Part 1

The “LOOK ABOUT YOU” Nature Study Books

BY THOMAS W. HOARE TEACHER OF NATURE STUDY to the Falkirk School Board and Stirlingshire County Council

BOOK IV.

LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK, Ltd. 35 PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C. AND EDINBURGH

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY THOMAS NELSON AND SONS, LTD.

PREFACE.

This little book should be used as a simple guide to the practical study of Nature rather than as a mere reader.

Every lesson herein set down has, during the author’s many years’ experience in teaching Nature Study, been taught by observation and practice again and again; and each time with satisfactory result. The materials required for most of the lessons—whether they be obtained from the naturalist-dealer or from the nearest hedge, ditch, or pond—are within everybody’s reach.

There is nothing that appeals to the heart of the ordinary child like living things, be they animal or vegetable, and there is no branch of education at the present day that bears, in the young mind, such excellent fruit as the study of the simple, living things around us.

Your child is nothing if not curious. He wants to understand everything that lives and moves and has its being in his bright little world.

Nature Study involves so many ingenious little deductions, that the reasoning powers are almost constantly employed, and intelligence grows proportionately. The child’s powers of observation are stimulated, and his memory is cultivated in the way most pleasing to his inquiring nature. By dissecting seeds, bulbs, buds, and flowers, his hand is trained, and methods expeditious and exact are inculcated. By drawing his specimens, no matter how roughly or rapidly, his eye is trained more thoroughly than any amount of enforced copying of stiff, uninteresting models of prisms, cones, etc., ever could train it.

The love of flowers and animals is one of the most commendable traits in the disposition of the wondering child, and ought to be encouraged above all others.

It is the author’s fondest and most sanguine hope that the working out of the exercises, of which this booklet is mainly composed, may prove much more of a joy than a task, and that the practical knowledge gained thereby may tempt his little readers to study further the great book of Nature, whose broad pages are ever open to us, and whose silent answers to our manifold questions are never very difficult to read.

T. W. H.

CONTENTS

LESSON PAGE I. Structure of Stems 7 II. Bulbs and Corms 12 III. What Goes on Inside a Plant 17 IV. Snowdrop, Crocus, and Tulip 23 V. Vegetable Fingers 29 VI. The Great Water Beetle 35 VII. Daisies 40 VIII. Chaffinch and Song-Thrush 46 IX. Plants that Arm Themselves 52 X. The Horse Pond Again 58 XI. Wasps 63 XII. Dandelions 69 XIII. The Life of a Trout 75 XIV. Silkworms 81 Appendix 88

“LOOK ABOUT YOU.” BOOK IV.

I.—STRUCTURE OF STEMS.

“We are going to have a peep into the inside of these twigs,” said Uncle George, as he laid some willow and horse-chestnut twigs on the table.

“First,” he said, “let us examine the outside of them.” He handed a small willow branch to Tom and a horse-chestnut branch to Frank.

“Now, Frank, tell me all you see.”

“I see the rings of scars which mark each year’s growth,” said Frank. “This year’s growth is at the top, above the first ring of scars. Below this is last year’s growth. Then comes another ring of marks, and below this again is the growth of two years ago.”

“That is to say,” said his uncle, “the upper part of your twig is about one year old, the middle part is two years old, and the lower part is three years old. Go on, Frank.”

“The upper part is light brown, while the middle and lower parts are dark brown.”

“Take your lens, Frank, and look at that brown covering carefully.”

“Oh, it is studded all over with little oval marks like pits,” said Frank.

“Now, what about the buds?”

“The buds,” said Frank, putting down his lens, “are in pairs; and the stem is swollen where each pair of buds comes off.”