Preface vil 



have to learn. Scientific observations, too, demand 

 sustained attention and very generally repetition and 

 interpretation by such intellectual processes as com- 

 parison and classification. The reasoning faculties, 

 by which such processes must be performed, require 

 the guidance of more mature intelligence, not only to 

 train them but even to bring them into operation at 

 all. Nor does mental orderliness come more naturally 

 than attention or discrimination. 



We find, then, that we must interest, we must 

 stimulate the power of observation, and we must elicit 

 and guide the reasoning faculties. One never-failing 

 method of effecting these three objects is to bring the 

 young directly in contact with nature. To pick a 

 bunch of flowers, to chip fossils from the quarry, to 

 be shown some of the more conspicuous constellations 

 on a starry night, or the moon's surface through a 

 telescope, is sure to arouse interest, and no competent 

 teacher need then fail to find lessons that will not only 

 instruct or impart information, but will also teach the 

 art of reasoning. So, too, though most of the leading 

 truths of physical geography can be illustrated any- 

 where, we might wish, in order to exhibit to the mind 

 all the facts upon which those principles are based, 

 to take the young student on extensive travels in 

 many climes whilst his mind is still in its most im- 

 pressionable stage. Failing this, nothing is so likely 

 to produce a powerful and life-like realization of the 

 true facts of nature as the word-pictures of eye- 

 witnesses. For this reason the writer of the present 

 work seems to have acted wisely in culling, without 

 pretence of originality, from many of the most accurate 

 works of travel of modern times, and setting before her 

 readers in detail the inferences to be drawn from the 

 facts which she describes. 



