Assistance at Home in School Education
The new Britannica performs a service of the greatest importance in responding to the opening mind of the child. Children are the greatest of question askers, and the Britannica is the best question answerer ever devised. They want to know about the races of men, the different animals and plants they see; in fact, almost every object that comes under their observation. The inestimable advantage of answering an inquiry fully and correctly and not in an offhand manner is too obvious to need mention. Let your young children see you go to your Britannica for information and as soon as they are old enough they will naturally do the same, and then the volumes will be performing their most efficient work in the household.
For helping children with their school “themes” and “compositions,” for elucidation or amplification of any topic that comes up in the course of their studies, there is no medium so useful as the new Britannica—the most exhaustive compendium of knowledge which has ever been devised, with its elaborate index of 500,000 alphabetical references, giving instant access to every fact in the whole work. Of equal assistance will be its employment in connection with Sunday School lessons; for the accounts of the Bible and its separate books, giving the latest results of Biblical criticism, are the product of the highest learning of the age.
The World of Nature
For the instruction of children about the history of mankind, the nature of the universe, the animal, plant, and mineral world, the new Britannica offers a complete fund of necessary knowledge. There are 277 astronomical articles, including biographies; 889 zoological articles; 675 on plants; 380 on minerals and rocks. The classified subject-list in the Index Volume places the whole of this material immediately before the eye.
The articles Anthropology (Vol. 2, p. 108), by Dr. Edward B. Tylor of Oxford University, dean of living anthropologists, and Ethnology and Ethnography (Vol. 9, p. 849) describe the races of mankind, man’s place in nature, the origin of man, and his antiquity. The main article Zoology (Vol. 28, p. 1022), by Sir Edwin Ray Lankester, of London University, is an introduction to knowledge of the whole of the animal world, which is amplified, with minute details, in separate accounts of all members of the animal kingdom. Zoological Distribution (Vol. 28, p. 1002), by the noted naturalist, Richard Lydekker, is a mine of information about the distribution of living animals and their forerunners on the surface of the globe. Articles of great importance are Botany (Vol. 4, p. 299), by Dr. A. B. Rendle of the British Museum, and the great article Plants (Vol. 21, p. 728), in the various sections of which the whole story of the vegetable world is told by eight famous specialists. There are, of course, separate articles on all plants. We also recommend to parents a careful study of the section (Vol. 23, p. 120) of Reproduction, Reproduction of Plants, by Dr. S. H. Vines, and Pollination (Vol. 22, p. 2), from which they can give their children much necessary instruction. Such a course is now strongly advised by educators and authorities in child-study as the best method of preparing the mind for a healthy, sane knowledge of sex matters in later years.
What Happens on the Earth and in the Air
All the facts about the earth’s surface will be found in Geography, in the section Principles of Geography (Vol. 11, p. 630), by Dr. H. R. Mill, formerly president of the Royal Meteorological Society; and see also Ocean and Oceanography (Vol. 19, p. 967), by Dr. Otto Krümmel, professor of geography, University of Kiel, and Dr. H. R. Mill. Everything about the weather, storms, etc., may be learned from Meteorology (Vol. 18, p. 264), by Dr. Cleveland Abbe, professor of meteorology in the U. S. Weather Bureau; and from Atmospheric Electricity (Vol. 2, p. 860), by Dr. Charles Chree of the National Physical Laboratory, England.
Clouds always appeal strongly to a child’s imagination. The article Cloud (Vol. 6, p. 557), by A. W. Clayden, author of Cloud Studies, has beautiful illustrations of cloud forms, with explanations.
Lord Rayleigh, a winner of the Nobel prize and one of the most distinguished of living scientists, in the article Sky (Vol. 25, p. 202) explains why the blue of the sky varies as it does.