Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/366

354 is perfectly appreciable through impressions made on his senses, and is well fitted to arouse in him lively interest and curiosity." If this be really so, then no more is needed than to furnish the child with his sprouting seeds as we both do. But surely mankind has been familiar enough with the sensible facts of germination, and yet the grossest errors concerning life-changes have prevailed through all past times. Indeed, Mrs. Jacobi quickly abandons this ground, that the child will perfectly appreciate the case, by saying it is "important to impress the imagination with typical and fundamental facts long before they can be reasoned upon or their laws really understood." I should prefer to let the child grow by slow preparation in concrete observations, till its mind gains knowledge and strength to understand typical and fundamental facts upon recondite subjects.

I gave my reasons for objecting to drawing as a means of acquiring descriptive botany. In her third proposition Mrs. Jacobi puts my view in this form: "That children should not be detained to draw the leaves, or other natural objects they study, because of the delay thus entailed." And, in commenting upon this, she further remarks: "If the aim at the time be not to learn botany, but to cultivate the observing powers of children, what danger is there in a delay which permits the object to be more deeply graven on the child's mind? Why is it so necessary to become familiar with hundreds of specimens in a given time?" As our object is here presumably to get at the truth, I have a right to insist upon greater correctness in the representation of my views. Mrs. Jacobi pleads to inaccuracy in her former statement of them in regard to drawing; but there are three further inaccuracies here, which I have indicated by italics, and, trivial as they may seem, they give an erroneous impression of my method. Without warrant, she introduces the phrase "other natural objects," so that a quite special objection to drawing in the endless field of observation which the study of plants presents, is generalized into opposition, on my part, to the use of natural objects as drawing lessons. Nothing I have said can be construed into opposition to drawing, which of course has its uses; but it may also be misplaced and misused. Whenever the object is to form a habit through repetitions of a great number of simple exercises, the intrusion of such a mechanical operation as drawing must seriously hinder the work in hand. In arithmetic, for example, it is necessary to go through a great number of numerical exercises to form the habit of rapid and accurate calculation. But many of the problems involve concrete imagery which is capable of pictorial illustration. If, however, with a view of deepening his impressions, the pupil were required to make drawings of these, he would, to say the least, be very much obstructed in his mathematical progress.

Mrs. Jacobi puts it as if I had said my aim in preparing the "First Book" was not to teach botany, which is incorrect. Although the