In the school at Shirley physiology was taught, and with remarkable success as it seemed to me, with the help of charts; the children seemed uncommonly intelligent and bright. The school is open three months in the summer and three in the winter--two hours in the forenoon and two in the afternoon; and the teacher, a young girl, was also the care-taker of the girls. Singing-school is held, for the children, in the evening. The societies at Hancock and Tyringham lie near the New York State line, among the Berkshire hills. They are small, and have no noticeable features. There are three Shaker societies in New York: at Mount Lebanon, Watervliet, and Groveland. _Mount Lebanon_. The Mount Lebanon Society lies in Columbia County, two miles from New Lebanon. It is the parent society among the Shakers, and its ministry has a general oversight over all the societies. It is also the most numerous. The Mount Lebanon Society was founded in 1787. In 1823 it numbered between five hundred and six hundred persons; at this time it has three hundred and eighty-three, including forty-seven children and youth under fifteen. This society is divided into seven families; and its membership has one hundred and thirty-six males and two hundred and forty-seven females, including children and youth. It owns about three thousand acres of land within the State of New York, besides some farms in other states; and several of its farms in its own neighborhood are in charge of tenants. The different families employ a considerable number of hired laborers. They raise and put up garden seeds, make brooms, dry medicinal herbs and make extracts, dry sweet corn, and make chairs and mops. The women in all the families also make mats, fans, dusters, and other fancy articles for sale; and one of the families keep some sheep. In a previous chapter I have given so many details concerning the Mount Lebanon Society that I need here say nothing further about it, except that it is in a highly prosperous condition. _Watervliet_. The society at Watervliet lies seven miles northwest from Albany, and upon the ground where Ann Lee and her followers first settled when they came to America. Her body lies in the grave-yard at Watervliet. No monument is built over it. The society there has now four families, containing two hundred and thirty-five persons, of whom sixty are children and youth under twenty-one. Of the adult members, seventy-five are men and one hundred women. In 1823 it had over two hundred members; between 1837 and 1850 it had three hundred and fifty.