Page:Preparation of the Child for Science.djvu/57

Rh I am not going to join in Michelet's protest against accustoming children to masses of cut flowers; but I will say that there is no use in trusting to cut flowers and exotics raised by gardeners as preparation for understanding Nature. Let the children have such homely plants as thrive without very skilled care, and attend to them themselves. Let them also grow such things as mustard and cress for the family use. I wish to call special attention to the advisability of children doing such things as a contribution to the family's resources. It is advisable, not only on moral grounds, as tending to promote unselfishness, but because it makes it easier to secure repeated performance of the same task, with slight variations. Incessant novelty stimulates the conscious brain too much; monotony tends to dull the whole brain; but a duty which has to be done under varying circumstances, a uniform result which has to be properly attained under varying conditions, does much to furnish with material the unconscious brain. A child who supplies the family with small salad at stated intervals has to water it in dry weather, shelter it from very scorching sun, grow it in pots in town, and in the hardest frosts on a flannel near, but not too near, the stove; he thus becomes accustomed to the feeling that Nature's unvarying laws of