194 Education through Nature 



reduced to their simplest manifestation; and it is easily 

 discovered that the life phenomena are very much the 

 same in all of them. Consequently if we understand 

 the life processes in one form, as for instance, the 

 amoeba or paramecium, we shall understand fairly 

 well the life of all; and understanding the life of a 

 cell, we shall so much the better understand the life 

 of a complex body like our own, which is practically 

 an aggregation of cells, very much as we understand 

 society better if we know something about those sci- 

 ences dealing with the life of the individual. 



The cell is the unit of structure of the complex 

 body just as the individual is the unit of the social 

 body. If, therefore, we could discover how the 

 various cells of a complex body, like our own, come 

 to differ from one another and how they become aggre- 

 gated into organs and associated with each other for 

 the performance of special duties, we should be better 

 able to understand how higher organisms come to 

 differ and how even human beings are impressed 

 with their own specific characters and their own individ- 

 ualities. So important is the life of the cell, therefore, 

 that in recent years a new science of Cytology has 

 been created, claiming the exclusive attention of the 

 ablest investigators. While the subject is too diffi- 

 cult for nature study in the grades, yet the teacher 

 should endeavor to know something about cell life, 

 as without such knowledge even nature study must 

 be very much like the blind leading the blind. That 

 even inexperienced pupils can do considerable here, 

 when properly directed, can be seen from the pupil's 

 paper on the paramecium at the end of Part I. That 

 paper was prepared by a pupil in the fourth year of 

 the Normal School with no previous training in this 

 kind of work. 



Viewed under the microscope, an amoeba, or the 

 paramecium which we have been considering in the 



