Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/738

This page has been validated.
718
POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

point of view, and must never forget, he says, that it is the real work which appeals to him, and not the particular exercise or the typical use of the tool. As Dr. Henderson says, it is not necessary to be forever suggesting to him that he is being educated. "We must see, feel, and think with the worker, and so introduce our disciplinary exercises that he practices them correctly while still carrying out his own dearest desire. In this way only can he get the greatest benefit from any exercise. We must constantly bear in mind that we are aiming at a well developed producer rather than a perfect product. . . . Whenever a piece of work, however poor in itself, stands for a child's best effort, it is a highly satisfactory production from the true teacher's point of view. He must remember also to keep constantly before us the fact that independence and self-reliance are to be cultivated from the outset." Sloyd claims to be peculiar in aiming at ethical rather than technical results, and at general organic development rather than special skill; in employing only pedagogically trained teachers; in using rationally progressive courses of exercises applied on objects of good form which are also of special use to the worker; in striving after gymnastically correct working positions in encouraging the use of both the left and right sides of the body; and in giving to each individual opportunity to progress according to his peculiar ability. These points have been emphasized in Sloyd from its beginning in Sweden more than twenty-five years ago.

Hawaiian Reptiles.—It is shown, in a paper on the subject by Dr. Leonhard Stejneger, published by the United States National Museum, that there are no true land reptiles in the Hawaiian archipelago other than a few species of lizards, all belonging to the cosmopolitan families—the geckoes (four species) and the skinks (three species). All of these, except one of the geckoes, belong to species widely distributed over the Indo-Polynesian island world, while the gecko excepted has close relatives in New Caledonia, Java, Sumatra, and Ceylon. This distribution is regarded by the author as not sustaining the theory of a once continuous land connection between the various island groups, but rather, by the limited number of species, as indicating that at the time of the immigration of the lizards the islands were separated from other lands. Yet these land creatures could not have been distributed over thousands of miles of ocean by ordinary means, and the agency of man has to be invoked. From various considerations it is permissible to conclude that they came to the islands with the ancestors of the Hawaiians. No records are known of any of the marine snakes having been taken at the Sandwich Islands. Marine turtles live in the seas surrounding the archipelago and breed upon some of its outlying islands, but little is known of them. There are no indigenous batrachians in the group, but frogs and toads are said to have been brought, intentionally, from China, Japan, and America to assist in the fight against mosquitoes.


MINOR PARAGRAPHS.

Miss Kingsley defines one of the fundamental doctrines of African fetich as being that the connection of a certain spirit with a certain mass of matter, a material object, is not permanent. "The African will point out to you a lightning stricken tree and tell you that its spirit has been killed; he will tell you when the cooking pot has gone to bits that it has lost its spirit; if his weapon fails, it is because some one has stolen or made sick its spirit by means of witchcraft. In every action of his daily life he shows you how he lives with a great, powerful spirit world around him. You will see him, before starting out to hunt or fight, rubbing medicine into his weapons to strengthen the spirit within them, talking the while, telling them what care he has taken of them, reminding them of the gifts he has given them, though those gifts were hard to give, and begging them in the hour of his dire necessity not to fail him. You will see him bending over the face of a river, talking to its spirit with proper incantations, asking it when it meets a man who is an enemy of his to upset his canoe or drown him, or asking it to carry down with it some curse to the village below which has angered him, and in a thousand other ways he shows you what he believes if you