92 THK PlyANT WORLD 



When compound leaves were first described (Hickory, No. 19) the 

 class added a column headed "Kind," in which to note whether the 

 leaves were simple or compound. A separate column was also added for 

 lobes or leaflets. 



By this time all the class had found the page too narrow for the num- 

 erous headings and they copied the descriptions holding the books hori- 

 zontally, or with the greater length from left to right, and drawing the 

 vertical lines over two pages at once, as the book lay open upon the 

 table. The third and fourth sheets were done in the same way and when 

 being used were often detached and placed below the first two sheets, so 

 that all four were in view at once. 



Most of the class thus described twenty-four trees, the descriptions 

 being individual work mainly. The three or four sheets made a great 

 deal of reading matter to read if one wished to name a tree, and one boy 

 suddenly objected, saying that one might have to read nearly every 

 description before striking the one desired. This was exactly what was 

 wanted : first, to make the pupil see in what his work lacked ; and second, 

 how to correct it. This same pupil said that if he had put the evergreens 

 on one sheet and the deciduous trees upon other sheets the work of naming 

 would be easier. The class, of course, objected strongly to recopying 

 the mass of material, and so were led to devise the plan of putting in 

 front of the book a page which should be divided into two columns — one 

 for evergreens and one for deciduous trees. If the leaf to be named were 

 evergreen, it would be necessary to read the descriptions of evergreen 

 trees only. Here, those who had not previously numbered the names of 

 the trees saw the advantage of doing so. It was at once noticed that this 

 division helped materially with evergreens, but did not help with decidu- 

 ous trees. " What can we do for this group ? " was the next question, 

 and the class decided to divide deciduous leaves into simple and com- 

 pound leaves. (That this was the next suggestion may have been chance, 

 or because there were .so few compound leaves in the series used.) Here 

 again the compound leaves were easily named, but it took a long time 

 to name a simple leaf from the descriptions, and the simple leaves were 

 divided into single and opposite. In the same way the single leaves were 

 classified as lobed, entire, and not entire. These sheets were placed in 

 front of the descriptive pages. 



At this stage the supervisor of the Boys' Department was asked to 

 come into the class-room and try to name a leaf from the boys' books. 

 He selected a chestnut leaf, and acting as if it were unknown to him, 

 had the boys show him how to use the book, and traced it from " decidu- 

 ous " to " simple, ' ' then to ' ' single, ' ' and then to ' ' not entire. ' ' Under 

 the "not entire " leaves were listed — 4, poplar; 5, beech; 7, chestnut; 

 9, oak; 10, witch hazel ; 14, sweet birch; 11, elm. The supervisor failed 



