342 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



himself might have observed with envy ; and there are fish that fly- 

 through the air of heaven with a grace and swiftness that would put 

 to shame innumerable si)ecies among their feathered competitors. 

 Nay, there are even fish, like some kinds of eels and the African 

 mud-fish, that scarcely live in the water at all, but merely frequent 

 wet and marshy places, where they lie snugly in the soft ooze and 

 damp earth that line the bottom. If I have only succeeded, there- 

 fore, in relieving the mind of one sensitive and retiring fish from the 

 absurd obloquy cast upon its appearance when it ventures away for 

 a while from its proper element, then, in the pathetic and prophetic 

 words borrowed from a thousand uncut prefaces, this work will not, I 

 trust, have been written in vain. — Cornhill Magazine. 



THE FLOWER OR THE LEAF. 



By De. MAEY PUTNAM-JACOBI. 



"Quod she agen, 'But to whom do ye owe 

 Your service? and which wolle ye honour, 



Tel me I pray, this yere, the Leaf or the Flower?' " 



Chaxjoer, " The Flower and the Leaf." 



THE comments made by Miss Youmans,* upon a single remark in 

 my article on " Primary Education," show how much can be un- 

 folded out of an apparently limited subject, when all its bearings are 

 thoroughly discussed. Already this discussion trenches upon several 

 philosophical ^jrinciples which involve much more than the apparently 

 trivial question whether children should begin the study of botany by 

 the flower or the leaf. An inquiry into these principles may therefore 

 be not uninteresting. 



Miss Youmans lays down certain propositions, with some of which 

 I do in reality agree, while with others I am in decided disagreement, 

 for reasons I will take the liberty of here setting forth. Thus : 



1. Children should study the external characters of plants before 

 attempting to study their life-processes or physiology. 



2. Children can not be suitably impressed with such "tremendous 

 ideas as evolution," and therefore it is useless to signalize these to them. 



3. Children should not be detained to draw the leaves or other 

 natural objects they study, because of "the delay" thus entailed, and 

 because "they could not draw one in a hundred of the specimens with 

 which it is necessary that they become familiar." 



4. The modern systems of botanical classification are based on the 

 sum total of the characters of the plant, and not on the corolla. It is 

 therefore unphilosophical to study the flower containing the corolla 



* "Popular ScicDce Monthly," October, 1885. 



