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AUTHOR’S PREFACE 
IN presenting these “First Studies of Plant Life” the 
object has been to interest the child and pupil in the life and 
work of plants. The child, or young pupil, is primarily inter- 
ested in life or something real and active, full of action, of 
play, or play-work. Things which are in action, which rep- 
resent states of action, or which can be used by the child in 
imitating or “staging” various activities or realities, are 
those which appeal most directly to him and which are most 
forceful in impressing on his mind the fundamental things 
on which his sympathies or interests can be built up. 
There is, perhaps, a too general feeling that young pupils 
should be taught things; that the time for reasoning out why 
a thing is so, or why it behaves as it does under certain con- 
ditions, belongs to a later period of life. We are apt to 
forget that during the first years of his existence the child 
is dependent largely on his own resources, his own activity 
of body and mind, in acquiring knowledge. He is preém- 
inently an investigator, occupied with marvelous observations 
and explorations of his environment. 
Why then should we not encourage a continuance of this 
kind of knowledge-seeking on the part of the child? The 
young pupil cannot, of course, be left entirely to himself 
in working out the relation and meaning of things. But 
opportunities often present themselves when the child should 
be encouraged to make the observations and from these learn 
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