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he is only good-naturedly mischievous. They also know, probably as well as the principal, whether a harsh or a mild punishment will best serve the purpose of reform. So the club by vote passes sentence. If it is the culprit's first offence the strong probability is that they will require him. to apologize not only to the teacher but to the club. The offender, if he be of the stubborn sort, will consider carefully before he refuses. No youngster wishes to be held in contempt by his playmates. He must have comradeship. If he declines to make amends for breach of good conduct he knows that he will be obliged to do his playing by himself, and it is an exceptional case where a boy will refuse to pay the penalty imposed by a jury of his peers.

They have uo court of appeal in these clubs. The principal abides by the finding of the jury. When the club suspends one of its members from school the principal carries out the sentence. If the penalty be too severe the teacher will point out in a friendly, never a mandatory way, where a probable injustice has been done, and advise the club how to remedy and to avoid a repetition of it in future. If it has been too light a reform will likewise be pointed out, but never commanded. Common experience is proof that children have an instinctive sense of justice, and no one who has not the power to touch that sense of justice should be permitted to teach. Results show that offenders very seldom fail to recognize that revenge cuts no figure in the

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Self Government in Two Chicago penalty imposed, and that an arbitrary spirit does not exist.

I

Schools

The Horace Mann and John Crerar Schools

N the Horace Mann grammar school there have been established a series of clubs devoted to self-government. Each grade has its own club, and the members elect their own officers and conduct their own affairs. Children who have not yet reached the age of seven years are memers, and the oldest pupil is not yet sixteen.

To say that the object of the clubs is the elevation of morals, would, perhaps, be not too broad. In fact, the motive which inspires them is desire for better deportment. A comprehensive name for them would be "Good Conduct" clubs. They were started just after the last Christmas holidays, and now embrace about eighty per cent of the entire membership of the school. The organizations are altogether voluntary. These juvenile clubs sit in judgment on their members in and out of school, and hold each member to accountability for his or her individual acts. In rare instances the penalty for infringing on general rules for good conduct is fixed by the school officers, while in most cases of enforcing discipline the club governs by vote of its members. In every case the pride of the pupil is appealed to and worked on. His or her standing in the estimation of fellows is affected by his or her conduct toward fellows,

and no scholar who misbehaved is able to maintain the

good will and comradeship of those who strive to be respectful and orderly. Additional to the punishment provided by rules of the school, these clubs have a less severe but more effective code, namely, of social ostracism. Nothing brings a wilfully bad boy to a realization of his conduct so quickly and so sharply as to manifest disapproval of his playmates, and experience shows that, while many boys of grit can withstand the birch, it is an exceptional case where he is impervious to the silent punishment administered by his fellows in withdrawing from association with him at play.

Workings of the Club Plan

With the clubs good conduct is incited, not forced. Reward comes in the way of self-approval, and punishment in the way of penalty fixed by equals, not by superiors. One instance will suffice to explain the workings of the club plan. A mischeivous boy shoots a bean and hits another scholar on the ear. He is sent to the principal. This officer refers the offense to the club made up of members of that room. They know the offender and the offense. They know his record in the school-room, at play and on the street. They know whether he is malicious or whether

Organizations in Each Division

The social effect of these clubs is marked. Each division has one such organization. Each chooses a name. In the highest grade the club is called the Golden Rule; in another, Honor Club; in the fourth grade, the fanciful name, Pretty Flowers, struck the youngsters, and one boy wears a pin engraved "P. F." In the Honor Club each member has a badge bearing the name painted on ribbon. They meet regularly and discuss various questions pertaining to good conduct.

One club meets weekly. A rule was made that each member should try to be helpful to some other scholar in the way of self-government, and that such cases should be reported. Where a member had been derelict in this selfimposed duty he was fined 5 cents. The fines were devoted to the purchase of photographs of American poets for the school-room.

Efforts to improve conduct by the force of a child's own will were not confined to the school-room and school playground, but were carried to the streets and to homes. In these clubs it is a very serious breach of ethics for a big boy to allow another lad to strike a boy "under his size," to get together in a gang and snowball peddlers, to refuse to take part in a club entertainment, to break into another's conversation, to take a twig for nature study without asking permission of the owner, to steal flowers, to be rude at table, to refuse to tip the hat to a teacher or to a girl of his grade. This custom of tipping the hat provoked animated discussion at first. The boys insisted that the girls should return the salutation, and they were strenuous about it. No doubt they would have carried their point if the exigencies of the hatpin had not presented an insuperable obstacle. Now, the raising of hat or cap is almost universal in the school. Toward the teacher it is a friendly greeting, not the salute of a soldier in the ranks to his superior officer.

Serves to Protect Property

Since

This systematic work in behalf of self-government serves to protect property. Some months ago a lady who lives in the neighborhood of the Horace Mann school and has very fine grounds, made complaint of a mild sort of vandalism among her shrubs and flowers by the pupils. The matter was taken up by the clubs and stopped at once. early spring there has not been a single complaint lodged in the school of broken windows, limbs or twigs torn from trees or flowers stolen. Properly to estimate the value of the self-government clubs it should be borne in mind that a considerable part of the membership comes from children whose home influence is not conducive to self-discipline.

Principal John T. Ray

of the John Crerar grammar school first advanced the theory of a pure democracy in the primary schools. He presented it in a paper about a year ago and since then it has been taken up by educators on both sides of the Atlantic and very widely discussed. He also was the first teacher to put the theory into practice.

Professor Ray starts out with the proposition that to the average child entering the public schools the average teacher is a despot in whose smile he lives and in whose frown he dies. The teacher in the child's mind is an autocrat. The first step which Mr. Ray takes is to teach the child that it is able to govern its own conduct under the direction of some other child whom the class shall select as leader. He teaches them, in language that a six-year-old can comprehend, the old Roman idea of the tribune. He explains the difference between a monarchy and a democracy. He shows how they may select a tribune who shall not only serve as a sort of a leader among them, but act as an intermediary between the pupil and the teacher or principal.

Tribunes of the Crerar Tribune

The children's first step in self-government is the selection of a leader, whom, like the Romans, they call their tribune. One of his duties is to protect the weak, and to require all the strong ones in the class to assist him in such protection. He is to settle all disputes which arise between pupils. He is to impress on each individual child that the good name of the class is in his keeping. Last and most important, he must teach that order is the prime requisite of society and that each child has rights that every other child is bound to respect. In actual workings the tribune is the judge, the friend and the companion of the class.

One of the first effects of the establishment of pure democracy among children is the checking of an almost irresistible tendency to "tell on" somebody. When a child comes to the principal with a story of some one "picking on" some one else, the complainant is immediately referred to his tribune, who takes the matter up and settles it in such manner as he deems just. The judgment of the tribune is often more effective than the same judgment would be coming from a teacher, because the class stands at the back of its tribune. His decree is the decree of the whole class.

Professor Ray holds that there are many more good boys than bad boys, and it is quite as easy for a right-minded boy to become the leader as it is for the bad boy to run things. The democratic plan as opposed to the autocratic plan has had one year's trial at John Crerar school. Its results thus far have vindicated the soundness of the theory that children are able at an early age to comprehend the principle of pure democracy and to put it into practice in all the acts of their lives.

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A

Pupa and Chrysalides

CAROLINE G. SOULE Brookline Mass.

I

S winter is here we will begin the work at the winter end, the pupa or chrysalis stage.

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Pupa" is used for the moths, and " chrysalis " for butterflies, and the pupa may be in a cocoon or not, while the chrysalis is almost always not in a cocoon, or even between leaves spun together.

As most moths and butterflies pass the winter in the pupal state it is clear that late autumn, winter, and early spring are good times for pupa-hunting.

The chrysalides of butterflies may be found under the cross-pieces of fences, in chinks of stone walls, hanging from projecting rocks and edges of clapboards on houses and barns, under the edges of piles of boards or the woodpile, or logs; sometimes fastened flat against a wall or fence, and a few, as those of Eudamus tityrus, between leaves spun together and fallen to earth. A very few, not in our part of the country, are in the ground, as in the Megathymus family found in the southern states and farther south. The chrysalides thus found are often stung, and give flies of different kinds instead of the expected butterfly.

cess.

An easy way to keep chrysalides is to fasten them to the sides of a wooden box, by a pin put through the silken tuft from which each suspended chrysalis hangs. This tuft can easily be scraped off the stone or wood with a pen knife, but care is needed to prevent injury to the chrysalis in the proIf the chrysalis is suspended by a band of silk around the upper part, and a tuft at the lower end, both may be detached and fastened, by pins, to the box. An empty starch box is excellent for this. Have a pane of glass to slip into the grooves in which the cover slides, and then stand the box on end or on one side, fastening the chrysalide around the wooden sides. The box may be made presentable by covering it with brown paper. Through the glass front all the process of the emergence of the butterflies may be seen. The sides and top should be left rough for the butterflies to climb by or hang from while their wings are expanding and drying, though some kinds will hang from the empty case or "shell."

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Chrysalides, when they hang by one end only should be fas

tened to the top of the box, just as they hung when found. The box should stand in a cool place and out of the sun, though in light. Butterflies, as far as my experience goes, usually emerge in the morning, and my records show more between nine and ten o'clock than at any other time.

After the wings are dry and the legs and antennæ have been exercised, the butterfly may often be made to feed by putting into the cage a few drops of honey or sugar and water. The food must be put close to the head of the butterfly however, and sometimes putting it on a bit of bright-colored paper will attract the insect's attention to it. Of course feeding gives the best chance of seeing its long tongue.

A friend and I once had a large wire cage full of butterflies which emerged from chrysalides made by caterpillars we had reared or found, and these butterflies learned to fly to our hands when we put them into the cage, perch on them or on our fingers, and eat honey which we had poured into our palms. If they have plenty of room to fly about in and flowers or honey to feed on, butterflies will sometimes mate

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in captivity, but it is safer to let them fly outdoors. Cocoons of moths may be found in the same places as the chrysalides of butterflies, and also hanging from twigs, spun along twigs, and enfolded by leaves either on the tree or on the ground.

Look on any wild cherry, willow, tulip-tree, ash, sassafras, maple, plum, and if you see a leaf dangling, after the leaves have fallen in autumn, examine that leaf. More often than not you will find that it is held to the twig by a shining band of silk, and is also held together around a cocoon. You will also find that, in most cases, it is easier to cut the twig than to break the silk! These cocoons will probably be those of Attacus promethea, and you should collect many of them, for some will have "stung" pupa, and give only flies, and in others the larvæ will have failed to transform, and have died. Shake the cocoon and if it gives a thud the pupa is sound, but if the noise is slight or wanting the pupa is of no use, or the contents are dead. The weight of a

Cut

cocoon will often decide whether it is good or not. ting it open will always show, but this must be carefully done with very sharp scissors, and beginning at the looser end of the cocoon. The first attempt will be very likely to cut into the pupa.

On ailanthus and tulip-tree, magnolia and castor-bean you may find cocoons of Samia cynthia, very like those of promethea.

Attacus Cecropia spins a larger, brown cocoon against a fence or building, or more often along the stems of a shrub or sapling, or along a small branch of a tree. I have found its cocoons on oak, wild cherry, lilac, against a large stem of woodbine, and on the under side of fence rails.

Telea polyphemus and actias luna may be found among dry leaves near birch, beech, walnut, hickory, oak, willow, liquidambar, and tulip-tree. Attacus Angulifera I have never known to suspend its cocoon, like promethea, to which it is closely allied, but one writer claims to find it so on Ceanothus. Its cocoons have been found under Ceanothus and tulip-tree.

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The cocoons of Attacus Ceanothi are much like those of A. Cecropia, but rounder and shorter. They are found only in the west and south.

Eacles imperialis and Citheronia regalis larvæ burrow in the ground to pupate, and their pupæ may be found by digging around hickory, walnut, maple, and sometimes pine trees, though I believe regalis never feeds on pine or maple.

Pupa of the sphingid moths may be found by digging around woodbines, grape-vines, in potato fields, about willow, elm, poplar, pine, bush honeysuckle, tomato plants, ash, catalpa, fig, azalea, viburnum, cephalanthus, plum, wild cherry, birch, apple, pear, high blueberry and whortleberry hickory, walnut, and so forth.

The best way to keep these pupæ for school use, would be to put them into cut-up sphagnum, dry, in a tin box, shutting the cover tight, and keeping the box in a cold cellar until April, or May, if the spring is late. Then bring them up and put them in a box like that for the chrysalides only covering the side which is used as the bottom of the cage with sphagnum to the depth of two inches. Sprinkle this once in a while if the room is warm, but look out for mould. In keeping pupæ guard against mice, who will eat pupæ, and larvæ too, if they can get at them.

In hunting for cocoons and pupæ you will doubtless find many which I have not mentioned, for I have given only a few specimens to show in what kinds of places they may be found. Moths may emerge at any time of day or night, in captivity. I think that outdoors they probably emerge in the day in order to be ready to fly by dusk or dark, for I have so often found in the morning moths still moist and unable to fly.

Most of the large moths - Bombycid moths at leasthave a decided odor, what one friend calls "a real menagerie smell," which varies in different species, and is a sexual attraction.

By tying a bit of worsted around the thorax of a female moth, between the two pairs of wings, and tying the other end to a twig or vine, a male may almost always be attracted, mating follows, and the female will lay fertile eggs when taken in and put into a suitable box.

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Reindeer in
in the Klondike

(Tell the children about this region and the gold discoveries.- ED) Many interesting stories are being told about the animals and fish that are to be found in the Klondike regions. One particularly instructive account of the reindeer of Alaska has reached us.

Years ago, naturalists familiar with the habits of this animal thought that it could be made as useful in the northern parts of America as it is in Lapland and the northern countries of Europe and Asia.

Little Mae Carr is a Klondike girl, born in the gold region. She is only about three years old. She dresses like a little boy and goes out mining. She is washing out gold now in a frying pan.

To the dwellers in these regions the reindeer fills the place of horse, cow and sheep. It can carry a burden of 250 pounds; and, while its usual speed is about ten miles an hour, it is so fleet of foot that on occasions it has covered as much as nineteen miles an hour. It can, over, keep up its normal pace for many hours without tiring.

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Its meat makes delicious food; its milk is excellent; its skin is valuable for leather; and, above all, it can support itselt on a moss called reindeer which moss, abounds in all cold countries. Appreciating the various good qualities possessed by the reindeer, Congress decided to pur

chase a number of these animals in Siberia, and transplant them to Alaska.

At first the experiment did not seem to be successful. The animals did not thrive; after a while it occurred to some one that the cause of this was perhaps that the keepers in charge of them were not experienced in their ways, and did not know how to treat them.

T

Justice for Tardy Pupils

E. D. K.

HE bell struck for nine o'clock. The teacher proceeded to open the school. A timid click at the latch announced that somebody was late, and that the record of tardiness, which had been kept spotless so far during the month, had lost its blank purity. As the door was opened a little girl with tearful eyes stepped slowly into the school-room, encountered the disappointed faces of her class, who were trying so hard "to go a whole month without a tardiness," and stood there the picture of The teacher, feeling that it was no ordinary case, held out her hand, and Annie was soon clasped close to her teacher-friend, as she sobbed out a perfectly satisfactory reason for the unusual lateness, and was sent to her seat with the kindest words of sympathy for the sickness at home that had made the sickness at heart of the little innocent victim who had spoiled the monthly record.

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woe.

A half-hour passed, and the school looked up to see the incorrigible boy of the class saunter in, with his hands in his pockets, and a "What-are-you-going-to-doabout-it?" air that touched another side of the teacher's character, and she stood silently and LOOKED that boy into soberness and shame, if not contrition. The silence of the was oppressive. John could have borne anything better, and the teacher knew it. After the power of the voiceless reception had waned, the teacher ascertained that, as she had supposed, the lateness was but the result of thoughtless indifference to time and school rules, and she pronounced a penalty as severe as the accasion demanded.

room

Next day was Friday; the last hour was always a happy one with the children, in the games, puzzles, stories, and general good time, in which the teacher was the leading spirit. John, as a part of his penalty, left his class, and stood aside, alone, a mere looker-on during that hour of gayety. A teacher dropping in and inquiring the cause of John's solitude, said," Why, tardiness is not the worst thing in the world, is it?" Let me answer that question here, which was not answered then.

Let us look for the underlying causes that produced the lateness in question. John's home was a poor one. The

A few Lapland families were therefore imported for the express purpose of caring for the animals, and in a very short space of time a great difference was noted. reindeer began to thrive, and increased so rapidly that we have now quite a fine herd.

None of the miners in the Klondike have as yet attempted to make use of these clever beasts; but it is expected that ere long reindeer sledges and reindeer trains will be as familiar in Alaska as they are in northern Asia and Europe. The Great Round World

Holding Court

The winsome lady who holds court in her modest schoolroom, her courtiers seldom forgetting that they are little ladies and gentlemen, does this only because she has their hearts; and their hearts she can have only as she can control their thoughts; and their thoughts she controls only through her own fine personality, and by constantly putting into their receptive minds suggestions pleasing and wholesome. She lives out her own beautiful and earnest life with them. By quiet example, by personal appeal, by song and story she reaches them. She knows the best in literature and in life, and she gives them of her best, and they go out from her with a wealth of treasure in heart and mind that for not of a few of her pupils, will be cumulative for a lifetime. She holds, with Froebel, that "all education not founded on religion is unproductive"; and, with Warner, that "Good literature is as necessary to the growth of the soul as good air to the growth of the body, and that it is just as bad to put weak thought into the mind of a child as to shut it up in a room that is unventilated."-J. P. McCaskey.

"I'm five,' said the little man, but with a very disgusted air. "I would have been six long ago, only my mamma keeps me in dresses!"

"How old are you now, Cyrus?" asked a visitor.

Regu

larity was unknown, and poor John's wayward fancies were not regulated by clock, or home discipline. He came and went regardless of others' wishes or convenience, and the result was an unconscious selfishness that was warping his character. The respect due to law had never entered into his home-training. The binding obligation to be in his seat by nine o'clock, in obedience to school rule, was not recognized by him. This inherent irreverence for abstract law that marks our American children under the most efficient home-training, left to itself, fills our reform schools and state prisons. Thus, if for no other reason than the training of this unfortunate boy in a correct regard for authority, should his teacher have emphasized her condemnation of this particular form of failure in duty.

She had explained these underlying reasons for punctuality to her children in her school-talks, and they had been made to feel that to be late for any requirement meant something more than a mere delay. If John wilfully disregarded the feelings of his teacher and fifty classmates by spoiling their plans for a clean monthly record, then the least puuishment that he could receive was to be excluded from their "good times." A true, warm-hearted teacher will suffer more than the boy, in thus seeing him isolated from innocent enjoyment, but her duty in character-building is as imperative as in book-teaching- nay, more.

In all the parts that go to make the whole of a symmetrical character, punctuality is one of the most important. The want of promptness in meeting requirements and engagements is the direct result of selfishness (either conscious or unconscious) in the disregard of the interest of others. It is a certain index of the weakness of a fibre that interweaves in the web of character, reappearing here and there, to mar the beauty of the texture. The business-man who advertised for an office boy, and sent away, unseen, all

who came five minutes late.

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Sex in the School-Room

A word to those who are fortunate enough to have a mixed school of boys and girls. I say "fortunate," for it seems that the only true way to prepare the coming man and women to walk side by side through life, is to teach them to step together in the school-room. Each loses the unattractive shyness, and painful self-consciousness, which marks the first association of the boy and girl who have been educated apart. The boy needs the gentleness and inspiratory stimulus of the girl's presence, and the girl finds in the independent strength of the boy, the necessary complement to her own nature. In such a school the opportunities are countless for the proper adjustment of the life relation. Above all things let us discountenance any compulsory association between the sexes, as a penalty, and so pervert the true intention of sex association by the Creator. The boy and girl should be sent to each other for assistance in lessons, whenever desirable, and any hesitation arising on either side should be entirely ignored by the teacher.

A boy who is taught from boyhood to seek for opportunities to help his girl acquaintances, is not going to be the man to oppose a broader channel for woman; and the girl who is taught to gratefully recognize this chivalry of boyhood, will not grow to be the woman to ask for an unwomanly sphere.-E. D. K.

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The formation of icicles! The snow melts on the sunny roof, then trickles down over the edge into the shade; then the trickle grows slower and slower until it stops and a little bit of ice is formed. Meanwhile all the water from that special bit of melting snow is trickling down the same path, and runs over the ice a little farther because as the snow melts more the little stream is bigger and has more force. Thus the bit of ice grows longer as it hangs from the edge of the roof, for the drops run down the ice already formed, and, in the cold shade, freeze to the end of the ice, and it grows longer and longer until it is a big icicle or until the snow is gone, or the sun no longer lies on it.

Snow Crystals

If there is a little cold "dry" snow, try a little window work. Bundle the children into hats, coats, and mittens ; give each one a slate, and open a window.

Let each child hold his slate out under the falling snow until it is lightly powdered with flakes, then look at them? Beautiful? Indeed they are ! And what infinite variety of shapes ! But there is one characteristic common to all, six ways or points. That is the law for snowflakes when formed under favorable circumstances undisturbed. They are crystals and are always true to their type as are any of the gems or other durable crystals.

But there are many and most beautiful variations of the type, all keeping the six rays, but decorating them, and forming designs which will suggest to you cathedral windows, or beautiful old carvings or fretwork.

Hold a magnifying glass over each one and let the children look through it. Children always love a magnifier, and I never saw a child who did not also delight in snowflakes.

Give each one a turn at holding his slate out for more, the variety is infinite, and you will not be likely to find too many alike. Some may be broken so that the six points cannot be counted, but that is easy to explain.

The question is pretty sure to come, "Why don't the great big snowflakes have pretty shapes too?" and this may be answered "Because they are wetter and made up of many little snowflakes frozen together."

The room has grown too cold to keep the window open longer? Then off with the coats and hats and let the children group themselves into the shapes of some of the snowflakes, then huddle two or three snowflakes of children into one big bunch and they will easily see how the little ones lose shape in joining together to make one big one.

Let them draw snowflakes on the board or slates, (they always enjoy this,) and after occe doing all this they will never forget snowflake beauty.

Tyndall's "The Forms of Water," page 32, gives fourteen different shapes of snow crystals clearly figured.

Mosses

Go out some day in February late January will do also - when snow is melting and look carefully on tree-trunks, fences, ground, and stone walls. You see the little patches of green moss? Look at them closely. There are several

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