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Home Nature-Study Course. 



enumerate those that are the result of life. The wood of desk and floor was made 

 by living trees. The wool of the rug was made by sheep. The glass was made 

 from minerals and was never alive, etc. Thus get the pupils to thinking what 

 part life has played in their surroundings. 



Purpose. — To teach the pupils to distinguish between organic and 

 inorganic matter in the soil and also to teach them to identify stone flour. 

 Stone flour, while an important factor of the soil is not the only 

 necessary ingredient. It is but the half of a pair of shears. Organic 

 matter is the other half. Neither alone affords the ideal means for the 

 production of plants. When the two are mixed under proper conditions 

 and proportions, the result is a productive soil. 



The teacher should be able to recognize stone flour. I know of no 

 place where it is more easy to identify than when passing through a cut 

 on the highway or seen from the car windows when traveling. Two 

 colors will be seen. First the black or dark colored rind and below that 

 comes the stone flour. The dark colored skin is the productive soil. 

 In most instances, the excavation from a cellar after the first foot or two 

 has been passed is stone flour and of itself is infertile. 



Teach your children that soil is composed of stone flour and organic 

 matter mixed. The term organic may seem to be too much an importa- 

 tion from chemistry to be teachable in the lower grades. I am not so 

 sure of that. In one way and another, you can announce to your class 

 that some forms of matter were once living and growing things. Then 



appeal to them to tell you if the 

 wood part of their desk ever had 

 life and growth. If of wood it 

 was once a tree and a tree 

 certainly once had life and grew. 

 Now has the iron support of the 

 desk ever had life? After elab- 

 orating the substances that have 

 had life, and those that have not, 

 ask your pupils to make a list 

 of all the substances that they 

 can call to mind and put them 

 into one column or the other — 

 organic or inorganic. If this exercise is given in the spirit of the old- 

 time spelling down, it need never be dull. Children may be taught a 

 lot of subjects commonly thought beyond their years provided the matter 

 is translated to their understanding and given in small doses in the 

 concrete. 



There are some substances that the chemist and the biologist do not 

 agree as to the proper class to which they belong — like the oyster shell. 



The grooved bed-rock scratched by 

 movement of the ice sheet over it. 



the 



