_Experiments in Colour-memory._ Experiments in colour-memory may be made by showing the child a tint, allowing him to look at it as long as he will, and then asking him to go to a distant table upon which all of the colours are arranged and to select from among them the tint similar to the one at which he has looked. The children succeed in this game remarkably, committing only slight errors. Children of five years enjoy this immensely, taking great pleasure in comparing the two spools and judging as to whether they have chosen correctly.
At the beginning of my work, I made use of an instrument invented by Pizzoli. This consisted of a small brown disk having a half-moon shape opening at the top. Various colours were made to pass behind this opening, by means of a rotary disk which was composed of strips of various colours. The teacher called the attention of the child to a certain colour, then turned the disk, asking him to indicate the same disk when it again showed itself in the opening. This exercise rendered the child inactive, preventing him from controlling the material. It is not, therefore, an instrument which can promote the _education_ of the senses.
EXERCISE FOR THE DISCRIMINATION OF SOUNDS
It would be desirable to have in this connection the didactic material used for the "auricular education" in the principal institutions for deaf mutes in Germany and America. These exercises are an introduction to the acquisition of language, and serve in a very special way to centre the children's discriminative attention upon the "modulations of the sound of the human voice."
With very young children linguistic education must occupy a most important place. Another aim of such exercises is to educate the ear of the child to noises so that he shall accustom himself to distinguish every slight noise and compare it with _sounds_, coming to resent harsh or disordered noises. Such sense education has a value in that it exercises æsthetic taste, and may be applied in a most noteworthy way to practical discipline. We all know how the younger children disturb the order of the room by shouts, and by the noise of over-turned objects.
The rigorous scientific education of the sense of hearing is not practically applicable to the didactic method. This is true because the child cannot _exercise himself through his own activity_ as he does for the other senses. Only one child at a time can work with any instrument producing the gradation of sounds. In other words, _absolute silence_ is necessary for the discrimination of sounds.