IT IS possible for a pupil to study geography diligently every day and forget apparently nearly everything he learns. Both geography and history are studies which may be pursued in such a way that nearly all that is acquired in any given month is lost in the next month. Those who are inclined to doubt this have but to test a class where the text has been the subject of acquisition. Test them on what they learned a month previously and even those inclined to believe this statement will be astonished that so little is retained of what once seemed to be known so well.

Mr. A sweeps his barn with the doors open and the wind blowing against his work. He works with much energy and some apparent efficiency; but the wind brings back the chaff to such an extent that there is never much clear space on his floor. Mr. B takes advantage of the direction of the wind, and every stroke counts for success and is more than doubled in effect by the help of the wind. The chaff flies before him and his floor is clear in a short time.

I have seen a steamer in waters opening upon the Bay of Fundy pouring out black smoke, beating the water into foam, and apparently making great progress. But observation of the distant shore proved that she was actually standing still. The adverse tide was such that she could not contend with it successfully. So she dropped her anchor and saved coal and the wear of machinery. Two hours later she swung with her cable, the anchor was hoisted, and she moved rapidly in the desired direction without the aid of a pound of steam. In Passamaquoddy bay are so many islands and channels and such a great fluctuation of tide that the waters are racing in various directions at all times. Fishermen study their courses and never tack against the tide. Those who go out every day do not leave home at the same hour Tuesday as on Monday, but just fifty minutes later. They do not go and return over the same courses, for many times the strongest flow of tide does not run where there was the swiftest ebb. With them the proverb, "The longest way round is the shortest way home," is often true, and I have heard them quote those words frequently.

In psychology there are both a wind and a tide. The wind is what the pupil thinks of the subject—as to its usefulness in his future life. The tide is his natural interest in the thing for its own sake.

Wind and tide are sometimes both against us, and it is a poor skipper who lacks the sense to tie up for a short time or take another course when he finds both set against him.

But there are teachers who battle fiercely against the desires and interests of their pupils, bound to compel them to learn, making a tremendous fuss, filling families with tears and tremblings, threatenings, scoldings, and reviewings—all with no permanent results of value.

There is a natural interest in children for birds. It is so strong and absorbing that it amounts to a psychological tide. The things of the bird-world act upon the child-mind rather instinctively than mentally. The whole child is active and alert when the subject is such that it fully interests him. A little effective teaching just at that time is worth more than hours of perfunctory drudgery over a similar task presented in the wrong way.

There are birds wherever man lives. They differ in color, form, and habit according to environment. The pupil who seems to be interested least in the ordinary things of the text book in geography is the very one, as a rule, to be caught with the birds and animals of the various parts of the earth. The pupil who will not retain information about the products of a country may be induced to consider intelligently something about the fauna of that country and pass readily to an interested study of the flora, and from what grows there to what is shipped from that place.