Page:The study of history in Holland and Belgium (IA studyofhistoryin00frrich).pdf/29

 the work eight hours a week. About twenty students take the course each year. They are chiefly candidates for the certificate for hoogere burgerscholen. Among them are also found students of law and medicine, who purpose to enter the service of the colonies, and occasionally one meets an amateur. These students have at their disposal the best maps, the most important special books, Dutch and foreign, as well as almost all the existing geographical reviews, which they find in the library of the University, together with all the collections and publications of the Aardrijkskundig Genootschap of Amsterdam. A little fee of eighty florins (about $34) is given to the professor, who has exclusive use of two large halls, one for lectures and the other for collections. The complete cycle of this geographical teaching requires not less than three years.

First there is a course in physical geography, two hours a week. For the first year M. Kan studies the earth from the point of view of orography, hydrography, geological formation and topography, and explains the principles of the lecture by means of charts. The second year he devotes to seas and coasts. The third year he takes up questions of ethnography and detached chapters of political and social geography, such as density of population, the characters of human races and their distribution upon our globe, the connection between physical geography and the political and moral condition of nations, colonization, religions and their influence upon the different human races, etc.

A second course of two hours a week, which is kept up for three years, is devoted to a deeper study of the Dutch colonies.

In a third course of two hours a week for three years, M. Kan gives a history of geographical discovery.

The fourth course, of one hour a week, is devoted to methodological exercises in intermediate teaching. The students learn to prepare and give lessons in geography of the grade given in the institutions where they will later teach.

The fifth course of one hour a week consists of meetings at which each student in his turn states the result of his personal