State Superintendent of Schools Kirk, said: "It is my firm conviction that a large part of what we now call 'geography' should be eliminated from the school curriculum. Much of it is so worthless or misleading as to retard education and exhaust the children's energies without any definite purpose. Children should learn about the country they live in, rather than the remote regions of Asia and the Arctic Zone." One speaker declared that the recreation time can be restfully utilized for nature-study work. Memory is good but observation is better, and teachers are asking for specimens of fruits, nuts, grains, grasses, woods, leaves, twigs, buds, and flowers. BIRDS AND ORNITHOLOGISTS. Birds has entered upon a new year with the satisfaction of having pleased its readers as well as having rendered actual service to the cause of education, ornithological literature and art. Nature with her usual prodigality has scattered thousands of rare and attractive birds throughout the world, and of these the editor of BIRDS selects the most interesting species, the loveliest forms and the richest plumage for preservation by means of magnificent illustrations, obtained through the expensive process of color photography. A unique treatment of text makes the magazine interesting and instructive to old and young alike. The people of this locality are noted for being lovers of birds and students of nature, and it has given the three greatest naturalists the world has ever known. This is the native heath of Audubon and Robert Dale Owen. Mr. S. G. Evans, the well-known dry goods merchant of this city, has a very fine and complete set of Audubon's birds. All this fills our eyes to think what the world lost in the death of William Hamilton Gibson. He made all life seem related to our lives, all being to appear one substance, all to be worthy of interest, sympathy, love, and reverence. There are strange and beautiful stories told of his power to attract and handle the shyest creatures. Once, it is said, he went to a public library in Brooklyn to make a sketch of some rare butterfly, and had found a book of plates from which he was studying his subject, when, lo! there floated into the great room one of the very specimens he desired to picture, fluttered down upon the open page, and at last rested with throbbing wings beside its own portrait. On one election day, Mr. Gibson went to vote, and as he was studying his ticket, there came in at the open door, no one knew whence, a stray pigeon, which flew at once to him and perched upon his shoulder. He caressed it in his tender fashion, and murmured to it, and then it flew away, no one knew whither. Once, too, as he sat upon his veranda at The Sumacs, his country home in Connecticut, describing to a visitor the peculiar markings upon the wings of a certain song-bird, he suddenly arose, stepped to a bush upon the lawn, and coaxed into his hand the very bird of which he was talking, and which he brought to show to