Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1880 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER V. LESSONS ON ANIMALS. 1. Lessons on animals extend the range, and widen the purpose of object lessons. Precluded in most part from having the animal in presence, and confined to such makeshift substitutes as pictures and stuffed specimens, there are not the direct means of cultivating observation, as in the case of an object before the class. In this there is no loss. For more is sought and more is possible in lessons on animals than the culture of observation merely. 2. A threefold culture, exclusive of their moral purpose, is sought by these lessons, (a) They offer a wide range of facts for observation; facts that are admirably adapted to extend and strengthen the habit which the object lesson has begun. Colour, size, shape, covering--its structure, qualities and uses, actions, food, modes of getting food, and other things of like kind, give the material for this purpose. (6) They offer also an extensive array of facts for the culture of the conceptive faculty and fancy. Facts and anecdotes abound illustrative of instincts, dispositions, habits, and intelligence. These presented by graphic picturing will not only call the higher powers of conception and fancy into play, but will excite the desire and furnish the power of a more widely extended observation, (c) They offer also the means of cultivating the sense of relation and of incipient judgment. The marked instances of resemblance amidst diversity, the opportunities of working out analogies, the relations that abound, and the adaptation of structure to habits, food and circumstances, furnish the means and suggest the propriety of this higher culture. It will be found, too, that such things are not only not beyond children's powers, but that they are interesting and...