THE BOOK OF THE SEASON. NOW READY, KERL'S COMPOSITION AND RHETORIC. Price, $1.25. BY SIMON KERL, Author of the English Grammars, in which the study of Grammar is made a most interesting pursuit. THIS NEW RHETORIC is 'a simple, concise, progressive, thorough, and practical work, ON A NEW PLAN. It occupies an intermediate position between common grammar and higher rhetoric, embodying from each what is practically most useful to the writer. It aims to make the student inventive as well as critical, to qualify him for prompt and proper expression in discharging the common duties of life, to guard and refine his taste in the general pursuit of literature, and to aid him in his own literary productions. The foregoing book, and the "First Lessons in Grammar," when studied together, will furnish an Elementary Course on the English language, or a course of Grammar, Composition, and Rhetoric that is quite sufficient for Common Schools. The same book, and the "Common-School Grammar," when studied together, will furnish an Advanced Course on the English language, or a course of Grammar, Composition, and Rhetoric that is sufficient for the great majority of Academies and Colleges. KERL'S GRAMMARS. For simplicity and clearness; for comprehensive research and minute analysis; for freshness, scientific method and practical utility, this series of English Grammars is unrivalled by any other yet published. KERL'S COMPREHENSIVE GRAMMAR. This work will be of great practical benefit to every speaker, writer, or teacher, who will use it as a book of reference. Teachers and School Officers are invited to send for our DESCRIPTIVE CATALOGUE and SPECIAL CIRCULAR, which will be sent prepaid upon application, and which contain full Descriptions, Critical Notices, and Testimonials of all our publications; also, the terms on which we will furnish them for examination and introduction. Address, WILDE, BOWLER & CO., We are willing that the controversy on the Geography Question commencing with the statement of facts in Newburyport, but spreading out somewhat into general matters, should be considered ended. We took up the matter in self-defence, and are ready to submit to a judgment from what has already appeared in these pages. The Old and New-which is best? As to Geographies, the question is one primarily, not of authors, but of systems. There are only two general systems of geography. One is the old-fashioned, that in which-from Morse to Mitchell-all of us were in bondage. This may be called the superficial or mechanical system. The other is the New System, now being adopted. This may be called the organic or natural system. The authors or compilers of the Old System are legion; the New is represented BY ONLY ONE NAME, ARNOLD GUYOT. Those who have studied the mechanical system know that it is made up of a mass or medley of detached, lifeless facts: names of continents, countries, cities, rivers, lakes, oceans, mountains, islands and capes. Populations, boundaries, products, climates, altitudes, manufactures, and morals are promiscuously and profusely pressed into and over the pupil's memory; but the relation of the climates to the productions, of the rivers to the mountains, of the populations to both, are not revealed, and the mind of the scholar struggles under the lifeless load. This system is easier to teach because it is mechanical, and all the questions can be printed to the teacher's hand, and he can, parrot like, ask them and get parrot-like answers; but it is words only that are learned, or, at most, isolated facts, and not ideas. Custom, inexperience, and indolence among teachers will, of course, favor this old system, and they will find abundant encouragement and support from those book publishers whose capital is in that system. But none of these interests, nor all of them, can ever make the system good. We might as well undertake to teach a correct astronomy out of the old Ptolemaic books as to undertake to teach geography correctly out of these old Geographies-it is not there. How well GUY OT has succeeded in reducing the system to a practical result in his books and charts can only be fairly tested in the school-room by interested and intelligent teachers. The New system recognizes the fact that the earth is an organic structure, all of whose parts are vitally related to each other, No mountain can say to his neighbor mountains, I have no need of you. They are not only neighbors, but brothers. Neither can the rivers say to the hills, we have no need of you. A child may learn by rote, names, lengths, and directions of all the rivers between the Hudson and the reef of Florida, and the knowledge be of no more geographical value than the names of all the signs on Broadway. He knows that water runs down hill, but he does not know that that is the reason which determines the size, direction, and rapidity of all the rivers upon the globe. He knows that all the rivers between the Hudson and the Gulf of Mexico empty into the Atlantic Ocean, but he does not know why-and no geography of the Old kind teaches him, that the Alleghanies are a huge surface sloping that way. Physi eal Geography teaches such things-and GUYOT'S GEOGRAPHIES TEACH PHYSICAL GEOG RAPHY. GILMAN H. TUCKER, New England Agent for Guyot's Geographies, At THOMPSON, BIGELOW & BROWN'S, 29 Cornhill, Boston. SCHOOL EXPERIENCES NOTHING BUT LEAVES.. PLAN OF THE BATTLE OF LAKE REGILLUS. SELECTION OF TEACHERS... EDITOR'S DEPARTMENT. 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Adapted both to scientific and ordinary readers: it is neither below the one nor above the other. $4.00 per year. Our Subscribers, $3.00. PUTNAM'S MAGAZINE (price $4.00) and Teacher, for $4.50. LITTELL'S LIVING AGE, $6.75. TERMS, Payable in Advance.- Single numbers, 15 cents. Yearly subscriptions, $1.50. Five copies, $6.25; Ten copies, $12.00, and each additional copy, $1.20. Specimen copies furnished gratis to any wishing to subscribe. All communications relating to advertising must be sent before the 15th of the month preceding that of publication. Address editorial communications to EDITOR of MASS. TEACHER, Boston; letters relating to advertising to JOHN P. PAYSON, Chelsea; those relating to subscriptions to GEORGE K. DANIELL, Jr., Office of Mass. Teacher, Boston; publishing, to D. W. JONES, Roxbury. [Mr. Editor: I send you some experiences which I am throwing together. If they are worth anything to the Teacher, you are at liberty to use them; if not, please return them at my expense.-D. D.] EXPERIENCE FIRST. I AM now what may be called, by courtesy, an old man. According to the best of my knowledge and belief, my birth must have taken place some time near the close of the last century, for I well remember the great eclipse of 1806, and the impression that came over me as the sun seemed to be blotted out of existence. On that day, with two or three companions, I was at play in a piece of young woods near my father's house, in Royalton. I had been told that the sun could be seen in the water if it was still, and we accordingly selected a beautiful spring in an opening among the trees, where we could towards the time of total obscuration watch the sun's fading crescent until it disappeared, appearing to have sunk beneath the spring's silvery surface. But it is not of my first experiences in solar observation that you are to hear, at length, in this paper. I want to tell you how I first went to school, and of all the wonders that new state of existence opened up to me. An old-fashioned New England farm-house stood in my native town, at the bottom of a somewhat long hill, the road descending to which, at the bottom, crossed a clear brook. It had belonged to a well-to-do farmer, whose lands coming to improvident heirs, had fallen into neglect, and the house was dwelt in by an elderly lady, a sister, I think, of the former owner. She, and an only daughter, of maiden tendencies, finding the large house contained more room than they needed for their own use, were well pleased to relinquish one of the front rooms to the district for the purpose of a school, as there was no school-house as yet in being. As was the fashion, the rooms were low, of good size, and claimed their share of the corpulent chimney in the centre of the edifice, puffing at times, when it had been unusually exercised. A generous open fire-place, flanked by a good-sized oven, the mouth of which was well stuffed with a cover of white pine plank, manageable by a handle of the same native material, served as dust-box, ventilator, furnace, spittoon, and sundry other conveniences. A wonderful table ran along one side of the room, consisting of two deal boards of about one foot each in width, laid side by side upon the backs of three wooden quadrupeds transversely, thus forming a desk for the writers and cypherers, who, to the number of eighteen or twenty in all, sat facing each other, well placed to study at once arithmetic and human nature, and to practise somewhat in their acquired knowledge of the latter. On two of the remaining sides of the room were ranged long benches of pine without backs, and of dif ferent heights, on which the pupils who had not reached the dignity of figures and pot-hooks and trammels were accommodated. Of this latter class myself was one, and here gained my first school experiences. I had an older brother and sister who had been at winter school before, and from the tales they related had gained some idea of the unusual deeds done there, and the fearful ordeal to which offenders were subjected. Hence, when the extra preparations of new boots well greased, mittens fresh from my grandmother's clicking needles, were made, and sundry books long laid aside were brought out, dusted, and satchelled, it was apparent to me that a new victim was about to approach the altar of learning, and tremble at the priest who was to officiate there. I suppose I went through the same emotions that precede any great changes in life, very much as such are now got through with, and on one sharp, crispy morning in December was holding my brother of twelve years by the hand, while he, laying aside the dignity of an older youth, and |