The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-07-13
HAVE NEVER SEEN A.cow.

The Plight of Hundreds of School Children in the City of Manhattan. Astonishing eases of ignorance, not only of nature. btIh of their own 7en- vironnent.3o thelpart of school. chill tren of New York have come to light as the result of joint iabors Of the American Museum1of Natural History and the Board of Education, Thou sands of the pupils have never wan dered three or four bloc ocls~sfrom the , street in which they were born, ana \ the book of nature is practically sealed to, them. \ The. only animals l they ever have seen are horses, dogs and cats, the. only bird with which they are faniiIiar is the. English spar row. ''How many children on the East Side have eyer seen a afcow, for Iinstance?' asked George H. Sherwood l of the museum. "I venture to say there are thousands and thousands of them. The question was asked of a class of 60 the other day. Only one Eboy raised his hand. ,.+
 "'Well, how big is a cow?' So big was the reply, spreading his Ihands to a width which would indi- cate the length of a dog. Did you ever see one?" he was asked. "Oh, sure, was the reply, I saw 1t in the window of a dairy--a picture of it"
 Answers, such as that, it is argued, show the futility of trying to teach anything in the. way of natural sci ence by pictures or photographs. It would be thought for instance that pupils might go to the parks to ob- serve the ways of birds and animals There are many East Side children who have never seen Third Avenue, a street which Is less than thres-quart- CTS of mile from a school in which inquiries were made. Dr. Bumpus director of the museum, recently in: stituted a series of lectures for schoo children. They were brought to tht lecture hall of the museum. Hundreds Iof them never in all their lives ha6 been on the Elevated Railroad ant often in one class there were five ol | six children who were i'll after theil journey.
 MT. Sherwood is now engaged In thu preparation of his annual report in con nectioh with his work e bringing tht museum in touch with the common schools. Many teachers" he said, "; | year or so ago wrote to Dr. Bumpu' asking him to give them few speci mems for use in their nature talks which are now required. The directo igave orders that small collection should be made up and lent to tn teachers who applied for them. Smal cabinets were made, in which wer placed collections of stuffed birds, in Isects, crabs, sponges, coral, star fishes mineral and native woods. Ther were eight kinds of cabinets in all and each school got one for thre weeks at time. They have been cir culated in the year closing June through 150 schools, and the speci
 mems have been seen and handled b about 27O,0OO pupils. The result ha been an increased interest in natur tstudy.
 I've have had a course of lecture for teachers, and the attendance c
 school children at the museum ha risen from 5000 year to 43000. Tn
 most popular of the collections hay
 been those of the stuffed birds, (
 which there are 90 boxes. Dr. Bumpu
 has received many letters from publi
 school pupils telling of their apprt
 citation of the collections. Here 1
 one from the East Side girl, who say
 she thinks the bluejay is pretty, br
 she likes the English sparrow best (
 all because it was the only bird whic