142 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



generally. The story of the gypsy moth ; the phylloxera ; 

 the caterpillar ; the tobacco worm ; the life-history and habits 

 of other parasites in the bark or on the leaf, in seed or pulp ; 

 the marvellous habits of the botfly ; the angle worm, through 

 whose body all our vegetable mould has so often passed ; the 

 common house fly, with its interesting and less ephemeral 

 story than we would have thought ; the grub ; the wire worm ; 

 moth and bat ; the food fishes ; weeds ; sorghum ; ginseng ; 

 grasses ; potato beetle ; hemp ; peach-tree borer ; the apple 

 aphis ; the tent makers ; and many other fascinating living 

 creatures which have been so carefully studied of late in our 

 agricultural colleges, — have a moral as well as a scientific 

 interest to childhood, and make a kind of knowledge which 

 has an educational to say nothing of an economic value, and 

 which must be ranked as one of the very highest. 



Many animals excel man in certain qualities of sensation, 

 instinct and physical development ; so that even the adult is 

 looking up and studying higher qualities than his own, in 

 learning of animals and their ways. They are not only our 

 older brothers, but are fit in some respects to be our teachers. 

 Man's supremacy in the world consists in the fact that the 

 qualities in which he excels animals are more numerous than 

 those in which he is inferior to them, and that certain of 

 these qualities are developed to a high and perhaps even ex- 

 cessive degree. The unfoldment of these, however, comes 

 late in his own development, and those which distinguish 

 him from animals are added last ; so that arrest in critical 

 later stages of adolescent development condemns him to pass 

 through life deficient in just those traits which are most 

 characteristically human. That is why, as Doederlein, 

 Mehnert, E. Boas and others have lately shown, those who 

 marry early, before complete maturity, transmit only quali- 

 ties that they themselves inherited, while those who do so 

 later add an element, infinitesimal though it may be, of in- 

 dividual contribution to the phyletic development of the 

 race ; and explains why early sexual maturity is a bad 

 sign for the advancement of the species. Children thus 

 in their incomplete stage of development are nearer the 

 animals in some respects than they are to adults ; and there 

 is in this direction a rich but undiscovered silo of educa- 



