PREFACE. 



This book is meant for boys and girls beginning the study 

 of plant life. It is true that I have given, wherever possible, the 

 reason for the facts stated about plant life ; a branch of the subject 

 ■which is generally kept back for a senior course. I have done this 

 because I believe that the method of keeping beginners exclusively 

 to the facts is false to the principles oi true teaching. Anyone may 

 see this who walks into the fields with a child and takes note of 

 the questions he puts. If you tell a child that the leaves of an elm 

 are alternate, stipulate, pinnate, with the blade unequally divided 

 by the mid rib he will soon grow tired ; but if you lead him below 

 an elm tree and show him that the peculiar shape of the leaves 

 enables each leaf to catch the maximum of light, he will listen 

 readily. Also, you have given him a key to the meaning of 

 leaves and leaf -form that may bring him to your side with many 

 other eager questions about other leaves. Almost unconsciously 

 he has learned the purpose of a leaf, and this in itself helps him to 

 understand a hundred things in the life of the leaf that were 

 meaningless before. 



Similarly, if you tell the child that a snapdragon flower is 

 personate and bilabiate, with didynamous stamens and a two-lobed 

 superior pistil he will soon grow tired ; but if you try to ex'plain 

 to him that the snapdragon's curious mouth is due to the visits of 

 bees, he will listen readily. Also, you have given him a clue to 

 the meaning of a multitude of strange-shaped flowers ; and the 

 endless variety of form in these flowers no longer bewilders him. 



It is true that in approaching plant-life in this way we have 

 X)f ten to say to the child : " I do not know.'' Sometimes, too, we 

 have to give explanations that may need to be revised with larger 

 knowledge. But this is no reason why the child should not have 

 the best answer to his questions that we can give. If the boy 

 Copernicus had not been drilled in the Ptolemaic theory of the 

 heavens, he would have had little chance of finding out the 

 Copernican system. 



