that spread easily, and of when and how this may be done. Make drawings of hooks of burdock, carrier of dandelion and thistle, "Spanish needle," etc. Read Warner's "My Summer in a Garden." Consult Gray's "Structural Botany,' "Field Botany," and "How Plants Grow," and Thoreau's writings.

INTR

CHAPTER VI.

THE LANDSCAPE.

INTRODUCE the subject, as in preceding lessons, by a conversation.

If the teacher has acquaintance with a certain brook (or other stream), and John has also, it is the fault of the former, if some good talking and satisfactory writing cannot be gotten out of the mutual knowledge. John will probably know more about it than the teacher, but will not, perhaps, be able to tell so well what he knows.

The questions which open and direct the conversation should be so managed as to suggest the order of topics for writing.

Example 1-A Brook :

Suggestions: Source, direction, feeders. Things likely to be seen along it: water rats and nests, frogs and tad-poles, shell fish, land snails, cases of caddis flies, larvæ of insects, slugs, water-beetles, water birds, water spiders, dragon flies, fish, ferns, wild-flowers, blackberry bushes, thickets, water-plants, trees, logs, stumps, pebbles, sand and rocks, fishing holes. Things to be heard: running water, notes, hum of insects,

leaping of fish, echoes, song of the brook; brooks of history; (Tennyson's "The Brook "; Lowell's prelude to Part II. of "Sir Launfal's Vision"; Whittier's "Snowbound," lines 110-115). Value of a brook on a farm.

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In preparing for these lessons, read, as far as practicable, this list: Emerson's "Two Rivers "; Wordsworth's three poems on Yarrow"; Southey's "How does the Water come down. at Lodore?"; Lowell's "The Fountain," "Beaver Brook," and "The Fountain of Youth."

Other subjects of the same kind: A woodland, a field, a mountain, a lake, a bay, a wooded hill, shore of the ocean, a thicket, a gorge, a cañon, a spring, a glen, a cliff, a prairie, a sandy plain or desert (Nevada), a quarry, a large solitary tree, a clump of trees, a waterfall.

Use only such of these as are familiar through nearness to the school or the homes of the children.

Example 2.-A Tree :

Suggestions: Name, height (calculated by means of its shadow and the shadow of a stake, or approximated by intelligent guess); diameter three, seven, or ten feet from base; branches, their angle with the trunk; bark and its color, thickness and general appearance; shaft; roots and their extent, lateral root, tap root (approxi mated from observation of the roots of the same

kind of tree blown down); wood, sap-wood, heartwood, and grain, their color and hardness; probable age; aspect in winter, summer, autumn, spring; foliage in mass; shape of tree; shape of leaves, with drawing and description; fruit, or seed, and flowers; time of flowering and ripening: buds; habitat (high or low, moist or dry ground?); shadow of the tree, shape and extent at noon in midsummer.

Example 3.-A Tree (continued):

After the tree has been written of as in No. 2., let it be considered historically. Probably how old? What was happening when it was a sprouting seed? From its locality (Boston Common; City Hall Plaza, Oakland, Cal.; Mound Hill Cemetery, Eaton, Ohio) what may have taken place near or under it? (Suggestions: Sir Francis Drake, Tecumseh, Anthony Wayne, Gen. St. Clair, Gen. Washington, Cotton Mather, emigrant wagons, Indian pow wow.) What happens now? (Boys play, people stop to rest, to talk, etc.)

NOTE I. Sections of trees may be easily obtained when trees are cut in the neighborhood.

NOTE II. These are some of the topics which may serve as material for interesting lessons. Use such of them at a lesson as are most available, but do not attempt too much at one time.

NOTE III. Do not ask too many questions—

merely enough to keep the subject well in hand.

NOTE IV. Do not talk too much yourself— nor too little.

Read:

I. Wordsworth's "Excursion," Bock VII.— beginning "Among the humbler worthies," etc. to "Now from the living," etc.

2. Spenser's "Faëry Queene," Canto I., 8 and 9. 3. Rossetti's "The Leaf."

4. Whittier's "The Palm Tree."

5. Jones Very's "The Tree."

6. Helen Hunt Jackson's "The Hickory Tree." 7. Lowell's "The Oak," "Rhocus," "To a Pine Tree," and "Under the Willows."

8. Emerson's "Wood Notes."

9. Bryant's "Among the Trees," "The Forest Hymn" and " The Planting of the Apple Tree." 10. Morris's "Woodman, Spare that Tree." II. Wordsworth's "The Fir Tree."

12. Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales." lines 29152940.

13. Ruskin's "Trees."

14. Lowell's "The Beggar."

Example 4.-—A Field:

Suggestions: A map of the field as seen from the school house, or as remembered, if each child selects his own field to write about. Large or small; level, rolling, or hill land; fallow, or culti