354 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



isms is perfectly appreciable through impressions made on his senses, 

 and is well fitted to arouse in him lively interest and curiosity," If 

 this be really so, then no more is needed than to furnish the child 

 with his sprouting seeds as we both do. But surely mankind has 

 been familiar enough with the sensible facts of germination, and yet 

 the grossest errors concerning life-changes have prevailed through all 

 past times. Indeed, Mrs. Jacobi quickly abandons this ground, that 

 the child will perfectly appreciate the case, by saying it is " important 

 to impress the imagination with typical and fundamental facts long 

 before they can be reasoned upon or their laws really understood," I 

 should prefer to let the child grow by slow preparation in concrete 

 observations, till its mind gains knowledge and strength to understand 

 typical and fundamental facts upon recondite subjects. 



I gave my reasons for objecting to drawing as a means of acquiring 

 descriptive botany. In her third proposition Mrs. Jacobi puts my 

 view in this form : " That children should not be detained to draw the 

 leaves, or other natural objects they study, because of the delay thus 

 entailed." And, in commenting upon this, she further remarks : " If 

 the aim at the time be not to learn botany, but to cultivate the ob- 

 serving powers of children, what danger is there in a delay which 

 permits the object to be more deeply graven on the child's mind? 

 Why is it so necessary to become familiar with hundreds of specimens 

 in a given time? '''' As our object is here presumably to get at the 

 truth, I have a right to insist upon greater correctness in the repre- 

 sentation of my views. Mrs. Jacobi pleads to inaccuracy in her former 

 statement of them in regard to drawing ; but there are three further 

 inaccuracies here, which I have indicated by italics, and, trivial as 

 they may seem, they give an erroneous impression of my method. 

 Without warrant, she introduces the phrase " other natural objects," 

 so that a quite special objection to drawing in the endless field of 

 observation which the study of plants presents, is generalized into 

 opposition, on my part, to the use of natural objects as drawing- 

 lessons. Nothing I have said can be construed into opposition to 

 drawing, which of course has its uses ; but it may also be misplaced 

 and misused. Whenever the object is to form a habit through repeti- 

 tions of a great number of simple exercises, the intrusion of such a 

 mechanical operation as drawing must seriously hinder the work in 

 hand. In arithmetic, for example, it is necessary to go through a 

 great number of numerical exercises to form the habit of rapid and 

 accurate calculation. But many of the problems involve concrete 

 imagery which is capable of pictorial illustration. If, however, with 

 a view of deepening his impressions, the pupil were required to make 

 drawings of these, he would, to say the least, be very much obstructed 

 in his mathematical progress, 



Mrs. Jacobi puts it as if I had said my aim in preparing the " First 

 Book" was not to teach botany, which is incorrect. Although the 



