PREFACE
A child’s reading book, it seems to me, should secure for the child three things,—practice in the art of reading, amusement, and instruction. Whether my little book is fitted to attain this threefold object, others must decide; but in laying it before the public, let me urge careful attention to a few suggestions.
1. As the book is arranged so as to begin with the opening of the school year and to follow it to its close, the interest of pupils will be increased by reading the different chapters during the seasons to which they refer.
2. The teacher should exercise judgment as to the omission of any chapter or group of chapters which may seem beyond the comprehension of the class. With a little care, such an omission may nearly always be made without injury to the usefulness of the rest of the book.
3. Specimens of the objects described, when these can be found in the locality, should always be on exhibition in the schoolroom. Whenever possible, the children themselves should collect and handle these specimens. If for any reason this collection by the children cannot be accomplished, the teacher should not fail to anticipate the readings, and to provide the objects mentioned.
By the observance of these simple and practicable suggestions, it is believed that, while the children are being trained in the art of reading, their powers of observation and of reasoning will be developed, and that they will be inspired with a lifelong interest in nature. The child’s mind is peculiarly alive to the charm of nature when she is studied in detail, and through her it can be trained to observe accurately and to reason logically.
Through the neglect of nature study, the wits of the country child lose just the sharpening they most need, to say nothing of a stimulus and delight which can ill be spared by one whose mental life is apt to be monotonous.
The wits of the city child may secure in other ways the sharpening so essential to success in life; yet the training afforded by a logical study of plants, and the pleasure which such a study, rightly directed, is sure to yield, are as invaluable to him as to his country cousin.
Experience having proved to my keenest satisfaction that almost invariably children can be interested in stories of plants and their children, to the children of the land I offer this little book, in the earnest hope that its pages may lead at least some few of them to find in life a new joy and a deeper meaning.
The aid derived from many sources in the preparation of “Plants and their Children” is heartily acknowledged; but more especially I wish to extend my thanks to Messrs. Holt & Co. for their courtesy in allowing the reproduction of several cuts from their valuable and interesting publication, “The Natural History of Plants,” translated from the German of Kerner von Marilaun.
