(2). Geography of the sea and climatology, two hours; (3). Geography of the Mediterranean and the Mediterranean countries, two hours; (4). Geography of America, two hours. In the seminaries, geographic explorations with the literature of travel, and the study and use of maps, formed the basis of the work. The department at Leipzig was under the direction of Professor Ratzel, the author of the justly celebrated Völkerkunde, and his assistants were Hettner and Fischer.

German students do not begin the study of geography in the university: there has been an extended study of the subject in the elementary and secondary schools. The following table shows the time devoted to the study of geography in the different types of German schools, with the time devoted to the subject in the public schools of Boston, which I think may be considered typical of American schools:

The number of high schools in America giving instruction in geography is admittedly small, so that the average child in this country gets about the equivalent of ten to twelve hours as against fifteen to twenty in Germany, and in the latter country distributed throughout the school course. What is true of the elementary and secondary schools is equally true of the normal schools. At Weimar, for example, where the students are admitted after completing the course of instruction in the elementary schools (8 years) a six-year course is provided in the normal school. Geography is given two hours a week the first, second, third and fourth years, one and a-half hours the fifth year and one hour the sixth year, or

ten and a-half hours for the six years. At Bridgewater, Mas which may perhaps be taken as a type of the better Americ normal school, geography receives five hours for one-half yea The subject is recognized as having large educational value in th intellectual development of the German child, and this recog tion finds expression in all their courses of study and recitatio programs.

Home geography (Heimatskunde), the study of the local form and forces within the observation of the child, preliminary to th more formal study of the book, is peculiar to Germany. This also an incorporation from Pestalozzianism. Hennig, who was student in the normal school at Yverdon for a longer time tha Karl Ritter, published in 1812, his method of teaching geography and Fingers's Method of Instruction in Elementary Geography which continues to be the method of procedure in Germany, i based directly upon Hennig's work.

German home geography is based upon a study of geographic features within easy reach of the school house, by means of excur sions through the town, or to country places not distant from the town. Teacher and children make the excursion together dur ing school hours. Sometimes it occupies a half-hour; sometimes two hours; sometimes a half-day. In a German town of 15,000 inhabitants I occasionally accompanied the second grade of a primary school on these geographic excursions; and more orderly, systematic instruction I have never seen. The purpose of the excursion was generally stated by the teacher before leaving the school room. When the place was reached, a halt was called, and the open-air lesson was begun. Sometimes it was in crowded streets in the town, with incessant streams of passing carriages, but the children took no heed of the passers and the passers paid no attention to the children, for they had been taught geography that way themselves when they were young. Agassiz said some years ago of elementary science in the schools of America, "We study Nature in the school room and go out doors and cannot find her." This cannot be said of Germany, since the early work both in nature study and geography is largely done in the open air. These out-door lessons consist of observations on the forms and forces of land and water, study of the economic uses and collection of plants,

animals and minerals, visits to local factories and industries, and sketches and drawings of the objects and forms studied. In this particular primary school, the geographic excursions came fortnightly; and although home geography came twice a week, the observations and drawings were made the basis of the indoor instruction during the intervals.

Learning lessons from the book-committing geographic facts to memory-so characteristic of our work in the United States, is almost unknown in Germany. A German school superintendent, in the printed directions to his teachers, says: "Geography being so full of matter, and most atlases and text-books so crammed with numbers and names, the teacher is easily tempted to exact too much from the pupils. Be moderate in your demands on the memory. This should be your rule: Leave unlearnt, if possible unmentioned, whatever in the way of figures and names cannot be permanently remembered, whatever seems unessential to the aim and sequence of the subject, and whatever cannot be used in illustrating a general principle."

The study of people—the human side of the study-receives larger consideration there than here. It was not uncommon to find German children knowing much more about the American Indians, for example, than I. The social and industrial life of the different races, with their physical and mental characteristics, is studied by the aid of descriptions, pictures and charts. Völkerkunde, the races of man and their geographic distribution, begins early in the school course and continues through the university. Our own literature on this subject being so barren, Mr. Butler and Professor Tylor have placed all English speaking students and practitioners of geography under lasting obligations to them for the admirable translation of Professor Ratzel's great work on Völkerkunde. (Macmillan, New York, 1896).

In the use of pictures, German geographic practices differ widely from the English and American. Pictures are studied quite as much as texts. “Das Bild spricht beredter als die beste Schilderung die wir hören oder lesen" (the picture speaks more eloquently than any description we can hear or read) is a German pedagogical maxim that is nowhere more frequently applied than in the teaching of geography. Collections of pictures illustrating

people, customs, landscapes and physical features, such as Ferd nand Hirt's Geographische Bildertafeln (5 vols.) are numerous an inexpensive, and the school children are taught to read the picture

The purpose of this article is not to glorify German method and disparage American practices; but to show what is done i the one country that seems to be rational, and what is left undon in the other that would be helpful. Geographic instruction in English-speaking countries is confessedly unsatisfactory; and it i the belief of the present writer that to attain better results w must-to borrow an expression from Pestalozzi-turn the geo graphic wagon right round. And Germany has a good many lessons to teach us, the lessons of long and successful experience. For nearly a century geography has been well taught in all her elementary and secondary schools; her universities have dignified it; her normal schools have given teachers adequate preparation to teach the subject; geographic museums have sprung up throughout the empire, bringing to the attention of school officials the best aids and appliances; geographic societies, in even the smaller towns, with frequent lectures to the people, have broadened and deepened the study in the later life and larger experience; and geographic journals, both scientific and pedagogic, have regularly brought to the notice of teachers and taught the latest and best development of geographic thought.

STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, Westfield, Mass.

WILL S. MONROE.

SOME SUGGESTIONS REGARDING GEOGRAPHY IN GRADE SCHOOLS.

The problem of "What is Geography" and what we should include and teach under this science without conflicting with the fields of other sciences, has been much debated and argued; in fact, much energy and a great deal of valuable time, that might much better have been devoted to the consideration of the principles and aims of the teaching as a whole, has been taken in an argument over terms. For the purpose of the paper we have in hand, let us define geography as the study of the earth in its relation to man. In other words, it is the study of all those features, char

acteristics and conditions of the earth that influence or have influenced man in his history, development, exploration and life. Such a study of all the fundamental features that have worked alone or in co-operation to cause man to have his present distribution over the earth, and to give him certain characteristics in those localities, involves the understanding of many different things; each one of which, has had a primary or secondary importance in determining the present conditions. The study of the geography of the world, therefore, involves the study of these fundamental features among which are the distribution of land and water in the great continents, their topography or shape, the distribution and character of the rivers, the climate and its effects, the winds, ocean currents, the soils, the shore line and many other things. These, are the geographic factors, the conditions of air, and earth, and water which have determined very largely the history and distribution of mankind. Besides these conditions which may be called the physical features of the earth, man has been influenced, and very largely, by other controls that we may term economic. He is dependent for his life and for his ability to overcome the obstacles of nature in many ways, upon animals and plants, upon the cereals, fibres, minerals, fuels and other products of the surface of the earth or from within it. Therefore, in order to understand the problems relating to the geography of man, we must understand also the conditions which have determined the localization in the world of these other objects upon which man is so dependent.

Everything that is alive upon the face of the earth is influenced by conditions of climate, temperature, altitude, etc., as is man himself; hence, in studying the descriptive geography of these many forms of life, we are brought face to face with fundamental physical principles which apply to all. We must study these principles and their effects, both on the organic and inorganic features, and trace out the causal relations between physical and economic factors and the results as we see them. We study the cause when we examine the reason for the present conditions. We study the effect, when we arbitrarily discuss the location in space of the present features of the earth without any reference to the reasons therefore. The rational method is to study the causes and the effects in their relations.