36 NATURE STUDY AND LIFE 



With the papers in hand the teacher sees exactly what 

 the resources of the class are for this series of lessons in 

 the zoology work. A plan may then be made that shall 

 bring out the best knowledge the children have about 

 their animals, their habits, likes and dislikes, foods, care, 

 uses, etc. If the class is well supplied with pets, the 

 children may study and observe them, thus learning their 

 lessons from the living realities rather than from books ; 

 and, as just intimated, such pets as are not likely to 

 cause annoyance and disturb the school may be brought 

 in during some of the lessons. But, in general, school- 

 rooms are not adapted for keeping animals, and even a 

 pigeon or a rabbit may be a nuisance when thus out of 

 place. 



It is not intended to give the natural history of each 

 animal pet in the series, and great care must be taken 

 not to allow the lessons to grow dull with commonplaces 

 that everybody knows, or run off into details of technical 

 and superficial interest that it makes no difference whether 

 any one knows or not. People may live long and die happy 

 without ever having lumbered their minds up with such 

 ideas as "a chicken has three eyelids," "a dog is covered 

 with hair," "a cat has five toes on the front feet and four 

 toes on the hind feet," and so on ad nauseam. There are 

 plenty of common-sense, valuable, and interesting things 

 to be learned about animals to occupy the time, and we 

 may leave all details of comparative anatomy to special 

 courses in colleges or medical schools. The following is 

 intended as merely suggestive upon the more important 

 of these matters, to illustrate the point of view rather 

 than to give a complete list. The resources of the 



