Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/739

Rh were asleep beneath a garment of snow and ice three feet thick, as we found by actual measurement.

Hitherto I have been speaking of the study of natural history. I shall now speak of the way we studied culture history: the history of man, his struggles and progress.

As the reader will have gathered, the study of nature in this school was by direct observation. Books were used, to be sure. The school library contained many books about nature, and the readers used were Wood's 'Natural History Headers' But the books were not the center of the study; they were merely accessory.

As with natural history, so with culture history. We began by observation. To get a large view of their native place, some six outings were spent in compassing the city on foot. Practical elementary lessons in surveying and mapping to scale were given, beginning with the schoolroom. Then a map was made of the city and its environs, and the course followed in the walks indicated, as well as the topography and the important buildings and public works. Visits were paid, mostly in the winter, to various institutions: to Parliament and City Hall and Market; to the shops of the jeweler, furrier, picture dealer, florist and maker of musical instruments; to the various factories and offices to see men wrestling with resistant matter in its various forms of wood, tin, copper, iron, stone; the lumberman, the joiner, the turner, the carver, the stone molder, the mason, the bridge-builder, the diver, the blacksmith, the printer, the bookbinder. We also attended the Ottawa Valley ploughing match just before winter set in, and visited the Experimental Farm at all seasons.

Meanwhile, the history of our city and district from the days of the sturdy backwoodsman to the present was unfolded and maps were made of the county and district. The industries of the locality were studied as conditioned by its peculiar resources in soil, timber, minerals and water-power. Then the early history of the various provinces and of the Atlantic states was narrated. The gist was given (with occasional reading of the more interesting parts) of many works relating to the discovery, exploration and settlement of the various parts of the American continent by the races of Europe. A map was drawn and so marked and colored as to give a bird's-eye picture of the course of discovery and settlement. In another map the native districts of the Indian aborigines were indicated, and something was told of Indian character and legend. Here again the school library was a valuable adjunct in the work, and sometimes the boys brought from their homes books bearing upon the subject in hand.

The parents have freely expressed their appreciation of the methods of the school.

I have tried to describe the value of this natural education, yet I have scarcely touched upon one aspect—perhaps most important of all,