METHOD OF TEACHING. IX 



The children who destroy the nests of tit-mice, to put nestlings, 

 which they think they can feed on seed, into a cage, do not 

 suspect the mischief which they are doing to the crops. 

 These nestlings, in fact, can only live when supplied with plenty 

 of insects ; caterpillars, which are so numerous at the time 

 of their birth, are their favourite food, and it has been calculated 

 that a nest of tit-mice destroys about 600 caterpillars per day. 

 If we attentively examine what each caterpillar devours in the 

 course of its life, we shall be able to judge how costly to agri- 

 culture are these fragile strings of small bird's eggs that children 

 delight to make, and which their parents do not forbid them 

 from making because they are ignorant of the mischief which 

 is done. 



Are not toads often pursued, hunted out, and killed? Yet 

 what services they render us. It is true that they were created 

 to live in the shade, and have neither elegant forms nor brilliant 

 colours, but they ought always to be encouraged, as they 

 live almost entirely on slugs and injurious insects. 



The study of plants is perhaps of still more general interest, 

 and certainly of more direct utility, for they actually form the 

 principal part of our food, and the chief source of the wealth of 

 our country. It is therefore indispensable to learn to know 

 them, to know how corn grows, how the trunk of the oak or the 

 tuber of the potato is formed, etc., etc. ; and which are the 

 commonest edible, industrial, and poisonous plants of our 

 country. 



The earth also contains an immense store of wealth. Here are 

 the day and kaolin to make pottery ; there sandstone and flint for 

 paving, for the manufacture of glass, etc. One country produces 

 coal seams, the fossil remains of ancient forests buried for hun- 

 dreds or perhaps thousands of years, which not only serve for 

 warmth, but from which abundance of useful industrial products 

 are extracted tars, essences, beautiful red and blue dyes, etc. 

 Another country, which is marshy, possesses peat bogs, a mass of 

 sodden vegetabls debris, which when dried and prepared, forms 



