HISTORY OF SCIENCE. 



mother, another might be an orphan and homeless, and you 

 would find their mere names of no use to you if you wished 

 to choose one of them to do any work, or to be your friend 

 and companion. For this you would want to learn their 

 character, their habits, and other real facts about them. 



Now this last is just the kind of knowledge which is 

 required in science. If, besides the name of a plant, you 

 know its different parts, the shape of its leaves, the number 

 of its seeds, and how they are arranged in the seed-vessel, 

 the number of stamens or thread-like bodies in the middle 

 of the flower, the number and colour of its petals or flower- 

 leaves, and many other points like these, then you know 

 something of structural botany. If you know, besides, how 

 a plant takes up food, how it breathes, and how the sunHght 

 acts upon the leaves and alters the juices of the plant, then 

 you know something of the life of the plant, ox physiological 

 botany. If you know where the plant grows best, in what 

 soil, in what climate, and in what countries, then you know 

 something oi geographical botany ; and if your knowledge is 

 accurate and carefully learnt it is real science. 



By this you will see that science means not merely know- 

 ledge, but an accurate and clear knowledge about the things 

 which we see around us in the universe. In the present day, 

 people are beginning to teach children much more on these 

 subjects than they did forty years ago, and every intelligent 

 boy or girl probably knows that Astronomy is the science of 

 the sun, stars, and planets; Physics and Mechanics^ the 

 sciences which teach the properties of bodies and their laws 

 of motion ; Biology the science of life ; Geology the science 

 of the earth, teaching us how the d liferent rocks have been 

 formed ; and Chemistry the science which treats of the 

 materials of which all substances are made, and shows the 



