A LETTER TO THE STUDENT 



Neaelt sixty years ago a lad ten or twelve years of age 

 gathered together in his father's cellar a collection of bot- 

 tles, jars, chemicals, and other equipment. He had gone to 

 school but three months in his life. Yet with the help of 

 his mother, he read the best books she could secure. He 

 obtained a copy of Parker's School Philosophy and worked 

 out in his " den " in the cellar almost every experiment in 

 the book. Moreover, he tested to his satisfaction many of 

 the statements he encountered in his reading. 



People would have smiled if, fifty years ago, any one had 

 said of this lad of Port Huron, Michigan : " He will make the 

 streets of your cities at night as light as day. He will 

 reproduce music and the human voice on cylinders of wax. 

 He will make it possible for every village to have a moving 

 picture show. He will use electricity instead of horses to 

 propel your street cars." Yet Thomas Alva Edison has 

 brought these very things and more to pass. He laid the 

 foundation for these great inventions by working out for 

 himself the statements he found in his books. 



The boy on the following page holds in his hands a rock 

 and a bit of soil. He has been told that soil comes from 

 rocks ; that plants draw their nourishment from the soil and 

 the air ; that when they die, they also become a part of the 

 soil. On the pages that follow are found brief directions 

 for learning some of the truths about the soil and plants. 

 Let us together perform the experiments. Very few, or 



