28 TEANSACTIONS OF THE ILLINOIS 



Brewer, of Yale College, says: "The ignorance of city children in 

 regard to natural objects which are growing all about thera may 

 seem incredulous. I have just talked with city yoang men from 

 prominent families who could not give the names of three kinds of 

 trees. I can pick out college students to-day who do not know the 

 difference between wheat and oats or rye and barley." This is cer- 

 tainly an inexcusable defect. How can it be remedied? The an- 

 swer is, by the study of the actual objects. And I wish to say for 

 myself that the little that I know about trees was learned by actual 

 close contact with them in early life. The trees that grow in north- 

 ern Ohio, the white oak, the black oak, the beech, the chestnut, the 

 hard and soft maples, as we called them, and some others, I may say 

 that [ know as thoroughly as I know anything. When in some of 

 the Illinois groves I fall in with a little specimen of the iron wood, 

 it seems like meeting an old friend. But of other trees, I have to 

 this day very confused ideas. What I learned, I learned not through 

 the agency of books, but by sense perception. And it would be a 

 great gain if from the trees in our school yards the pupils could ac- 

 quire a thorough acquaintance with some at least of our useful and 

 ornamental trees; a knowledge that should be like the knowledge 

 one has of his intimate friend; a knowledge involving a multitude 

 of elements, but still instantaneous in its operation. 



This training of the sense perception is a very important part 

 of education. In how many cases it has been neglected. Multitudes 

 of adults there are who fail to see, in any adequate sense, the objects 

 that come before them. If in childhood and youth we had become 

 accustomed to thoughtful observation, our habit in this respect 

 would have been entirely different. Prof. Louis Agassiz, carried by 

 a railroad train at the rate of twenty-five miles an hour, had his ob- 

 serving powers so thoroughly trained that he could recognize a par- 

 ticular plant by the roadside as he rushed along. To other observers 

 there was nothing but a blurred surface of greenish earth. We fail 

 to discern a tithe of the beauty there is in this world because our 

 powers of observation have not been schooled by exercise. 



I think that from trees in the school enclosure, the child may 

 secure, in the first place, scientific culture. By such observations as 

 they can make, it is that the botanists acquire their knowledge, 

 and deduce their scientific skill. The fundamental thing in this im- 

 portant science of botany, is the establishment of the facts. The 

 generalization comes later. And we are somewhat addicted to the 

 habit of generalizing before we have fully mastered the facts. This 

 habit is a vicious one, and the study of trees, as they grow and as 

 they actually are, would help us to overcome it. Thus, from a rea- 

 sonable and a natural use of these surroundings of the school house, 

 children may derive the basis of an education most thoroughly scien- 

 tific. 



