20 Tffh'EE KINGDOMS. 



or two grammar recitations, or examinations in geo- 

 graphy, for a little practical knowledge of what lives and 

 moves and has its being out of doors, and a few lungfuls 

 of crisp June or October oxygen. 



Your own ignorance, if that is what you do own on 

 these matters, will the better enable you to study with 

 your pupils; and next to instruction from the most gifted 

 master, nothing is more inspiring than such friendly 

 companionship in learning. As for failing to interest 

 your pupils, remember that a taste for the pure pleasures 

 of natural science, like a taste for olives, must be culti- 

 vated by persistent tasting! After one or two excur- 

 sions, followed by a careful study of the specimens ob- 

 tained, with the personal use of microscope or blowpipe, 

 enthusiasm generally groAvs like purslane. You will 

 find, too, that the Association will be a great help to you. 

 We have now about fifty scientific specialists always 

 ready to aid the members by answering their letters of 

 inquiry, and by determining their specimens for them, 

 free of cost, save postage. 



A boy in a grammar school in the uttermost parts of 

 Dakota becomes interested in fishes. He finds the com- 

 mon varieties that he knows, and studies them. By and 

 by he takes in his net or on his hook a stranger. He finds 

 no account of him in the small zoolog}' in the school 

 library. The teacher cannot help him. He studies the 

 fish with his eyes, examines fins, and scales, and skeleton. 

 Then he prepares a description as accurately as he can, 

 perhaps aided in this by the teacher, and sends it, with a 

 rude sketch, it may be, to one of the gentlemen who 

 kindly assist our students. In a few days he receives a 

 letter, giving him the name of his fish, and, what is bet- 

 ter, the name of a book from which he can learn much 

 more about fishes than from any volume that ever before 



