566 NATURE STUDY. 



WORK FOB APRIL. 

 SEEDS AND THEIR GERMINATION. 



" Whether we look or whether we listen, 

 We hear life murmur, or see it glisten ; 

 Every clod feels a stir of might, 

 An instinct within it that reaches and towers, 

 And, groping blindly above it for light, 

 Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers." 



LOWELL. 



Ethical Value. No other phase of plant life, not even 

 the development of buds, has so much in it for the little 

 children as the germination of seeds. They are babies to- 

 gether, the seeds and the little folks, and the children 

 are drawn to them, have a fellow feeling, appreciate their 

 struggles and difficulties, enter into their work, rejoice at 

 their success, enjoy the brightness and beauty they shed 

 about them, join in the " Well done " when the work of the 

 seed is finished, and other seeds have been formed. 



If they really study the life of the seed and seedling, not 

 merely their form and structure, may not our boys and girls 

 see in the short life of the seed an epitome of their longer 

 life ? Perhaps. Much depends on what the teacher sees 

 in the seed and plant and in her boys and girls. 



IMPORTANCE OF STUDY OF DEVELOPMENT FROM BEGINNINGS. 



The study of the germination and life-history .of the plant 

 is very important from another point of view. The children 

 should, from the very beginning, study the plant as a whole, 

 and think of root, stem, leaves, and flowers, not as distinct 

 things, but in their relation to the whole. 



The little plant coming from the seed, with tiny root, stem 

 and leaves, the baby can comprehend and think of as a 

 whole. If he first studies it when it is full grown, he does 



