te; and to habituate the mind from the beginning to that practice
of self-help which it must ultimately follow.

Object-lessons should not only be carried on after quite a different
fashion from that commonly pursued, but should be extended to a range of
things far wider, and continued to a period far later, than now. They
should not be limited to the contents of the house; but should include
those of the fields and the hedges, the quarry and the sea-shore. They
should not cease with early childhood; but should be so kept up during
youth, as insensibly to merge into the investigations of the naturalist
and the man of science. Here again we have but to follow Nature's
leadings. Where can be seen an intenser delight than that of children
picking up new flowers and watching new insects; or hoarding pebbles and
shells? And who is there but perceives that by sympathising with them
they may be led on to any extent of inquiry into the qualities and
structures of these things? Every botanist who has had children with him
in the woods and lanes must have noticed how eagerly they joined in his
pursuits, how keenly they searched out plants for him, how intently they
watched while he examined them, how they overwhelmed him with questions.
The consistent follower of Bacon--the "servant and interpreter of
nature," will see that we ought modestly to adopt the course of culture
thus indicated. Having become familiar with the simpler properties of
inorganic objects, the child should by the same process be led on to an
exhaustive examination of the things it picks up in its daily walks--the
less complex facts they present being alone noticed at first: in plants,
the colours, numbers, and forms of the petals, and shapes of the stalks
and leaves; in insects, the numbers of the wings, legs, and antennae, and
their colours. As these become fully appreciated and invariably
observed, further facts may be successively introduced: in the one case,
the numbers of stamens and pistils, the forms of the flowers, whether
radial or bilateral in symmetry, the arrangement and character of the
leaves, whether opposite or alternate, stalked or sessile, smooth or
hairy, serrated, toothed, or crenate; in the other, the divisions of the
body, the segments of the abdomen, the markings of the wings, the number
of joints in the legs, and the forms of the smaller organs--the system
pursued throughout being that of making it the child's ambition to say
respecting