Museum. During the past winter, twelve exercises on the chemical and physical properties of minerals with simple tests for determination were given by the assistant curator. A volunteer class in plant study was formed in the early spring and has continued to hold weekly meetings, with the exception of the two months of summer. Another means of arousing public interest has been found in the informal evening openings. During the season of 1901-02, six talks were given at these openings on such topics as 'Vegetable Fibers,' 'Industrial Insects, 'The History of a Lake,' and on 'Plants,' 'Buds' and 'Galls.' Special