Plant Life 



495 



THE RELATION OF PLANTS TO GEOGRAPHY 



should be from first to last a steady growth in the 

 intelligence of the child as to the places where certain plants 

 grow. He finds hepaticas and trilliums in the woods, 

 daisies and buttercups in the sunny fields, mullein on the dry 

 hillsides, cat-tails in the swamp, and water lilies floating on 

 the pond. This may all be taught by simply asking the 

 pupils questions relating to the soil and the special condi- 

 tions of the locality where they found the flowers they bring to school. 



Egg-shell experiment farm. 

 The plants from left to right are: cabbage, field corn, popcorn, wheat, buckwheat. 



SEED GERMINATION 



Less than three decades ago, this one feature of plant life once came 

 near "gobbling up" all of nature-study, and yet it is merely an incident 

 in the growth of the plant. To sprout seeds is absurd as an object in 

 itself; it is incidental as is the breaking of the egg-shell to the study of 

 the chicken. The peeping into a seed like a bean or a pea, to see that the 

 plant is really there, with its lunch put up by its mother packed all 

 around it, is interesting to the child. To watch the little plant develop, 

 to study its seed-leaves and what becomes of them, to know that they 

 give the plant its first food and to know how a young plant looks and acts, 

 are all items of legitimate interest in the study of the life of a plant; in 

 fact the struggle of the little plant to get free from its seed-coats may be a 

 truly dramatic story. (See "First Lessons with Plants," Bailey, page 

 79). But to regard this feature as the chief object of planting seed is 

 manifestly absurd. 



