assumed that when apathy prevails in the school-room it is solely the teacher's fault. Oral exercises enable them to escape this reproach by giving animation to school work. It is said that this is a "live system" in contrast to the old humdrum routine of lessons and recitations. But science gets no real help. There is only the substitution of a superficial class-activity for the more deliberate work of the individual pupil. More mental effort is required on his part to get a lesson from a book than to listen to a lesson given by the teacher. The teacher is to do everything and stands in the place not only of the book but of the pupil also. Is this not a step backward in education? The teacher is magnified at the expense of close study, and science is cheapened by the method. Oral-teaching implies a fertility, a versatility, and a proficiency in scientific knowledge on the part of teachers which that class of persons does not possess. It is a premium on tutorial smattering and cramming by which the voluble teacher with superficial acquisitions and a ready memory becomes the model teacher. There may be benefits in this method but science does not gain them. Judicious oral assistance, as in the physical, chemical, or natural history laboratory, given by a competent master to a pupil at work, is invaluable for stimulus and guidance; but the aid must be discreet and the skilful teacher will not talk too much. But where it is all talk and no work, and textbooks are filtered through the very imperfect medium of the ordinary teacher's mind, and the pupil has nothing to do but to be instructed, every sound principle of education is outraged and science is only made ridiculous.

This failure to gain the benefits of real scientific study has its source deep in the constitution of the public schools. In dealing with masses of children, classification became necessary which gave rise, as we have seen, to grading and an elaborate mechanical system. The working of children in lots seems to be a necessity of the public schools but it strengthens the practice of verbal instruction recitations and lesson-giving. It is well fitted to impress the public with the idea that there is much done in the schools. There is a prescribed routine of operations and a display of order that is admired. But teacher and learner are subordinated to the system. It is machine work and machines make no allowances. Gradation assumes and enforces a uniformity among pupils which is not according to the facts. Wide

personal differences of capacity, aptitude, attainment and opportunity, not only exist among children but they are the prime data of all efficient mental cultivation. In the graded schools, just in proportion to the perfection of the mechanical arrangements, individuality disappears. Special original capacity, the main thing, counts for nothing. The mind cannot be trained in such circumstances to originate its own judgments. The exercise of original mental power or independent inquiry is the very essence of the scientific method and with this the practice of the public schools is at war. Moreover, a system which deals with the average mind and does not get at the individual mind breaks down at the point where all true education really begins, that is, in promoting selfculture. The value of educational systems consists simply in what they do to incite the pupil to help himself. Mechanical school-work can give instruction, but it cannot develop faculty because this depends upon self-exertion. Science, if rightly pursued, is the most valuable school of self-instruction. From the beginning men of science have been self-dependent and selfreliant because self-taught; and it is a question whether they have been most hindered or helped by the schools. De Candolle, in his valuable book on the conditions which favor the production of scientific men, says that the discoverers, the masters of scientific method have chiefly appeared in small towns where educational resources have been scanty; and that they have often been most helped by the very poorness of their teaching which threw them back upon themselves. It was to their advantage that the schools were not so perfect as to extinguish individuality and thus destroy originality.

Our strictures are here upon the general working of the public school system; but we recognize that there are many exceptional teachers who do what they can to deal with science in the true spirit, while multitudes of instructors are chafing under present restrictions and groping after something better. The bad system is moreover continued chiefly from the lack of knowledge as to the possibilities of a better. But the better method of teaching science has been proved entirely practicable. The institution where we meet and many other science schools have shown it. A large number of teachers have demonstrated that various branches of science can be taught to the young by the true as well as by the false method. What is now most urgently needed

is to gather from these experiences practical plans of improvement in science teaching for the benefit of those who desire better guidance than they now have.

In his address as Rector of the University of Aberdeen, Professor Huxley said: "I would not raise a finger to introduce more book-work into every art curriculum in the country." We concur in this view as applied to the present science teaching in our public schools. We would not raise a finger to extend it.

President Barnard of Columbia College, in a public address reprobating in severe terms the common method of teaching science as being an inversion of the true order of cultivating the mental faculties, referred to the great benefits which must arise "when our systems of education shall have been remodelled from top to bottom." That result may come about in the fulness of time but it is wise to expect only a slow and gradual improvement. Vice President Grote, in his St. Louis address, pointed out the guiding principle in this case as a substitution of real knowledge for second-hand information by a necessary law of mental advancement. In obedience to this principle, the cultivators of original science should do what they may to raise the standard of our prevalent science teaching; and we respectfully ask that the Association will assign to a committee the duty of reporting at our next meeting on the best modes of improving the teaching of science in our public schools.

EULOGY ON JOSEPH HENRY. By ALFRED M. MAYER.

Ar the meeting of this Association in 1878 a committee, composed of Professors Baird, Newcomb and myself, was appointed to prepare a eulogy on our revered and lamented colleague and former president, JOSEPH HENRY.

This, I will not say labor, but duty of affection, has devolved on me alone. I would that the other members of this committee had laid before you their tributes to his memory, because for years they had been closely associated with him in his social and professional life in Washington. Yet, while Professor Henry had been the friend of their manhood, he was the friend of my boyhood; and during twenty-five years he ever regarded me—as was his wont to say-with a "paternal interest." To his disinterested

kindness and wise counsels is due much, very much, of whatever usefulness there is in me. Hence, I have said that it is a duty of affection for me to speak to you about one who was my beloved friend.

I shall not, however, attempt a biography of Joseph Henry, nor shall I speak of his administrative life as Director of the Smithsonian Institution, for this is known and valued by the whole world. His best eulogy is an account of his discoveries, for a man of science, as such, lives in what he has done, and not in what he has said; nor will he be remembered in what he proposed to do. I will, therefore, with your permission, confine myself chiefly to HENRY as the Discoverer; and I do this the more willingly because I am familiar with his researches, and also because Professor Henry, from time to time, took pleasure in giving me accounts of those mental conceptions which preceded his work, led him to it, and guided him in it.

To appreciate a discoverer rightly we should not look at his work from our time, but go back and regard it from his time; we should not judge his work in the fulness of the light of present knowledge, but in the dim twilight which alone illuminated him to then unknown-but now well-known-facts and laws. I will, therefore, endeavor first to present you with a clear, but necessarily very concise, view of the state of our knowledge of electricity when Henry began his original researches in that branch of science, (65)

A. A. A. S., VOL. XXIX.

5