Some Common Minerals and Their 

 Determination 



W. A. Tarr, University of Missouri. 



FIRST PAPER. 



Children are keener observers than older persons. Countless 

 natural objects are noticed by them that older people, even 

 though they are naturalists, fail to observe at all. Familiarity 

 has caused us to lose some of the keenness we once possessed. 

 We should take advantage of this aptitude of children and help 

 Hhem to acquire a wide acquaintance with the natural objects 

 around them. Teachers everywhere are doing this in their nature 

 study work. Birds, flowers, plants of all kinds, insects, and ani- 

 mals are receiving their full share of attention by nature teachers. 

 But the great field of inorganic nature is not touched by the vast 

 majority of teachers, and yet the amount of material for such 

 work is unlimited. It seems strange that a field so full of won- 

 derful possibilities for study in the grades should have been and 

 still is, neglected by nature teachers. 



There are two reasons for this. One is that there is a lack 

 gf teachers who have a knowledge of geology, mineralogy, and 

 chemistry, and the other is the common belief among nature 

 teachers that the child has a more vital interest in life and its 

 various forms. However true the last may be, it is no excuse 

 for not assisting the child when its attention is attracted to 

 crystals and rocks. I believe that if our teachers were qualified 

 to answer the child's questions about such inanimate objects their 

 interest in them would be as lively as in life forms. Girls are 

 attracted by the form and color of minerals and rocks and often 

 is an agate or piece of petrified wood found among the boy's 

 pocket treasures. The world's greatest diamond mines in South 

 Africa were discovered by a hunter observing a Kaffir boy play- 

 ing marbles with some rounded pebbles, one of which attracted 

 his attention by its brightness. This was the first diamond found 

 in South Africa. The boy had found it in a nearby river near 

 which the mines were afterwards located. 



A collection of minerals and rocks is very easily made and a 

 great deal of interest may be aroused among the children in the 

 grades or students in the high school by having them make one. 

 They can be kept in almost any kind of a box and the child itself 

 can arrange compartments in the box by using wood or paste- 



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