3 66 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



effect. They will stumble, and they will even make stupid mis- 

 takes and mispronunciations ; but do they not do so when they 

 are reading i. e., observing and comparing and interpreting 

 printed words in a book ? Of course they do, and therefore the 

 teacher must not be discouraged by their stumbling and mis- 

 apprehending when first they have to look at and compare differ- 

 ent leaves and flowers, and give forth the articulate sounds which 

 correspond to the impressions created on their minds. 



Every weary teacher knows what a blessing is variety in the 

 studies of the class, and it passes my comprehension why advan- 

 tage is not taken of the splendid opportunity offered by the study 

 of elementary observational botany. 



We now come to the important subject of method. How 

 should botany be taught ? 



Elementary botany in schools should be confined to lessons in 

 observation and comparison of plants, and the greatest possible 

 care should be taken that books are not allowed to replace the 

 natural objects themselves. Indeed, I would go so far as to ad- 

 vise that books be used only as an aid to the teacher, were it not 

 that a judiciously written text-book might be employed later on by 

 even young children as a sort of reading-book. 



The chief aids should be the parts of living plants themselves, 

 however, and, in spite of the outcry that may be expected from 

 pedantic town teachers, I must insist that every school might be 

 easily provided all the year round with materials for study. I 

 even venture to think that these materials might be collected by 

 the children themselves ; at any rate, there should be no difficulty 

 about this in the country. 



I will illustrate these remarks by a few examples. The teach- 

 ing of elementary botany to children should commence with the 

 observation of external form, and might well be initiated by a 

 comparative study of the shapes of leaves, the peculiarities of 

 insertion, their appendages, and so on. 



The point never to be lost sight of is that if you teach a child 

 to discriminate, with the plants in hand and, from observation 

 only, between such objects as the simple, heart-shaped, opposite, 

 ex-stipulate stalked leaves of a lilac, and the compound, pinnate, 

 alternate, stipulate leaves of a rose, you lay the foundations of a 

 power for obtaining knowledge which is in no way to be measured 

 merely by the amount or kind of information imparted. It does 

 not matter whether the child learns the trivial facts mentioned 

 above, or not, but it is of the highest importance that the child 

 be taught how to obtain knowledge by such direct observation 

 and comparison ; and the beauty of it all is that, as is well known, 

 the child will retain most of such information as mere matter of 

 course. 



