the path of investigation. The implicit reception of truths gained by the observation and experiments of others is, as things are, often unavoidable in the case of the adult man, presumed to be already educated, but is antagonistic to educational training, which consists in the development and direction of the native intellectual forces of the child.
"This conception of the nature and power of education has been firmly grasped and exhibited with remarkable skill by the author of the little book now under notice, which is expressly designed to make the earliest instruction of children a mental discipline. Miss Youmans, of New York, presents in her work the ripe results of educational experience reduced to a system. Wisely conceiving that all education—even the most elementary—should be regarded as a discipline of the mental powers, and that the facts of external Nature supply the most suitable materials for this discipline in the case of children, she has applied that principle to the study of botany. This study, according to her just notions on the subject, is to be fundamentally based on the exercise of the pupil's own powers of observation. He is to see and examine the properties of plants and flowers at first hand, not merely to be informed of what others have seen and examined. His own observation, resulting in the perception for himself of form, color, interrelation of parts, likeness and unlikeness, etc., is to be the primum mobile of his whole course of learning. His own examination and investigation of phenomena, his own reasoning and judgment on discovered relations, are to constitute the process by which he learns not only the facts and phenomena of botany, but also the use of his mental faculties. Inasmuch, moreover, as the phenomena that he observes are coordinated in Nature, the process becomes one not only for acquiring separate facts but organized knowledge, and, therefore, a systematic training in the art of observation. 'This plan,' Miss Youmans remarks, 'first supplies the long recognized deficiency of object teaching by reducing it to a method, and connecting it with an established branch of school study. Instead of desultory practice in noting the disconnected properties of casual objects, the exercises are made systematic, and the pupil is trained not only to observe the sensible facts, but constantly to put them in those relations of thought by which they become organized knowledge.' It is obvious that a course of instruction which secures such results as these, and which is applicable to the most elementary education, involving not merely the acquisition of sound knowledge, but the systematic training of the mind as a preparation for subsequent studies, literary as well as scientific, is a very valuable contribution to our educational resources. It supplies 'that exact and solid study of some portion of inductive knowledge' which is pointed out by Dr. Whewell (lecture 'On Intellectual Education,' delivered at the Royal Institution) as a want in education, and which would end in a real discipline for the mind by enabling it to 'escape from the thraldom and illusion which reign in the world of mere words.' 'The knowledge of which I speak,' he adds, 'must be a knowledge of things, and not merely of names of things; an acquaintance with the operations and productions of Nature, as they appear to the eye, not merely an acquaintance with what has been said about them; a knowledge of the laws of Nature, seen in special experiments and observations, before they are conceived in general terms; a knowledge of the types of natural forms gathered from individual cases already made familiar.'
"The desideratum here indicated is, we repeat, supplied for the first time by Miss Youmans's plan of teaching botany, which she accordingly proposes as a 'fourth fundamental branch of study, which shall afford a systematic training of the observing powers.' Some may of course question the pretensions of botany to the position here claimed; but it will be found more easy to object than to propose a substitute.
"It may, however, with better reason, be objected that the study of a descriptive science like botany, which is founded essentially on observation, fails to elicit the inventive and constructive faculties of the child, and to secure that training in the experimental knowledge of the action and reaction of forces, cause and effect, etc., which constitutes the method of scientific investigation. We should, therefore, suggest, as
