chamois-footed nymphs of the Mississippi and Missouri bluffs, and the more web-footed varieties which inhabit some of the muddy sections of the interior; but why should a few ugly facts like these be permitted to spoil a fine theory? Who shall say that after using the uniform system for a few generations the feet of all will not adapt themselves to the uniform mold, so that all our citizens may stand on the same footing? By all means let us have such a law.

OBJECT LESSONS.

In most of our cities and towns, and in many of the country districts too for that matter, "Object Lessons" may be found in the prescribed courses of instruction. The framer of the "course" may never have seen a real object lesson given, and he may not know any one that has seen one, but he thinks it sounds well and gives the course an air of up-with-the-times, so he puts it in on general principles. The result often is that the teacher, who has herself never seen anything of the kind, makes an attempt to carry out the schedule, and succeeds about as well as she would in a lesson on the violin. These attempts have of late years brought object lessons into disrepute, and there is undoubtedly much truth in the assertion that they are often the most objectless of all lessons.

The failure in giving these lessons is due mainly to the fact that the teacher has a wrong conception of their purpose. In an examination which we witnessed some years ago the applicants were asked to explain what is meant by object lessons. The majority answered in substance, that these lessons consist in holding up objects before the scholars and telling them about the objects. Such a lesson while it might impart a little information would fail in the great object for which the lesson is intended-cultivating the observation of the little ones. The object is to teach children to see with their own eyes, hear with their own ears and use their own judgment. When Agassiz gave the would-be naturalist a shell and required him to find out for himself all there was of interest about it before letting him proceed further, he gave him a genuine object lesson.

The object lesson may be made of real value and we hope to see it emerge from the cloud under which it has fallen. We append the following from Eldredge & Brothers' Cultivation of the Senses:

The most suitable subjects for a teacher to begin with in the cultivation of the perceptive and conceptive faculty are 1st, Those that

afford occupation for the hands, thereby gratifying the love of activity, as well as exercise for the senses, such as the Kindergarten "gifts," colored balls, blocks capable of combination in pleasing groups, etc. 2d, Common things, such as a table, a chair, a bed, a poker, a pin, a needle, a knife and fork, a thimble, a feather. 3d, Subjects from natural history, such as the cat, the dog, the cow, the horse, the mouse, the robin, a bird's-nest, a daisy, an apple, an orange, a potato, wool, the lion, camel, etc. 4th, Subjects connected with food and dress, such as bread, cheese, butter, tea, coffee, bacon, rice, sugar, salt, pepper, spice, rice, vinegar; a straw bonnet, cotton, linen, cloth, a shoe, a button, thread, a hook and eye. 5th, Subjects connected with the human body, such as the head, the arms, the legs, the hands, the feet, the eye, the ear, the teeth, the tongue, the nose, the skin, the hair. 6th, Subjects connected with domestic and industrial economy, such as baking, washing, brewing, cooking, building, a butcher's shop, a blacksmith's shop, a tailor's shop, a grocer's shop, a carpenter's shop. 7th, Subjects connected with familiar physical phenomena, such as the sun, the moon, the wind, rain, snow, ice, water, day, night, the seasons, clouds.

Object lessons for infant schools may be conveniently grouped into four classes, corresponding to the ages of the children: 1st, Lessons in which the main purpose is to lead children to perceive the parts and the more obvious qualities of objects. 2d, Lessons calling attention to the less obvious qualities and uses of objects. 3d, Lessons involving an easy classification of things. 4th, Lessons directing attention to the adaptation of means to ends, and thereby exercising the reason. The same subject may be treated in all these ways, the teacher remembering that the senses should be chiefly exercised first, the conceptive faculty next, and the reasoning faculty last of all.

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Object lessons should be continued until children take up the formal study of the subjects under which they are included, physical geography, physiology, chemistry, etc. They should not be limited to the contents of the house, but should include those of the fields and the woods, the granary and the sea-shore. They should not cease with early childhood, but should be kept up during youth, as insensibly to merge into the investigations of the naturalist and the man of science." As far as possible, even in the primary school, lessons relating to connected and kindred subjects should be given in a series, so that the relations between things may be perceived, and in order that new knowledge may be linked on to the old. "Alike in its order and its methods," says Herbert Spencer, "education must conform to the natural process of mental evolution; there is a certain sequence in which the faculties spontaneously develop, and certain kind of knowledge that each requires during its development; and it is for us to ascertain this sequence, and supply this knowledge."

The teacher should in all cases take care to provide himself beforehand with the apparatus necessary for his lesson, the apparatus

and the experiments made with it being, if properly used, in themselves the lesson, and the teacher merely a demonstrator, whose function is not so much to communicate knowledge by word of mouth as to direct and test the child's powers of observation and reasoning. Careful attention should be paid to the order in which the experiments are performed and the specimens displayed.

If possible, the teacher should have the actual object on which the lesson is, placed before the children; and a specimen of it should be given to each child. For instance, if the lesson were on a daisy, each child should have a daisy, and should examine it for himself under the teacher's direction, first taking off one part and then another, and laying each part carefully aside. An enthusiastic teacher will always be on the lookout for specimens for the illustration of his lessons, and will take advantage of times and opportunities to secure them. I recently heard a lesson on the bee, and found that the teacher had had the forethought to secure a complete hive of dead bees, from which he was enabled to furnish every child with a handful at the beginning of the lesson.

If the actual object cannot be had, then a picture of it should be introduced; but it should not be forgotten that a picture is only an imperfect symbol of the object which it represents. It is, of course, a more perfect symbol than a word, because it is not arbitrary and bears some resemblance to the real thing; but it is addressed to only a single sense, and is very liable to mislead even that. It can give no idea, except by way of suggestion from the association of ideas, of resistance, weight, texture, etc. Pictures that are not on the same scale as the objects represented should contain some familiar object to furnish a standard for relative measurement. A picture of a mouse should contain a cat. A picture of an elephant should contain a man. This rule should be invariably observed in lessons on Natural History.

As an auxiliary to all other modes of illustration the black-board should be freely used. Every teacher should be able to draw rapidly and effectively before his class. An illustration may often be drawn on the black-board when no other form of illustration is available. Children love to see a drawing grow under their eyes. Moreover, a black-board drawing enables the teacher to present a complex object little by little, and to exaggerate the scale of important parts of an object that are too small to be clearly seen in a model or complete drawing. In lessons on subjects in which form plays an important. part, as in botany, it is well to get the children to copy for themselves the forms set before them.

In his desire to get children to acquire real knowledge, the teacher should not forget the importance of their acquiring verbal knowledge commensurate with it. Words are indispensable as the symbols of knowledge and should be taught as occasion requires, care being taken that the knowledge of the thing or quality takes precedence of the knowledge of the word designating it. There are some qualities that are common to large classes of objects. It is

not necessary to introduce these into every lesson on objects possessing them. Once they are well known, the teacher may assume the knowledge of them and direct his attention more particularly to distinctive qualities. All the new words should be written on the black-board, and an abundance of examples should be given and required in which the words occur.

Teachers cannot be too careful in performing experiments, in handling and arranging specimens, and in drawing and writing on the black-board, to set an example of neatness, order, and symmetrical arrangement. Clumsy experiments, disorderly heaps of speci mens, bad drawings, illegible writing, and confused black-board work have necessarily a bad moral and intellectual effect on the minds of the children before whose eyes they are constantly presented.

WHICH REMINDS US OF A LITTLE STORY.

The Missouri Teacher has the following in its February No.: The practice of grinding out certificates to those who attend the "Normal" Institutes of Iowa and Kansas is scarcely less contempt ible than that of selling certificates at $1.50 apiece as is done by the county commissioners in Missouri.

This reminds us of a little story: In the early days of '61 we attended a war meeting in a little town in Illinois. Some of the recruits had been imbibing rather too freely at a neighboring saloon, and one of them was sleeping not too quietly on the soft side of a plank sidewalk. The orator of the occasion was the proprietor of a farmers' store at which you could purchase anything from a threshing machine to a box of Ayer's pills, and in passing out through the crowd after delivering his speech, and while he was yet full of patriotism and generous impulses of every kind, his eye fell upon the fallen hero. Turning to the saloon-keeper, who was standing near, he struck an attitude and with a withering look and tone, he pointed to the sleeping beauty and said loud enough to be heard by all in the vicinity, "Look there at the effects of your damnable traffic!" The saloon-keeper had to make an apology of some sort, so he said with a shrug of his shoulders, "Well, you sell him de yug!"

Any old subscribers not wishing their Journal continued should notify us, as it will in all cases be continued till ordered stopped, and until all arrearages are paid. In writing to us, be sure to give your postoffice address, that we may know where to find your name on our books. Address,

IOWA NORMAL MONTHLY, DUBUQUE, IOWA.

LETTER FROM MISS KELLOGG.

The following letter from Miss Kellogg, Ex-Superintendent of Decatur County, will be read with deep interest by a multitude of Iowa teachers, who remember her as a noble, self-sacrificing woman. We most heartily commend the cause she so eloquently advocates: TOUGALOO, Miss., Jan. 21, 1882.

I never read a notice of a meeting of Iowa teachers without wishing I could have been there. I attended the Ohio State Teachers' Association last summer at Put-in-Bay Island, a very attractive Lake Erie summer resort, but I was thoroughly homesick and felt myself "a stranger in a strange land" as I have not at any other time since leaving Iowa.

The papers were generally very good and the discussions animated, but the social element seemed to me almost utterly lacking, except in the immediate vicinity of the genial Ex-Commissioner of Schools, Mr. Burns. He has within him a living fountain of conversational wit and pleasantry constantly bubbling over so freely that he was at all times the center of an oasis in the social desert. Yet the desert was very arid. All were equally away from home, and, what added to the sense of orphanage, there were no devotional exercises until the very close. The weather was extremely warm, the hotels densely packed with summer boarders and pleasure parties in addition to the Association, and very few ladies were in attendance. The principal questions discussed were Normal Schools, County Supervision and the Township System, in all which the Buckeye State is very far behind the Hawkeye.

During Christmas week, while you were in session at Oskaloosa, I was attending a State Teachers' Association which interested me deeply-that of the colored teachers of the state of Tennessee.

I left Clyde Thursday evening before Christmas in company with my cousin, the president of this school, and reached Nashville the next Saturday morning early. The morning being a rarely bright and glorious one, we went on to Murfreesboro and spent the day on the battlefield of Stone River, clambering over brier-grown fortifications, recounting the particulars of the engagement, "all of which "one of our number "saw, and part of which he was;" visiting the lonely grounds of the national cemetery in which more than six thousand warriors sleep their last sleep, and calling up there the tender, eloquent words of President Lincoln at Gettysburg.

A conference of the officers of the American Missionary Association with the heads of the higher institutions of learning founded and fostered at the South by that society, for the education of the sons and daughters of the freedmen, gave me a chance to listen to Dr. Ward, editor of The Independent, Ex-Gov. Washburne of Massachusetts, Gen. Armstrong of the famous school at Hampton, Va., et al.

There are three colleges for colored people in Nashville: Fisk