Most of the forms which are included in the following chapters can be kept in confinement in glass jars or studies out doors. The studies have been made so general that in case the particular form mentioned is not available any closely related form can be used. Each child should make a small collection of living and pinned insects for study and should be encouraged to observe insects and their work in the field. The collections and many of the observations could be made to good advantage during the summer vacation when the insects are most abundant and active.
Pupils should not be encouraged merely to make observations, but they should be required to record them as well. Brief descriptions of the appearance and development of insects, the injury they do, and remedies for the same, will help fix in mind facts which otherwise might soon be forgotten. Drawings, whenever possible, should also be required. The pupil who can record observations accurately with drawings will not soon forget them. The teacher should therefore require each pupil to provide himself with a note-book for keeping brief, but accurate notes and careful drawings. The drawings should be made with a hard lead pencil on un-ruled paper, the size of the note-book, and the pupils should be encouraged to be neat and accurate.
The author wishes to take this opportunity of expressing his deep appreciation for the many helpful suggestions and other assistance which Mr. R. H. Emberson, superintendent of Boys and Girls Club Work in Missouri, has given. It was his life-long devotion to the boys and girls of the grade schools and his keen appreciation of their needs that lead him first to suggest to the author the importance of preparing this little book for their use.
Leonard Haseman
University of Missouri.
"The study of entomology is one of the most fascinating of pursuits. It takes its votaries into the treasure-houses of Nature, and explains some of the wonderful series of links which form the great chain of creation. It lays open before us another world, of which we have been hitherto unconscious, and shows us that the tiniest insect, so small perhaps that the unaided eye can scarcely see it, has its work to do in the world, and does it."
—Rev. J. G. Wood.