8 PREFACE 
brush. Pupils should make their own plates from the object, 
and color them, arranging their studies after the plates. 
This entire work is intended for and adapted to the city 
schools. It calls for the simplest apparatus, the cheapest mate- 
rial. It asks only for school desks, paper to cover them, knives 
and pins, pencils and paper. 
The lessons are suitable for fourth, fifth, or sixth years, 
either fall or spring term, but should not be taken earlier than 
the fourth, and it is believed they will successfully solve the 
problem of an adequate training in elementary laboratory 
methods for any one of those years under the conditions 
obtaining in the city schools. 
I am indebted for several suggestions in the plates, viz., pear, 
plum, and strawberry, to the great French work Le jardin fructier 
du Muséum, by Joseph Decaisne, and to Koehler’s Medicinal- 
phlanzen for the orange twig. Otherwise the plates were done 
from life. 
A large part of the value of this work is due to my former 
Training School pupils, who, during the past few years, have 
tested these lessons in the New York schools; to them, and to 
the principal of the school, Mr. Augustus 8. Downing, most of the 
credit of this little book belongs. But for them it would never 
have been undertaken and brought to completion in its present 
form. 
M. H. C. 
