and Carthage-being quite given over to desolation. Our own country exemplifies, within a smaller space and time, the same relation of gities to history. Mentz-first Roman, then the seat of archbishops and electors, then under the French dominion, and now Bavarian ; Treves and Cologne-earlier Roman towns than Mentz, afterward the seats of archbishops and spiritual electors, and now Prussian; &c.

These ancient cities, then, which have survived the changes of time, and the seas, mountains, and rivers, which existed before man, are the permanent monuments with which it is of inestimable importance that pupils should become acquainted, for the sake of all their subsequent historical studies. They will thus readily understand the geography of the ancient historians. When they see the maps of ancient Gaul, Spain, &c., they will at once recognize the Arar as the Saone, the Matrona as the Marne, the Bætis as the Guadalquivir, &c.; Rotomagus as Rouen, Lugdunum as Lyons, Cæsarea Augusta as Saragossa; Abnoba Mons as the Black Forest; &c.

The geographical instruction thus far described is either immediately concerned with actual intuition by the senses or is closely connected with it. In this way the pupils have gained a knowledge of the seas, mountains, plains, rivers, and lakes, and the most important countries, and their boundaries, mountains, rivers, and cities. It is now time to give them a brief and clear description of the various races of men, languages, religions, and forms of government.

After all this, there remains but little to say of the description of particular countries-that is, of what particularly characterizes each individual country and nation, and distinguishes it from others. Here is the first place where more detailed descriptions of the principal cities can properly be given; pictures of them being used where practicable. But nothing should be protracted too far.

In this manner, according to my view, should the foundation be laid for future geographical and historical studies. These, again, may be carried further and relieved, by the reading of good travels, newspapers, missionary reports, &c. The pupil will now find his own knowledge so confirmed that he can proceed with no further aid, if he has good maps. He will also find himself sufficiently at home in any part of the earth to understand its ancient geography.

But all this fixation and extension of geographical knowledge is chiefly gained by means of books and maps. It is only in the first commencement of it that we make use of any immediate knowledge of a very small part of the earth's surface-namely, of the pupil's place of abode, and the vicinity of it.

It may be asked whether then I have wholly given up my earlier views, above described, on the method of instructing in geography? By no means. I only convinced myself, as I have shown, that the practice of draughting the neighborhood of home, with which that method begins, was not proper for beginners. Older scholars, who have gained a knowledge of drawing, may, however, practice it with advantage. But this prosaic method, as I may call it, of observing and delineating, should always have a poetic side; it should be made useful in instructing the pupil to draw landscape from nature, and especially to gain facility in sketching.* If travels in Germany and in such other countries as are most beloved by and interesting to us Germans are the best preparatory school for understanding all the countries and people of the earth, the young must be made ready for these travels by the acquisition of such knowledge and accomplishments as will be of most service in them. But landscape drawing and architectural drawing occupy an important place among these.f

An adult person, desiring to know what further knowledge and accomplishments are useful to those who travel, would ascertain to the best advantage from reading the travels of distinguished writers, like Goethe, Humboldt, &c. The acquirements of these men are shown by what they accomplished.

Here I pause. Having thus endeavored to trace the course of geographical study from its very first rudiments, I refer, for the ultimate aims of geographical study, to what I have extracted from my dialogue on geography, already given.

* I have given my views more at large on the relation between landscape painting and map drawing in the first part of my Miscellaneous Writings, p. 29.

+ Unfortunately I am no draughtsman. In order in some measure to supply this deficiency, I used, while among the Silesian mountains, to make out from elevated poiuts a sort of panoramas, on which I entered, with the aid of a compass, the names of mountains, towns, &c., in their proper directions, pufting the furthest further and the nearest nearer from my own position in the center of the paper. These panoramas frequently proved each other's correctness. If, for instance, I had laid down Mount B. south-east from Mount A., then, in drawing from Mount B., Mount A. would be north-west of it.

VII. INSTRUCTION IN NATURAL SCIENCE.

[Translated from Raumer's "History of Pedagogy," for the American Journal of Education.]

INTRODUCTION.

I PRESENT here materials both new and old. I printed some essays on instruction in natural science as early as 1819 and 1822, in the first and second volumes of my "Miscellaneous Works," (Vermischten Schriften ;) and in 1823 I wrote a programme "On Instruction in

Natural Science in Schools."

Although, during an uninterrupted course of teaching since 1823, I have made new experiments, and have had occasion here and there to seek out and to open new paths, yet my original views on the subject have not substantially changed.

Even during the period of my own studies, I felt a repugnance to the usual course of this instruction. From 1805 to 1808, I heard lectures on mineralogy in Freiberg, from my never-to-be-forgotten teacher, Werner. His school has scarcely its parallel; pupils came to Freiberg from all parts of Europe, and even from Asia and America. And from that school what men have proceeded-Alexander von Humboldt, Steffens, Novalis, Schubert, Weiss, Mohs, and how many more!* Werner's oral delivery was a model of lucidity and order; and his descriptions of mineralogical species left nothing to be desired. But when he had described perhaps ten species, and had scarcely a quarter of an hour left, he would have the cases which contained these ten groups opened on the table before us. It was a very torture of Tantalus, to gaze with straining eyes at these, endeavoring in so short a time to obtain a distinct impression of the appearance of so many different species. To do this, indeed, was impossible, even for the most ardent and attentive learner; and they would have gained, not an actual knowledge of minerals, but only fragments of it, had Freiberg afforded no other means of acquiring it. But traders in minerals came there from the most distant countries, and of them the students, amongst whom some were usually quite rich, purchased. Every one had a larger or smaller collection of minerals; and they showed their treasures to each other, and talked about them, and

While I was in Freiberg I ate at a boarding-club, which consisted, besides us Germans, of a Swiss, a Frenchman, a Roman, a Spaniard, and three Russians, one from Nertchinsk, which is near the Chinese boundary-line.

studied them together. But this was not enough. After, therefore, I had attended the lectures twice, I engaged private lessons from Werner, merely for the sake of going through his excellent collection under his direction. When, in 1811, I was appointed professor of mineralogy at Breslau, I saw that, under the circumstances of that situation, I must pursue a different course from Werner's, and must proceed as much as possible by the way of intuition, and keep the oral part of my instruction in the background, in order that my pupils might gain some actual mineralogical knowledge. For Breslau of fered none of the outside assistance which was accessible at Freiberg; the academical collection being the only one from which the students could gather any information.

Besides

I shall hereafter describe the method to which I resorted. the students, I had other hearers also. I offered to the rector of the Breslau Gymnasium to instruct any of his scholars who might have a special taste for mineralogy, and had the pleasure of always having some gymnasiasts under my teaching during my eight years' stay there; and my experience in Göttingen was similar.

I was transferred, in 1819, from Breslau to Halle, where I taught on the same plan, and also gave the mining pupils practical lessons, in the neighborhood, in the mode of examining mountains. In 1823 I left Halle and went to Nuremberg. Here, as instructor in a private school, I had an opportunity of instructing boys of from ten to fourteen in mineralogy, and had the use of a good collection for the purpose. I also endeavored to make my pupils acquainted with the vegetable kingdom, by the method which I shall hereafter describe.

I received my present appointment to the professorship of natural history and mineralogy at the University of Erlangen in 1827. Here I taught mineralogy to the gymnasiasts in the same manner which I had previously made use of; but to the students in a somewhat different one. Instruction in general natural history was a somewhat novel employment for me. It was evident that in this department I could not, as in mineralogy, begin with the observation of nature herself. How could this be done, for instance, in mathematical and physical geography? It was a matter of course that, as things then were, oral instruction must be the principal resource, notwithstanding that very many points might be made as clear as possible to the senses by means of exhibiting natural objects, pictures, maps, models, &c.

So much I have said by way of preface, to give the reader a general view of the course which I pursued in learning and teaching natural history; and to make it properly clear that mineralogy was my chief object.

I. DIFFICULTIES.

The teacher of natural science might well turn dizzy when he considers the vast compass of his subject, and the mental power and exertion which they demand.

Their extent is increasing daily. Where Hipparchus and Ptolemy saw 1,022 stars, Lalande and Bessel saw 50,000; where the Greeks and Romans knew 1,500 species of plants, Stendel's "Nomenclator Botanicus" for 1821 gave 39,684, and its second edition, in 1841, no less than 78,005, without reckoning the cryptogamia. Thus the number of botanical species has nearly doubled itself within twenty years. In zoology there has been a similar increase. The twelfth edition of Linnæus' "System" included about 6,000 animals, while Rudolf Wagner, in 1834, enumerated about 78,000. The greatest German mineralogist, Werner, who died thirty years ago, in 1837, would not now know the names of more than one-third of the species of minerals now recognized.

In physics and chemistry there has been a similar growth. This can not be so well expressed by numbers; but almost any one can recall many of their doctrines, of which nothing was known a hundred years since.

The teacher, in casting his eye over this broad ocean of knowledge, might well despair of being able to fix upon a beginning, a path to pursue, and an object to aim at, for his pupils. And this despair might well increase, on considering how far scientific training is carried in these various sciences, and what deinands are made both upon pupil and teacher. In most branches of natural science--including the higher ones-mathematics holds the scepter; and to him who is not master of that study the gates of their paradise seem to be entirely closed.

II.

OBJECTIONS TO NATURAL SCIENCE IN THE GYMNASIUM ANSWERED.

But these difficulties in the nature of the study are not all. Still others, raised by the adversaries of natural science, arise against its pursuit in the gymnasium; and of these we shall now speak.

Unless, say these adversaries, you propose to claim, with Jacotot, that we ought to be able to teach what we do not understand, you must admit that instruction in natural science must be given up, for the reason that there are no teachers who understand it. We answer, It is not to be denied that heretofore the incapacity in this department of many teachers has been plain enough. Without any knowledge of minerals, plants, or animals, they all lectured to the boys out of Raff's or Funke's natural history, made them commit to memory the descriptions of animals, &c., and then questioned them on them. But men always generally escape from such errors as this.