Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/640

620 entry for the journal: "The episperm, on the under surface of Tertius, is all black, and has split, leaving a space the shape of an equilateral triangle, with the apex pointing to the convex edge of the cotyledons." In the summer, when flowers could be obtained from the woods in abundance, the child made collections of ovaries and ovules, and was never tired of finding the latter asleep in their beds, in so many differently shaped houses. At this time the static considerations were allowed to predominate, and the child rather forgot the function of the embryo seeds—so much so that, upon seeing some small pieces of ice lying in half a musk-melon, she said that these were like the ovules in an ovary. At the beginning of the second year, the study of plant-growth was resumed with seven hyacinths, that received appropriate names, as seven sisters. The first lessons in written expression coincided with the beginning of this new study; for now the child was allowed to write the plant-journal herself. The exercise was complex. The child first examined the hyacinths, and noted whether anything had transpired since the last observation. She then framed a spoken sentence, in which such an event was accurately described. She then dictated the writing of this sentence as a whole, which she was afterward to copy. During this dictation, some knowledge of spelling was incidentally acquired; for the child was led to spell by sound, and without reference to silent letters. The words she had not yet seen. Finally, when fairly at work at the writing, the meaning of the sentence was temporarily ignored, and attention closely concentrated upon the forms of the letters, and no mercy shown to inaccurate imitation of them. Thus, one day she entered the observation that Blanche, in a blue glass, had grown much more vigorously than Aura, in a dark one; and a blue glass was given to the less favored sister, in the hope that she would improve. She noted that the tips of the white roots were gray and conoid in shape (making the observation herself independently), and was allowed to demonstrate the function of these tips by cutting one off and seeing the growth of that root arrested. On another day she first discovered, then described, then wrote down, that the first broad leaves of Blanche had split open, showing two others at right angles to them. This was her first perception of this remarkable law of phyllotaxy, and she herself illustrated it by making two loops with the thumb and finger of each hand, and making them intersect each other. The previous acquisition of mathematical conceptions was constantly shown to facilitate and render precise her observations of complex objects.

It was rather as a concession to a prevailing prejudice that at this time the child was taught to read. This study, usually made of the most importance, was held for this child to be quite subordinate and easy, and little stress laid upon it. The child was allowed to follow her own inclination, to divine the subject of the chapter from the picture at the head of it, and, to a considerable extent, the words in each