Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/396

380 take the earth in his hand, he might peel or scrape off the soil as we take a carpet from a floor, only the soil would seem much thinner than the carpet, because the earth is so big. All had traveled in railway trains, and had such impressions of their swiftness that this illustration was used: Suppose we start for the center of the earth on a train. Traveling day and night, it would take nearly a week to reach the center, and another week from there to the surface again; and all day while we watched, and all night while we slept, we should be rushing through the rock; and if we came out through the thickest layer of soil, it would take but a few seconds to pass through it. Then, telling them to open their eyes, I took a peach whose rind was thin and peeled smoothly from the pulp, spoke of the giant as I drew off the rind, and told them that the soil is thinner on the rock ball of earth than that rind on the peach. A few remaining minutes were spent in observing some pine trees and barberry bushes growing near.

On the third day, after reading the sentences already on the board—of which each child besides his own read one or more others—the following sentences were easily elicited: "Children eat plants and animals. Animals eat plants and animals. Plants get food from the soil. The soil comes from the rock. Rock decays to make soil." These were written on the blackboard, read, and copied by the children as on the first day. This was the natural science, reading, and writing of the third day. In number, the children added and subtracted ones by making groups and joining and leaving one another. In geography the first lesson was recalled, and the terms east and west associated with the appropriate points.

On the fourth day, after the children had retold what they had learned in the science lessons, they were shown a globe, and asked to imagine one as large as the room would hold, and how, to represent the earth, they must think it all rock, with only a thin layer of dust to represent the soil. In geography they were shown a map of the school-room, and led to see its relations to the room, and the relative positions of objects in the room and on the map. The next day, on another map, they traced their route to the country, and located the field and ledge of rock where their question was answered. In the fifth day's science lesson the children were led to speak of rain and wind as washing and blowing off the decayed rock and exposing fresh surfaces, and so increasing the decay, and to give the following summary: "Without decay of rock there would be no soil; if no soil, no plants, no animals, no people." In reading they had seventeen sentences, which they read without hesitation and wrote with some resemblance to the originals. In number, none failed to count to ten and to add