INTRODUCTION
As a result of the present efforts to raise the standard of education in this country, many different “Methods of Teaching” are receiving our grave consideration. So insistent are their advocates, that we stand in some danger of forgetting that learning, rather than teaching, is the essential factor in education.
It is not the knowledge given us ready-made by the teacher, but that which we learn, acquiring it by our own efforts, which enters into our being and becomes a lasting possession.
Therefore this little book does not pretend so much to teach as to act as a guide along the road for those who desire to learn something about the plants around them; hence it points out how much they can easily see for themselves of the wonderful life and work of the silent plants.
It is planned for children, whose quick sympathies are more readily drawn towards the life of things than to the dry facts of morphology or classification.
Its “Leitmotif” is therefore the story of life, and those of its activities which find expression in the plant world. Perhaps it may serve to awaken interest in some older people who have not yet been initiated into these mysteries.
As is inevitable, most of the actual facts in this book are already the common property of botanists, though some of the suggested work, such as the mapping, is only now being adopted by the Universities.
The most interesting subjects are often left out of the more elementary books, or even if given are frequently set forth in such a lifeless and pedantic fashion, that little real interest or understanding has been awakened in the young student. The present work attempts to avoid the time-worn methods of arranging the subject.
Children generally know more about the behaviour of animals than that of plants (being themselves animals and frequently having kittens or other pets); hence, the parallels between the life-functions of plants and those of animals are pointed out whenever possible.
Once the idea of their “livingness” has been fully realised, it is time to go on to the study of the details of the plant’s body, and then to the communities of plants which grow together.
In this way the child can work out from its own observations a complete and logical idea of the living plant, instead of having merely acquired a detailed but fruitless knowledge of barren facts.
