PREFACE 



These simple lessons are designed to awaken an 

 interest in plants and in nature rather than to teach 

 botany. They are suggestions to the teacher who 

 desires to introduce nature -study into the school. A 

 somewhat full discussion of the author's opinions re- 

 specting the methods of presenting nature- study by 

 means of plant-subjects, is given in the book of which 

 this is an abridgement. It is desired to emphasize the 

 importance of making nature-study objects the subjects 

 of writing and drawing in schools in which compo- 

 sition and drawing are taught. The first essential to 

 the writing of compositions is that the pupil have 

 something to say which is drawn from experience and 

 observation. Live and emphatic ideas are more im- 

 portant than drill in modes of expression. Fill the 

 pupil with his subject, and writing comes easy, particu- 

 larly if he is taught that good English demands that 

 he go no farther with his subject than to express 

 what he himself feels. The writing and the drawing 

 should not be intended, primarily, as examinations in 

 the nature-study, but as regular exercises in the cus- 

 tomary work of composition and drawing. 



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