down the East Side there are young graduates giving lessons in their homes, making the lives of drudgery around them bright by their fiddles and their songs. The best criterion of what their fiddles and songs are worth to the community is the sacrifice which both the parents and the children are willing to make to have them."

Home and School.

VISITING TEACHERS.-The Public Education Association of New York maintains 5 "visiting teachers" who serve as a link between the home and the school. It is the business of these teachers to concern themselves with children whom the school finds it hard to manage, the socalled difficult children who, because of irregular attendance, poor scholarship, incorrigibility, immorality, or poverty with its attendant evils of household cares and childlabor, cannot be properly influenced and cared for by the regular class-room teachers. The visiting teacher goes into the home of the child and endeavors to bring its work and influence in line with that of the school; therefore her work is both educational and social-she serves as a connecting link between the home and the school. "She is the sympathetic observer, the helpful friend of both. To fulfil this function, she visits not once or twice but frequently both the home and the class-room, conferring with parent, teacher, and principal. From all three she asks coöperation. The child is the problem to be solved. To achieve the result desired, it is necessary that all available forces be united."

Under the title of "The Misfit Child," Miss Mary Flexner describes, in the March issue of the World's Work, how she has employed all the various educational and social agencies in the form of relief societies, day nurseries, settlements, hospitals, fresh-air funds, gymnasiums, scholarship funds; trade, cooking, art, and folk-dancing classes; public libraries, etc., in her work as a visiting teacher in New York, in order to "make good" home deficiencies for the overburdened, underfed, unhealthy, improperly environed, or erring child. She speaks especially of the need of establishing mutual understanding, sympathy, and confidence among all the parties concerned. This is usually not an

easy task, because of incapability, poverty, ignorance, indifference, or sickness in the home.

This composite democracy of ours, she says, presents the most varied problems imaginable. But "its salvation reduces itself in the long run to the individual salvation of its constituent units." It depends upon the personal fate of each boy and girl. Therefore, time and effort spent early upon these otherwise lost and menacing individual units of society will yield rich returns for all expense involved. Many interesting cases of amelioration and reform are cited by Miss Flexner in illustration of what can be accomplished for the child by those who have the training, the time, the interest, and the authority to throw their influence around the life of the misfit child.

Conservation.

PROVIDING FOR THE BIRDS.-As our song-birds are of great value in keeping trees and plant life free from destructive insects, their preservation goes hand in hand with our general movements for forest conservation. Omar H. Sample asserts, in a recent issue of American Homes and Gardens, that there is a surprising ignorance of the value of birds as insect destroyers and a deplorable indifference to the rapid decrease of our feathered songsters. This decrease within the last 15 years he places at 46 per cent, or nearly half. He says that modern farming, which insists on cutting away the hedges, bushes, and shrubs which furnished favorable nesting places for the birds, is largely responsible for this condition. He then states the need of our replacing by artificial means suitable nesting and feeding places to restore our lost bird-life.

In this connection he calls particular attention to Germany, the model land of forest conservation, where there is a rigidly enforced law protecting 152 species of birds, as well as a strong movement to grow nesting-hedges for them, toward building nesting-boxes in trees, and toward erecting natural and convenient winter-feeding houses for them, and in general toward providing them food, shelter, and protection from their enemies. He describes in an interesting way the 500-acre experiment station for the study and

preservation of bird-life that has been established at Seebach by Baron von Berlepsch, the father of the modern science of bird protection. The Hungarian Government became so much interested in his work that it sent a trained investigator to his estate to study his methods and is now supplying nesting-boxes in the 5,000,000 acres of its state forests.

In connection with this same subject of caring for the birds should be mentioned the setting aside of Marsh Island as a refuge for the birds of the lower Mississippi valley. Mrs. Russell Sage has bought Marsh Island, which is on the Gulf Coast southwest of New Orleans, and has donated it to the Federal Government, the State of Louisiana, and an organization formed for the purpose of controlling it, as a refuge for birds. The conditions attached to the gift are that there shall be no settlements allowed on the island, and that a special government permit be required even to land on it. As this island is famous as a feeding ground for the mallards, canvasbacks, black ducks, teal, snow geese, blue geese, herons, bitterns, loons, rails, and many varieties of land birds, it will prove a regular paradise for our feathered friends.

This bird paradise is 18 miles long and 9 miles wide and contains approximately 75,000 acres. That such provisions for saving the birds are needed is clear from the fact that in Louisiana, during the hunting season of 1909-10, there were over 4,000,000 game birds slaughtered, and this takes no account of the large number destroyed to furnish feathers and wings for ladies' hats. The Christian Herald for October 30 says, "The provision of the refuge will be the most pleasant news the birds of North America have heard since the reading of the will of David Wilcox, which made possible the formation of the National Audubon Society for the study and protection of the feathered tribes."

ARBOR DAY PAMPHLET.-Education for June reports that the Public Library of Jersey City is publishing a series of pamphlets, on anniversaries and special occasions, that should be useful to teachers and social workers. The one issued on Arbor Day and some facts about Trees" gives a fair idea of the scope of these pamphlets. The following

66

are its headings: Arbor Day; Origin and History; Methods of its Observance; Benefits derived from its Observance; Tree Worship; Trees; Age and Size of Trees; Uses of Trees; Historic Trees; Forests of New Jersey; Shade Tree Commissions.

SCHOOL SAVINGS BANKS.-The teaching of thrift, or the conservation of money resources, has not received the attention in America that is accorded it in several European countries. Although some believe it to be outside the province of the school for it to serve as the depository of children's savings, some form of practical lessons which will tend toward habits of thrift is badly needed in America. School savings banks can be made to furnish these lessons in an effective way. The idea of such banks originated in France, the paradise of small savings, and from there spread rapidly into such thrifty countries as Germany, Holland, and Belgium. Mr. John Thiry, a native of Belgium, in 1885, while he was a school commissioner of Long Island City, New York, introduced the plan in America. Through his instrumentality this system of teaching thrift was soon established in all the public schools of that city and gradually spread all over the country. Although such savings banks are not in the general use which they deserve, there are now 1149 public schools recorded as using the plan, with a total amount of savings registered of nearly $3,500,000. As a large proportion of this amount would ordinarily have been spent for cheap candy and in some cases for cigarettes, these banks have been a means of conserving the welfare of their depositors.

But, more than this, they have taught something of the meaning and value of thrift. They have also enabled many persons to pay their way through academies and colleges, and while attending trade and technical schools. They have made it possible for boys to start small business enterprises of their own and for girls to buy their own clothing. In some instances they have given children the satisfaction of rendering financial assistance to their parents at critical times. But, possibly more than anything else, they have taught the lessons of self-denial for the sake of a greater future good which are so hard for young people to understand. The thrifty Franklin had as a favorite expression

"Deny self for self's sake," and these young depositors have had a better opportunity to do so than have the pupils in the schools where these banks have not been established.

Mr. Thiry died in 1911, leaving the leadership and the accumulated literature and records of the system to his associate, Mrs. Sara L. Oberholtzer, of Philadelphia. It is largely due to her efforts during the last 20 years that 265 schools in Pennsylvania have adopted the plan. This State, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York have the most of these banks, although recently San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley, California, have introduced the plan in a number of their schools.

Child Labor.

THE NEW CHILDREN'S BUREAU.-By far the most important general legislation affecting the welfare of young people during the past year was the creation of a Children's Bureau as a branch of the Department of Commerce and Labor. Miss Julia C. Lathrop has been placed at the head of the Bureau with a salary of $5000 per year. The purpose of this bureau is not to exercise authority over the children of the country or to bring legal pressure to bear upon their parents. It is rather to serve as a great national intelligence office, or bureau of information, continually engaged in the kind of investigation and research work that will make clear the position and needs of the great number of children who are now practically without intelligent and sympathetic interest and care. The Bureau will pay little attention to well-fed, well-housed children except to include them in its general statistics. But it will concern itself specially with the less fortunate who are surrounded by conditions which retard physical development and which prevent them from getting an effective education.

There are four classes of children upon whose condition the Bureau is to turn its attention. These are (a) afflicted children; (b) dependent children; (c) delinquents; and (d) children at work. The child labor problem has already received a great deal of effective attention throughout the country. But this Federal bureau will undoubtedly make it possible to secure information that hitherto it