Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, Louis Agassiz: his life and correspondence, third edition

When it was impossible to give the lessons out of doors, the children were gathered around a large table, where each one had before him or her the specimens of the day, sometimes stones and fossils, sometimes flowers, fruits, or dried plants. To each child in succession was explained separately what had first been told to all collectively. When the talk was of tropical or distant countries pains were taken to procure characteristic specimens, and the children were introduced to dates, bananas, cocoa-nuts, and other fruits, not easily to be obtained in those days in a small inland town. They, of course, concluded the lesson by eating the specimens, a practical illustration which they greatly enjoyed. A very large wooden globe, on the surface of which the various features of the earth as they came up for discussion could be shown, served to make them more clear and vivid. The children took their own share in the instruction, and were themselves made to point out and describe that which had just been explained to them. They took home their collections, and as a preparation for the next lesson were often called upon to classify and describe some unusual specimen by their own unaided efforts. There was no tedium in the class. Agassiz's