7 88 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



MOTHERS AND NATURAL SCIENCE. 



By MAEY ALLING ABER. 



A ROBIN teaches its own young to fly ; a human mother often 

 leaves the training of her babies exclusively to others. The 

 bond of nature between the mother and child puts a premium 

 on all that the mother does, and her constant association is an 

 opportunity for understanding the peculiarities and needs of the 

 child such as no ordinary teacher ever obtains. 



As one's finger may trace in the yielding soil a channel for the 

 outflow of a tiny spring, and at its fountain-head determine the 

 course of a river, so, in the earliest years, the mother may, with 

 little effort, give direction to the energies of the child. The 

 mother's capacities, education, and circumstances may not permit 

 her to accompany the child far on its course, or to contribute 

 much to the current of its intellectual life ; but let her give the 

 direction and all the powers of nature will conspire with the 

 child's inborn force to increase the volume and strength of the 

 on-rushing stream. 



To claim for natural-science studies the mother's power of 

 direction, to show why mothers should interest their children in 

 these studies, and to suggest how they may do so, is the purpose 

 of this paper. 



What mothers may do to interest children in natural science 

 is a question which has but one answer — they may do everything ; 

 what mothers can do has as many answers as there are mothers. 

 Between the may and the can is but one barrier — difficult to 

 destroy — the mother's own habits of thought. Not ignorance, not 

 scarcity of materials, not want of books — not all of these combined 

 need long block the way of any mother whose mind still has the 

 suppleness and sincerity of childhood ; for the door into this king- 

 dom of nature, like that into the kingdom of righteousness, is the 

 simplicity of childhood. 



It would be well, in these days of the supremacy of the mate- 

 rial life and of increasing demands for applied science, if young 

 women who are pursuing courses at our colleges would more often 

 elect science studies, that they may be ready, by power to teach 

 and by assistance and appreciation given to others, to further the 

 introduction and pursuit of science studies in all lower schools ; 

 and to do this in a manner which shall help to put science in its 

 true place as the handmaid, and not the destroyer, of religion. 



But it is to those who have passed their school and college 

 days that this paper must be addressed. As no body gets so stiff 

 that proper treatment can not restore some of its lost pliancy, so 



