Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/775

Rh curiosity, the pleasure, and even the excitement that come from a connected course of observations upon simple leaves are all-sufficient as a stimulus to continued effort, and the concurrent testimony of able teachers who have practiced the method abundantly justifies my own results.

This objection, that I begin with leaves in the study of plants, has been often made before. Of course, there may be various points of approach to the subject; but I had to adopt one, and I chose that which is unquestionably most favorable for beginning the work of self-instruction. None of the objections that I have seen have any force against the proved advantage of the plan pursued.

In further criticism of the method Mrs. Jacobi says, "Again, it is unnatural to enter upon the beautiful world of plants by the study of forms and outlines—which is much better pursued when abstracted from all other circumstances, as in models of pure mathematical figures." I am at a loss to understand this. Does Mrs. Jacobi regard me as attempting to teach geometry by the forms and outlines of leaves? I certainly have made no other use of forms and outlines than results from the inevitable relations of the mind to its environment. Forms and outlines are properties by which objects are known. The properties of bodies revealed to us through sensation are used by the child in the study of plants in exactly the same way that they are earlier used in the study of household and all familiar objects. The only difference is that, in descriptive botany, these observations are made with more precision, have a logical unity, and a conscious purpose. I am the more puzzled to understand in what the unnaturalness of the study of forms and outlines of leaves consists, because Mrs. Jacobi tells us (p. 472) that, "before the child has a clearly intellectual life on any other subjects, it attains a very definite power to distinguish the square, the oval, the spiral." If this be true, how can the study of forms of any objects be considered unnatural? If, as she relates, a child may describe bits of cake as squares and cubes, "make pentagons and octagons with knife and fork," characterize onions as "oblates," without being unnatural, why does she become so when she describes leaves as round, oval, oblong, etc., as the case may be?

But perhaps Mrs. Jacobi means that "it is unnatural to enter upon the beautiful world of plants by the study of forms and outlines," because the most beautiful and attractive parts should receive attention first. This might accord with the dictates of aesthetic feeling, but there is no reason why it should be regarded as especially the natural way. The truth is, this point has been settled by the history of botanical method. The flower, the most conspicuous and beautiful part, was for a long time taken alone as the basis of a classification which depended upon the number and mode of arrangement of its essential organs, to the neglect of the remaining plant-characters; but that is now