306 THE EDUCATIONAL CLAIMS OF BOTANY. 



necessary to furnish abundant and varied materials for simple 

 observation in this impressible sensational stage of mental 

 growth, when, as yet, only rudimentary details can be appre- 

 ciated. At this time they can be rapidly acquired and easily 

 remembered, while, as the mind advances to the reflective 

 stage, unless the habit of observation has been formed, atten- 

 tion to details becomes tedious and irksome. 



It is sometimes said that it is absurd to attempt teaching 

 children " science " before twelve or fourteen years of age ; and, 

 if it be meant the memorizing of the principles and results 

 of science, the remark is true. But it is not true if applied to 

 the early observation of those simple facts which lead up to 

 scientific principles. Nature settles all that by putting chil- 

 dren to the study of the properties of natural objects as soon 

 as they are born. The germ of scien'ce is involved in its 

 earliest discriminations. When the child first distinguishes 

 its father from its mother, it is doing the same thing that 

 Leverrier did in distinguishing Neptune from a fixed star ; the 

 difference is only one of degree. In putting children early to 

 the work of observation, as is provided for in the First 

 Book, we are, therefore, only continuing a course already 

 entered upon, and which involves the most natural and con- 

 genial action of the childish mind. 



Another" reason why children should commence the study 

 of objects early is, that the habit may be formed before the 

 mind acquires a bent in other directions ; is, because to post- 

 pone it is to defeat it. As education is supposed to begin 

 when school begins, and to consist mainly in learning lessons, 

 children quickly get the notion that nothing is properly " edu- 

 cation " that does not come from books. But the difficulty here 

 is deeper still. The habit of lesson-learning, of passively load- 

 ing the memory with verbal acquisitions, is so totally different 

 a form of mental action from observing, inquiring, finding things 

 out, and judging independently about them, that the former 

 method tends powerfully to hinder and exclude the latter. I 

 have found, in my own experience, that the younger children 

 took to exercises in observation with freedom, and zest, while 

 their elders, in proportion to their school proficiency, had to 



