Yet it is, after all, the "diversity in unity" which pervades the universe; and a skilful teacher, who loves children and knows how to meet them, will never lose sight of the harmony of development which is to be sought by varied means.

Later in school life, when the faculties have been trained, and the power of concentration developed, students may be limited to a few lines of special study, and pursue them with vigor and thoroughness.

We should, then, have a varied training for little children, with nature for their teacher, and so let their perceptive and their thinking powers unfold as naturally as the bud expands into the flower under the genial, pervading influences of sunlight, air, and moisture. Thus there will be no opportunity for uninterested minds, idle habits, or parrot-like recitation of the letter of text-books without the spirit of the subject taught.

Happily the importance of right beginnings in childhood, if we would secure good results in maturity, is now appreciated; and what can be a more appropriate introduction to school life than a series of familiar observation

lessons upon natural objects. Children find their pleasure in what they can see, hear, and examine; and the teacher who promotes this pleasure, establishes herself in their confidence, so that she may lead them as she will.

Moreover, material for the first steps in Reading is furnished by such oral lessons, and progress in learning to read is rapid when children are watching for the record of new words or simple phrases, in which they have reported their own observations.

Mr. William Lant Carpenter, in a report on scienceteaching in the Liverpool and Birmingham schools, quotes

en nent English authorities in support of his view that "there is a large class of minds whose activity is more easily promoted, and whose imagination is more readily fired by physical science than by literature, especially of the class most met with in elementary schools." Indeed, his pamphlet is entitled "Science Teaching as a Relief from the Overstrain in Education."

Many pupils called "dull" at their books, are naturally quick-sighted, and, had they been trained at the start to close observation and to correct inferences from observed facts, they would probably have developed mental activity, instead of becoming the discouraged element of their classes.

It is faculties, not facts, that we should have in mind. Establish good mental habits, and the facts will come in the process. The true work of the teacher, then, is to create right occasions for observation and thought, and to bring ideas to correct expression.

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This kind of teaching-true oral teaching it is begin the first day of school life, while the printed page is still unintelligible to children, and their restless, untrained minds are held but a few minutes to one interest. In the beginning are many spare minutes which will be passed in listless idleness or active mischief, if not utilized by the versatile, cultured teacher.

And here let us pause a moment to reclaim the phrase "oral instruction" from the misuse into which it has fallen, and from which has followed its severe criticism.

Oral teaching is not pouring into a pupil's mind, be he young or older, while he waits, a passive recipient. It is directing and supplementing his mental activity, while he does his own observing, thinking, telling.

Oral lessons are not lectures but talks. They follow

the old Socratic method mind calls upon mind — and children are trained to attention and concentration, so that, when advanced students, they will be able to grasp ideas by a single mental effort; to catch and keep the force of the spoken word of the lecture-room; and to take the meaning of the printed page almost at a glance.

Oral instruction is both preparatory for and supplementary to the use of text-books. Because its possibilities for good are great, so are its possibilities of harm. Surely, pointless, desultory oral teaching is as great a waste of time as the thoughtless repetition of unappreciated passages from a text-book.

Returning to our subject, we are ready to answer the inquiry, "What and how shall we teach?"

The material for nature-study is waiting for every clementary teacher. There can be no lack of it, even in

the crowded city.

Everywhere something waits to tell its story, if only questioned rightly; and yet children, if not taught early how to see, may go through the world with their eyes shut. Said a companion to Thoreau, as they walked in the Concord woods, "How do you collect so many Indian arrow-heads?" "Why, I see them everywhere by the roadside, as I go along. There is one now!" and he stooped to pick up one that his friend had just passed by. This incident illustrates the difference between a trained and an unobservant eye. Let us try to open the eyes of our pupils so that they may find,

"Tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything."

By studying, first, the visible, familiar objects, children are prepared for lessons illustrated by effective black

board drawings, pictures, and vivid descriptions, whenever specimens are not available. Their active imaginations respond to the teacher's call upon their conceptive power, and their beaming eyes tell that they are making mental pictures, as she talks and questions. Recently, in the middle of such a lesson addressed to the imagination, a little girl said, with an eagerness that must find expression, "I almost feel as if I could see it now."

We have dwelt long upon the most elementary stages of instruction, partly because "well begun is half-done," and partly because it is just here that methods have often been most pernicious, and that true observation-lessons are most needed.

Do we not remember how often, as children, we read about natural objects, but formed no mental pictures till, on some occasion, by happy chance, we saw, with genuine delight, an object known only through a text-book description? Seeing was believing, and having once, through perception, established confidence in the authority of our text, our imaginations began to form concepts out of what had been only barren words.

The higher stages of instruction in Natural History follow naturally upon right beginnings, the methods are the same, but with broader applications. With a love of nature awakened early, and with habits of careful observation and accurate statement established, older pupils are prepared to take up true scientific study with earnestness and intelligence. They are ready for further investigation, comparison, and inference; and, when their "accumulated observation has become experience," so that they perceive the harmony and gradations of nature's order, they are prepared to classify and generalize their acquired knowledge.

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The objections made to elementary instruction in Natural History arise, mainly, from a misunderstanding of the intention of its advocates. It is neither desired nor desirable that children should struggle for scientific nomenclature, crowding their memories with terms and definitions. When a mineral, plant, or animal has been examined and the teacher needs to designate a part or organ, the need is frequently anticipated by the children, who are always eager to put names to things. thus adding daily to their vocabularies? make any difference whether a word is short or long, if they have come to the need of it? Is elephant harder for a child than horse? or mahogany than oak? or petal than leaf? Surely, when a child has distinguished the butterflies that flutter among the flowers, and learned to call them by name, he remembers these names with a tenacity which we unfortunates, who learned them later in life, often covet. The use of needed terms is to children the pure pleasure of calling things by their names; and is this not as good exercise for the memory as any other? And does not the demand for each new word imply an added observation, more power to see likeness and unlikeness, more capacity for enjoyment and usefulness through life?

A part of the children in our schools, born into homes of ease and intelligence, get this early training, under judicious direction, among pets, flowers, minerals, and pictures; by listening to stories and fairy tales. It is their birthright, and gives the general information and power of appreciation which aid them in maturer studies, whether literary or scientific.

But multitudes of helpless little children come, at five years of age, from the streets and alleys of our cities,