PRELIMINARY 5 



up of little particles of water, and that we can tell in various 

 ways that when we see many clouds up in the sky the air round 

 us is full of water too, and that there will soon be rain. We 

 know, too, that though all the heat comes from the sun, yet the 

 wind has a great deal to do with making a day warm or cold, 

 and we explain that to ourselves by noticing that if we stand in 

 the passage and let the hot air come to us from the warm school- 

 room, it feels much warmer than when we open the outer door 

 and let in the cool air from outside. We know that some winds 

 are formed of warm air while others are formed of cold air, and 

 we suspect, therefore, that the warm winds come from a place 

 where the sun is strong, and the cold winds from some place 

 where the air is chilled down in some way. We know too that 

 the sun and the wind dry up the road quickly, while on calm, 

 cloudy days it is always muddy, here is at least the beginning 

 of a rational study of the weather. 



At a very early stage something more than this can be done. 

 Simultaneously with the weather observations simple notes will 

 of course be taken of plant and animal life as affected by weather. 

 In the reading lesson and elsewhere the children are learning 

 that spring is the growing time, summer the flowering time, 

 autumn the seeding time, and winter the resting time ; but care 

 should be taken to point out by the daily weather observations 

 how far removed our normal type of winter, for example, is from 

 the dead season of the poets. The monthly rose striving to 

 flower in December ; the birds singing in mid-winter ; the spring 

 bulbs pushing their little spears through the soil between frosts ; 

 the yellow aconite piercing the crust with its bent head in mid- 

 January ; the redwings trooping over to our shores after a cold 

 spell: these and many other examples should be used to show 

 what we owe to the south-westerly winds of winter. Make the 

 class realise by their own observations that our ordinary winter 

 consists of a series of relatively short periods of frost, with or 

 without snow, separated by periods of relatively mild weather. 

 At the same time, whether or not formal lessons in geography 

 have begun, tell them of the vast snow-covered plains of northern 

 Europe, of the silent Russian steppes, read them passages of 

 Tolstoi or Turgeniev describing winter scenes, make them realise 



