RELATION TO GEOGRAPHY AND ARITHMETIC. 293 



tial is an understanding of function and form and 

 plan. 



The number of parts, or the numerical plan, as the 

 number of limbs in animals, or the occurrence of parts 

 of plants in twos or threes or fives, is often important ; 

 but these number relations are so simple that they can 

 scarcely be said to involve any work in arithmetic. 



Quantitative physics and chemistry require much use 

 of arithmetic, but the work in elementary schools must 

 be largely qualitative, and hence makes comparatively 

 little use of the space or number relations. 



Elementary science or nature study will gain little 

 from an attempt to force correlation between it and 

 arithmetic. It may lose much. 



When we require the children invariably to count 

 the number of branches and leaves and buds and scales, 

 to measure the length and breadth, and to calculate the 

 area or volume, of what they are studying, to determine 

 the proportion of branches which have developed, or of 

 buds or leaves which have failed to mature, or the per- 

 centage of legs which turn forward, and the percentage 

 which turn backward, this may be excellent practice in 

 arithmetic, but it is, not infrequently, a positive hin- 

 drance to the nature study. Such work attracts the at- 

 tention of pupils from important features to minor and 

 often accidental details, takes their thought from the 

 real spirit of the work/and has little or no relation to 

 the higher aims of nature study. The autumn foliage 

 may be considered as an opportunity to set the children 

 at work determining the percentage of leaves which 



