it would by no means supplant or replace the personal and
intimate relationship of confidence between mother and child.
That is always to be aimed at, and though it may not be possible
among the ill-educated masses of to-day, nothing else will
adequately take its place.

There can be no doubt, however, that while in the future the school will
most probably be regarded as the proper place in which to teach the
elements of physiology--and not as at present a merely emasculated and
effeminated physiology--the introduction of such reformed teaching is as
yet impracticable in many communities. A coarse and ill-bred community
moves in a vicious circle. Its members are brought up to believe that sex
matters are filthy, and when they become adults they protest violently
against their children being taught this filthy knowledge. The teacher's
task is thus rendered at the best difficult, and under democratic
conditions impossible. We cannot, therefore, hope for any immediate
introduction of sexual physiology into schools, even in the unobtrusive
form in which alone it could properly be introduced, that is to say as a
natural and inevitable part of general physiology.

This objection to animal physiology by no means applies, however, to
botany. There can be little doubt that botany is of all the natural
sciences that which best admits of this incidental instruction in the
fundamental facts of sex, when we are concerned with children below the
age of puberty. There are at least two reasons why this should be so. In
the first place botany really presents the beginnings of sex, in their
most naked and essential forms; it makes clear the nature, origin, and
significance of sex. In the second place, in dealing with plants the facts
of sex can be stated to children of either sex or any age quite plainly
and nakedly without any reserve, for no one nowadays regards the botanical
facts of sex as in any way offensive. The expounder of sex in plants also
has on his side the advantage of being able to assert, without question,
the entire beauty of the sexual process. He is not confronted by the
ignorance, bad education, and false associations which have made it so
difficult either to see or to show the beauty of sex in animals. From the
sex-life of plants to the sex-life of the lower animals there is, however,
but a step which the teacher, according to his discretion, may take.

An early educational authority, Salzma