57 
Again, we do not teach the parts of the flower, because they 
are parts of the flower. The’introduction may be through the 
e when we are learning about the source of thé honey on the 
oe table, or it may come through our garden-work, as we 
see the bees going from flower to flower. The carrying of the 
pollen by the bee is of vast interest to the child. Where does 
he get it?) How does he carry it? What does he do with it? 
What does the flower do with it? And because they want to 
talk about it and must have words, calyx and corolla, sta- 
mens and pistils, come naturally into the vocabulary of the child. 
It is not the parts of the flower but their functions that are of 
interest to him. 
Neither do we at the present time teach the star-fish according 
to Mrs. Agassiz’s “A First Lesson in Natural History.’”” We 
were loth to give up the star-fish ; those lessons were dear to 
the children. But we had to subject ourselves to the cross-ex- 
amination of the times: How does this star-fish affect the lives 
of these children? At what point do the children and the oe 
me in contact? They cannot eat it; they cannot wear i 
it aie not make a good pet; the great mass of children in ns 
United States live and grow up and die without ever seeing a 
living star-fish or perhaps a dead one. Is there xo pcint where 
the star-fish touches the life of the child? Ah, yes! Through 
the oyster! The child eats oysters; the star-fish eats oysters ; 
and the more the star-fish eats, the fewer there are for the child. 
And so while we are studying about the oyster it takes per- 
haps no longer than five minutes for the children to learn all 
that was really gained formerly in one or more lessons wholl 
devoted to the star-fish. Where interest is aroused, assimilation 
is rapid. Moreover, the star-fish is not an isolated subject in the 
child’s mind, but it occupies a place related in common to the 
oyster and to himself. This is not a scientific ules of the 
star-fish, so long secure among the radiates. It must be humili- 
ating to be taught no longer because one isa es but because 
one eats oysters. 
The child is not ready for scientific classification or organiza- 
tion, and to attempt it, is to fail in more ways than one, and to 
