When you have laugbed over the absurdity of the following blunders, stop and look at them a little more closely. It will appear that most of them may be arranged in two classes. The first are those in which the pupil is led astray by substituting a word for another which sounds something like it. The first, fifth, and seventh are of this class. The second

are those in which several statements belonging to different persons or events are combined into one heterogeneous whole. Of this class are the second and third. A large proportion of pupils' blunders, especially in geography and history, fall under these two heads. Let the teacher recognize this fact, and take special pains to prevent such mistakes, using the methods that he finds to be most effectual:

The Youth's Companion says Miss A. C. Graham has taken a prize for the best collection of pupil's blunders, and gives the following as literal copies of the originals of some of them:

Esau was a man who wrote fables and sold the copyright to a publisher for a bottle of potash.

Oliver Cromwell was a man who was put in prison for his interference in Ireland. When he was in prison he wrote "The Pilgrim's Progress" and married a lady called Mrs. O'Shea.

Woolsey was a famous general who fought in the Crimean war, and who, after being decapitated several times, said to Cromwell: "Ah, if I had only served you as you have served me, I would not have been deserted in my old age.' Perkin Warbeck raised a rebellion in the reign of Henry VIII. He said he was the son of a prince, but he was really the son of respectable people.

The heart is is a conical shaped bag. The heart is divided into several parts by a fleshy

Squibs poking fun at some of the peculiarities of the English language are very common, but we do not remember to have seen one that presents the variety of English plurals so well as the following. It might be a good exercise for the teacher to explain to his pupils some of these forms, which are shown up so wittily:

ARBITRARY ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

We'll begin with box, and the plural is boxes, But the plural of ox should be oxen, not oxes. The one fowl is a goose, but two are called geese,

Yet the plural of mouse should never be meese. You may find a lone mouse, or a whole nest of mice,

But the plural of house is houses, not hice.
If the plural of man is always called men,
Why shouldn't the plural of pan be called pen?
The cow in the plural may be cows or kine,
But a bow, if repeated, is never called bine;
And the plural of vow is vows, never vine.
If I speak of a foot and you show me your feet,
And I give you a boot, would a pair be called
beet?

If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth,
Why shouldn't the plural of booth be called

beeth?

If the singular's this and the plural is these, Should the plural of kiss ever be nicknamed

keese?

Then one may be that and three would be those,

Yet hat in the plural would never be hose;
And the plural of cat is cats, and not cose.
We speak of a brother, and also of brethren,
But though we may say mother, we never say
methren.

Then the masculine pronouns are he, his, and him,

But imagine the feminine she, shis, and shim!
So the English, I think you all will agree,
Is the greatest language you ever did see.
-Commonwealth.

SCHOOL-ROOM DEVICES.

E. C. HEWETT, EDITOR.

We have not met with the response we hoped, from teachers' giving bits of their own experience and theories in the use of devices, or methods, for teaching the different school studies, or for managing, directing, and disciplining pupils. We repeat the invitation given to our readers in the September JOURNAL; and we hope that we shall have a much larger response than we have had, as yet.

In this number of THE JOURNAL, We purposely give a pretty large space to matters concerning instruction in

GEOGRAPHY,

Study of the home neighborhood. It is a fundamental principle of the psychology of pedagogy, that elementary ideas respecting any subject of thought or study must be gained through the senses, by direct observation. This principle, which is coming into more prominence in the consciousness of teachers, is the sufficient reason, and perhaps the only reason, why beginners in geography should be led to observe the geographical phenomena of their immediate surroundings. One half-day spent by the little people in the open air, under the guidance of a wise and sympathetic teacher, studying the forms of land and water in their own neighborhood, would be worth many weeks of study of the same topics from books alone. Of course, in this matter, country pupils have much the advantage of city pupils. And the pupils of a country where the surface is much diversified, and where streams and lakes are plentiful, have a great advantage over the pupils who live on the flat and waterless prairie. But under the most adverse conditions something can be done.

Some of the land features to be studied are plain, hill, mountain, slope, crest, chain valley, etc. The features of water, are streams, branches, right and left bank, falls, lakes, inlet, outlet, etc. The features determined by both land and water are shore, cape, promontory, island, peninsula, isthmus, strait, the basin and the bed of a stream, etc.

Some of these features can be found everywhere in the country; and, in some parts of the country, nearly or quite all of them can be found sufficiently near the

In

school-house to be easily reached. such a case, it is simply preposterous to go on studying words of description behind the closed doors of the school-house, while no attention is given to the real objects themselves.

In a country of tame scenery, many of these natural features of land and water can be studied on a small scale, on the banks of a trifling brook, where the sand or mud on the shore may be used to represent a great many of the land-forms, in the lack of something better. Even the temporary streams flowing after a shower, in the country road, will give the wide-awake teacher facilities not to be despised in the absence of anything else. The molding-board, and the skillfully used picture, will aid in carrying forward the work within doors; but the out-door observation should come first.

Methods of representation will follow observation-work; in this let the teacher take the lead, but by no means do all the work.

The following selection suggests one way of introducing the study of maps:

AN EXERCISE TO TEACH THE USE OF MAPS.

The following exercise will help children to make rough plans of the streets in the neighborhood:

The teacher draws a large slate on the board. In the center of it, she draws a small outline of the school house. She then has the pupils decide in which direction the different streets or objects lie. She now tells the class that she will take a walk, and that they are to follow her, and she moves the chalk along to represent a street.

The pupils tell the name of the street represented; and where streets cross they are indicated by lines crossing the street represented.

After one or two streets have been passed, the teacher turns to the right or left, represents another street, and goes on to a corner, which is indicated by a line crossing the one the teacher is on.

The children are now asked where the teacher is, and they name the church, store, or other well-known building on the corner.

Several of these walks are taken in this way, the teacher leading. When the pupils are sure of their ground one, of the number may be called upon to lead the class, first to his own home or any given place, and afterwards wherever he will.

The teacher may now dictate the direction, and the pupil may draw at her dictation. These exercises may be dictated by using the terms right and left to direct the pupils, or by using the points of the compass. It is well also to direct by description only, and have the

pupils follow and tell where the teacher has stopped; the pupil can also be benefited by the giving of clear and explicit directions, so clear that the class can follow easily.-Selected.

The Shape and Size of the Earth.

The study of home geography may extend to the neighboring village or town, but it should not at present go beyond the field of the pupil's actual observation. Not from parts to whole, but from whole to parts, is the general movement of the child's mind. And so the child at an early age needs to be led to a true conception of the earth as a great ball swinging freely in space. It is sometimes contended that this is impossible to a child. But we know from what we can remember of the experiences of our own childhood, that it is possible. In the old "Peter Parley's Geography," which we studied in the country school before we were eight years old, were the following lines, which have dwelt in our memory ever since:

"The world is round, and like a ball

Seems swinging in the air;

The sky extends around it all,
And stars are shining there.

"Water and land upon the face

Of this round world we see;
The land is man's safe dwelling place,
But ships sail on the sea." Etc.

In our childish imagination, a vast ball with its surface of land and water was seen swinging in space just as clearly as it ever has been since. Nor were we troubled about the people standing on the other side, nor feared that they, nor anything else, would fall off; for the sky and the stars were all around it, and nothing falls toward the stars.

The principal reasons for believing that the earth is a globe, too, are perfectly intelligible to the child, if rightly presented. He can be shown that the masts of a ship appear first in the offing, that the horizon enlarges when we ascend a height from a plain, that people have sailed around the earth, and that it is shaped like the moon, which he sees as a sphere swinging in space.

Of course, the child can have no adequate conception of the size of the earth. It may well be doubted whether one

adult in a hundred has such a conception. But the child may be helped towards it. Somewhere in the neighborhood of every school is a piece of road a mile long, with which the children are familiar, or may be made familiar. Let them understand that an ordinary express train travels over about thirty times that distance in an hour. But, if there were a railroad all around the earth, it would take that train traveling night and day without a single stop, more than a month to make the journey. And, if a railroad could be made through the middle of the earth, a train traveling at the same rate would require more than eleven days to go through the earth to the other side.

The child is very likely to be told that the earth is not a perfect globe, that it is slightly flattened at the poles. It is better to say nothing of this to the little child; and when he becomes old enough to be taught this fact, great care should be taken that he does not exaggerate the amount of the flattening. The child who conceives the earth as a perfect sphere is much nearer right than the one who thinks of it as having the shape of the "oblate spheroid" found in ordinary school apparatus. Get the child to think of a globe ten feet in diameter, let the ten feet be measured off, or let him have a rod ten feet long to look at. Now, when he thinks of a globe having such a diameter as that, teach him that a shaving one fifth of an inch thick taken off of the opposite sides would truly represent the flattening of the earth.

The Earth's Surface. -No school study requires a more constant and vivid exercise of the child's conceptive power, or his imagination, than does geography. He needs to see with his mind's eye, the surface of the earth; sometimes stretching off into wide plains, sloping gently to the sea; sometimes spreading into vast plains, many feet above the sea-level, often as high as the tops of high mountains, in other places. Sometimes he needs to think of a vast expanse not like a level plain, but gently rising and falling like the billows of the ocean. times, he must think of the surface as very rough and broken, and yet nowhere rising to a great height. Again, he must think of high elevations sometimes rising almost like huge cones from the plain,

Some

oftener stretching away in long lines with sharp or rounded peaks, and steep slopes, whose steepness is never equal on the two sides. Once more, he must often think of these chains as lying in groups, nearly parallel to each other, with long valleys of varying widths between them.

Now, comparatively few children will ever have the opportunity to see all these different forms of surface on a large scale; but all must be helped to the conception of them. How? In the first place, teach them to observe carefully any of these features which are within their range, even on a small scale. Aid can be got from good pictures. Relief maps, or relief pictures, are now found in our best geographical text-books. Sometimes a large globe with surface in relief can be had.

Much can be done by a judicious use of the molding board, or by the construction of maps from paper pulp. The great danger is, and it is not an imaginary one, that the teacher will nearly or quite ignore the whole matter; perhaps he will try to substitute empty words, his own or those of the text books, for vivid ideas from any source.

No

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Two errors will need to be guarded against carefully. By the use of the methods suggested, the pupil is likely to get an exaggerated conception of the height of mountains as compared with the horizontal stretches of country. peak of the Rocky Mountains is so much as four miles high; the breadth of the continent is three thousand miles, or about eight hundred times as great as the greatest height. Again, pupils, especially those who live in mountainous regions, are likely to get an aggerated notion of the roughness of the earth's surface. These elevations and depressions seem so vast to us, because we are so small. And yet if we remember that the highest mountain in the world is less than six miles high, while the radius of the earth is about seven hundred times as much, we shall see that all the roughness of the earth's surface compared to the size of the earth itself is no more than a sprinkling of the finest sand on the surface of a school-room globe of ordinary size.

Adversity borrows its sharpest sting from our impatience.

How He Found Out.

"Mary," said he, "will you do a little sum for me." "Oh, yes." “Well, write down the number of the month in which you were born. Multiply it by 2, and add 5 to the product. Now, multiply what you have by 50, and add your age to the product. Now, subtract 365 from what you have, and add 115 to what is left. Please tell me your answer." She replied, "532." "Ah, I see, you were born in May, and are thirty-two years old." "Yes, but how do you know?" "Because the month of your birth was the fifth of the year, and the last two figures give your age.

Let the class in algebra or higher arithmetic explain why this exercise will alAn ways give a result like the above. ingenious teacher can vary the problem indefinitely, and yet observe the same principle and arrive at the same result.

Reviewing Through Imagination.

We will suggest an exercise which will be interesting and profitable, if well managed. Ask all the pupils to close their eyes, and to keep them closed. Now say, "I will tell you what I see, and I want you to see it, too, just as clear as you can. I see a great stretch of country spreading out for many miles almost as level as the floor. Can you see it? What do you call it? On one side of this plain I see the land rising up, up, ever so high. There are thick forests growing on the lower slopes, but above the forests I can see great masses of bare rock. I can not see the top because a cloud is wrapped around it. Do you see what I see? What do you call it? We will climb up this mountain; it is pretty hard climbing, but after many hours, away up above the trees, I see under a great over-hanging rock, a kind of basin, and beautiful clear water is bubbling up in it. Do you see it? What do you call it? The water from this spring runs off singing down the mountain side. What do you call it? Now, it leaps from a rock into a larger basin below. What is the name of such leaping water? Now, as is flows out of the basin, the water flows slowly through a little plain, and here another stream

comes and joins it. What do you call this new stream, etc."

The talk may be carried on till we have a broad stream running through lakes, enclosing islands, bordered by capes and promontories, with ships upon its bosom and cities upon its banks, finally discharging into an arm of the ocean. If formal definitions have been learned they may be given at the several stages.

Discipline.

One Way. The boys are passing out for recess. They have a new teacher, and, of course, boy-like, are testing her mettle. A peculiar restlessness "half daring, half afraid," is expressing itself in their every movement. The teacher is ready (?). She quickly detects the familiar symptoms of mischief and braces herself for the necessary treatment. Her lips are rigid and her eyes defiant, but withal she is not a little anxious, and unconsciously shows it.

This is enough. From the corners of their eyes the boys read the challenge and note the anxiety; they venture the risk. Down come their feet with sudden though to be sure, not over confident heaviness.

"Boys! Stand still!" shouts the teacher with a house-a-fire look and tone of voice which is extremely pleasing (to the boys). "Now, see here, if you can't walk properly, you'll go without your recess!

Pass!"

A suppressed giggle goes the rounds but the feet are passably quiet until the outside door is reached, then down they come with unusual vehemency followed by exultant war whoops. Undoubtedly a sound lecture awaits their return.

Another Way. --Teacher No. 2 has a similar experience to start with. She also is ready. Her lips are firm but warmly so; her eyes, so far from being defiant, are particularly trusting and not the slightest hint of anxiety is allowed even to enter her soul. Most important of all, perhaps, is the direction of her gaze. It is not thinly and nervously spread out over the whole mass of children, making each feel that he is quite lost in the crowd and therefore shielded from detection; but she centers her attention on the two or three leaders, pass

ing along with them, perhaps making a remark or two regarding something she hopes they will enjoy on the playground. In the face of such personal sympathy it is impossible to stamp; mischief fades away from the two or three faces in question and consequently from most of the others.

But from one supposedly unnoticed corner there comes a sudden stamp. Does it run like wildfire through the whole line? No, indeed, the fuel has been dampened. Mob strength is broken. Without changing her expression toward the other children, the teacher quietly calls (or takes) the offending member from the line and waits until all have passed out before giving full utterance to her righteous indignation, which is no fun to bear alone. She has conquered. -School Education.