Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/776

754 as the artificial system. Afterward the flower was deposed from its supremacy, and all the characters of plants, of which forms and outlines are leading ones, were taken into account in grouping them, and this is named the natural system. I should rather say that to make a fanciful idea predominant in a method of study is unnatural, while the truly natural method is that which conforms to the requirements of the mind and the progress of the science to he studied, and which will therefore lead to the best acquaintance with the truth of nature.

Again, after objecting to the early study of plants in their most simplified forms by children, Mrs. Jacobi says: "But with plants comes a new idea—that of life, of change, of evolution. It is fitting that these tremendous ideas make a profound impression on the child's mind; and this impression may be best secured by watching the continuous growth of a plant from the seed." I confess to having read this passage with no little surprise. It may be well at times to strike out from the beaten track, and take independent views, but some things are, nevertheless, established. Mrs. Jacobi here ignores the latest progress in the methods of botanical study for minds of all grades. The plan of beginning the study of the vegetable kingdom by inquiries concerning life-processes is now discredited and abandoned by the best botanical authors and teachers. It is the old method of studying physiological botany before descriptive botany, or the inner mysteries of plant organization before the external characters and relations of plant-structures by which they are known and classified. In his botanical text-book, published more than forty years ago, Professor Gray began with the idea of life and growth, but, in the series of botanical text-books he is now preparing, the first volume is devoted to the study of the external aspects of plants. He recognizes that this should come first, saying, "It will furnish the needful preparation to those who proceed to the study of vegetable physiology and anatomy." The reasons for adopting this order are conclusive, but they are strongest in the case of beginners; and yet Mrs. Jacobi adopts the old plan condemned by experience, in the case of a child five years old. If there is any truth in mental science, or any value in the experience of practical teachers, there is in childhood a special intellectual fitness for acquiring a knowledge of the external characters of organisms, and an unfitness for grasping and comprehending the obscure and difficult operations of life as manifested by these organisms. Nor can the reason which Mrs. Jacobi offers for the course taken be for a moment accepted as sound. She would introduce a little child to the study of plants through the grand gateway of evolution, to impress it at the start with the tremendous conception of unfolding life. It is proper, and I have recommended it in my little book for beginners, to make the germination of seeds an experimental