AN EXPERIMENT IN PRIMARY EDUCATION 619 



one ; the writing part of the scheme is, moreover, impossible for a 

 child who has not yet learned how to write. There is another method 

 which consists in seizing at once upon the most striking aspect of the 

 subject, and which shall make the most vivid impression upon the im- 

 agination. For this purpose the leaf is the least useful, the flower the 

 most so. The earliest botanical classifications are based upon the corol- 

 la, and, in accordance with a principle already enunciated, a child may 

 often best approach a science through the series of ideas that attended 

 its genesis. The conditions are different for an adult, who requires to 

 get the latest results ; the child's mind is always remote from these, 

 but often singularly near to the conceptions entertained by the first 

 observers. Again, it is unnatural to enter upon the beautiful world of 

 plants by the study of forms and outlines which is much better pur- 

 sued when abstracted from all other circumstances, as in models of 

 pure mathematical figures. But with plants comes a new idea that 

 of life, of change, of evolution. It is fitting that this tremendous idea 

 make a profound impression on the child's mind ; and this impression 

 may be best secured by watching the continuous growth of a plant 

 from the seed. The study of life is a study of events, of dynamics, of 

 catastrophes. The earliest observation perceives the extraordinary 

 influence of the surrounding medium upon the destinies of the living 

 organism. It is not difficult to surround these destinies with such a 

 halo of imagination as shall impress on the mind a sense of the mys- 

 tery, sanctity I may add, the necessary calamities of life before it 

 has become absorbed in the consideration of living personalities. 



I trust it will not seem a piece of bathos when I add that I initiated 

 the pursuit of these objects by making the child watch the growth of 

 seven beans on a saucer of cotton-wool. A specimen bean was first 

 dissected, and its principal parts named the cotyledons, the embryo 

 with its radicle and plumula, the episperm. The daily reference to 

 these terms speedily rendered the child quite familiar with them. To 

 seven other beans were given appropriate names, as of a band of broth- 

 ers, and they were then planted on cotton-wool by the child. A daily 

 journal of events was opened, in which I wrote each day or two, at the 

 child's dictation. As she had learned the Arabic numerals, she in- 

 serted these herself in the protocol whenever necessary. The entire 

 history of each bean was thus written out, and the successive steps 

 of its development, from the thrilling moment when the radicle first 

 peeped out, to the time when, after transplantation to a flower-pot, the 

 plumula had developed to a long, trailing vine. The rate of growth 

 of this vine was measured day by day exactly, with a rule, the num- 

 ber of leaves counted, etc. But the mathematical considerations were 

 here subordinated to a larger idea, that of the succession of events. 

 Some of the beans molded early in their career, and the relations of this 

 catastrophe to the accidental differences of position, moisture, etc., were 

 carefully studied. On one occasion the child dictated to me the follow- 



