miall] ready-made LESSONS IN NATURE-STUDY 103 



to his pupils. If he is only able to get up with due thoroughness 

 a single new lesson a year, that lesson will influence all the rest. 

 I have heard of a schoolmaster who had mastered by his own 

 efforts the movements and phases of the moon, and taught that 

 one thing heartily and well. No mean result, I thought, but I 

 should have been glad to hear that he was adding a fresh topic 

 to his stock every year; less than that would not fix him in the 

 right attitude. 



Whether the living things that share our dwellings, or seek 

 their food in our gardens and fields, make the best possible matter 

 for school-lessons or not, the student of nature is bound to attend 

 to them. They are what the mother-tongue is to the student of 

 languages, what the fatherland is to the student of history. A 

 man who knows nothing about the flowers of his own window- 

 boxes and his own flower-beds, nothing about the plants which 

 raise food for him, or the insects which devour what he had 

 hoped to enjoy, nothing about the minute forms of life which 

 bring fertility to the soil, or fatal disease to the household, 

 nothing about house-flies and hive-bees and bacteria — such an 

 one may call himself a naturalist, may indeed have a right to the 

 name, but he has need of deep knowledge of some other kind to 

 escape the accusation of blindness and indifference. What oppor- 

 tunities of enlarging his knowledge of life has he allowed to 

 escape him ! 



We want fresh helpers for the preparation of new nature- 

 studies. There must be a large number of teachers who could 

 now and then write a good one. The difficulty (and a very 

 serious difiiculty it is) would be to pick out the really useful 

 lessons from the rest. Such questions as follow might be some 

 guide in the estimation of merit. 



Has the writer made out anything, great or small, that was not 

 known before? Does he employ new methods of inquiry, or 

 new methods of teaching? Is the plan of the lesson natural, 

 attractive, and likely to aid the memory ? Is the language simple 

 and expressive? Can the pupils do work for themselves upon 

 the subject of the lesson? Does the lesson contain any good 

 experiment? Is it illustrated by new and careful drawings? 



I am quite sure that there would be no difficulty in getting any 

 lesson published which came out well from such an interrogation, 

 and I believe that to write once in a way with all possible care 



