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earth and the rocks, the leaves tear apart the materials in the air; these crude materials are drawn into the substance of the plant through roots and leaves and are recombined and transformed into plant material. The shedding of the leaves in the fall is full of exceedingly beautiful lessons. The fallen leaves, for one thing, disintegrate, and themselves form an invaluable covering to the rocky bones of the earth. They make the rich soil of the forests, which in time becomes the wealth of the farmer.

But this is not botany; it is chemistry, some one complains. No, it is botany, in the broad sense of the word.

It

The foliage of trees, besides ministering to the needs of the trees themselves, shades the earth beneath and prevents the too rapid evaporation of water. also is the direct cause of the deposition of water. No doubt rain is caused by extents of forest, and the moisture in the air is condensed at night upon leaves, being deposited as dew, often in such abundance as to feed the water-supply on the earth below, and keeping the surrounding air moist and fit for the growth of vegetation. A few simple experiments can demonstrate the condensation of moisture on the leaves, adding vastly to the interest of the work. But this is physics, some one objects. No, it is botany, in the broad sense here used.

The roots of the trees, besides administering to the needs of the trees themselves, form traps for detaining the rainfall, thus keeping the earth moist. By causing the water to run away slowly they perform the office of reservoirs, to store the spring rains and the melted snow so that the brooks run merrily out of the forests all summer long, whereas, if there are no trees, the rains descend, the snows melt, the floods run unchecked and destructive down the slopes, the water quickly drains away, and for long months the land lies parched and dry, unable to sustain vegetation.

Obviously there is a duty owed by us to the trees, and through them to our fellow-men. The trees should be protected and the country carefully denuded, only such forests or individual trees being removed as can be spared without injury to the surrounding country. The children will be intensely interested in

such talks about trees ir. general, and will be ready with a little help to suggest many reasons for protecting the trees.

But this is forestry, some one complains. No, it is botany. Without this kind of knowledge the study of the leaves is of very little value. Let the oak leaf, or the maple leaf, or the beech leaf, even, in the lower primary grades, become the text from which is preached the sermon of the trees.

A knowledge of tree life, a love for trees, and a knowledge of the reasons for preserving them, if instilled in early years, will make an intelligent interest in trees a part of the equipment of mature life, and there will be no difficulty in gaining advocates for forest laws when the question is raised. It is in the primary schools that the foundation should be laid upon which later are to be placed the answers to the economic questions of the community.

In botany work the economic value of the woods, the hardness, fineness, durability, beauty, and utility of the wood of the various trees, would make a delightful and valuable subject for study.

Chestnut shingles, cypress posts, cedar pencils, can be introduced into the botany hour with no loss of time and with an infinite gain in interest. If necessary, teach less technical and more practical botany. Make the technical always an end to the practical, never an end in itself.

If we can get so much light from the leaves of the trees, what can we not get from the remainder of the plant world? The flowers are unexampled in the number and beauty of truths, belonging as well to human life, that they convey. Without subtracting aught from the beauty and delicacy of a flower, its color alone is seen to be the means of relating ir to the world about it and of preserving its species. The fragrance, too, has its beautiful use. In the stamens and pistils may be taught in the most delicate and ideal way all the facts of the reproductive life in the animal as well as in the plant world, not taking from the flower its charm, but adding charm to all other forms of life. In the nectar of the flower we have a very obvious bond between the plant and the animal world. The bees gather the sweet juices and store

them in their remarkable waxen combs. The adaptations of both flower and bee structure to this end are wonderful and intensely interesting. The bees are necessary to the flowers, and the flowers to the bees. Neither could prosper without the other; in some instances the plants would actually perish without the bees, and the bees would soon die if the flowers withheld their bounty.

The remarkable life of the bee, with its great community of harmonious workers, has always been a fascinating study, and is as interesting to children as to adults. But, some one says, this is entomology. No, it is botany. When studying botany everything bearing upon it and necessary to elucidate it belongs to that subject. We have coined certain words for convenience; we say botany, physics, chemistry, and yet neither of these is comprehensible without the others, and neither should be taught as if it were an entity a something apart by itself. That is the beauty of the sciences; they are all interrelated, all threads in one design.

To children the habits of plants and animals are infinitely more interesting than their structure, and this should be a hint to the teacher to begin with functions, and, when these have been studied, then to ask how they are made possible by structure. For instance, children are more interested in finding the honey in a flower than in pulling the flower to pieces and labeling its various parts with unmeaning names.

This being the case, let the work upon the flowers begin, it may be, by taking such as are honey-producers, and, with at straw or a splinter of wood delicately performing the office of the bee, actually finding the drop of nectar and tasting it. This done, it is easy to make the child curious as to just where this sweet honeydrop comes from, how it is held in its place and protected from robber insects and from being washed away by the rain so that the bee may have it. In this way an intelligent and thorough study of the calyx and corolla can be conducted with enthusiasm. The children will learn as a matter of course such terms as are necessary in speaking accurately of these flower parts that have become so charming

Quickly will follow the questions: Why

does our flower love the bee? Why does it not wish the ant and the beetle to come? The answers to these questions open broad vistas indeed, and at least a part of this wide view of the subject can be given at the very start in botany work in the primary grades.

The relation of plant life to human life should also receive careful attention from the first. The air we breathe, the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the houses that shelter us, we owe directly or indirectly to the plant world.

The study of the food-plants is particularly valuable and interesting. The bean or pea makes a very good typical foodplant to be grown and observed. It is easily raised, even in a window-box. Its flowers are pretty and interesting, and its economic value to man is great. Through it on one hand can be taught the whole story of plant life, and on the other the relation of the plant to human life. The bees fertilize it and are necessary to the perfection of its seed. From the bean come vast stores of honey, so that thousands of pounds of bean honey are annually gathered in parts of California. Beans need certain kinds of soil. They flourish better in one soil, less well in another, and not at all in a third.

Here is opportunity to make a few simple school-room experiments, with the bean as a type of what is necessary to all plants-appropriate soil or food. subject of the adaptation of soils to plants is one for school use. The pupils readily become interested in the different products grown in different parts of the country.

Why are they grown where they are? Why are apples raised in Missouri and Nova Scotia? Why cotton in Carolina and hops in New York? Thus can botany be vitally connected with geography, to the advantage of both. Children are interested, if the subject is approached in the right way, in the modern methods of reclaiming worn-out soils. In short, the children should be interested in the problems of the farmer. What are poor soils? worn-out soils? Innumerable interesting questions spring up as by magic, and one great aim of botany, or what should be its great aim, is accomplished the child is interested in agricultural problems.

The Preaching of Clement and Jacob

J

A Medieval Legend

By Mary H. Field

ACOB, the neophyte, bent oft and long

Above the convent's old black-lettered lore,
An ardent, youthful soul whose zeal was strong
To be in truth like holy men of yore.
So day by day and night by night he strove
By prayer and vigil and all studious art
To train his soul each earthly thought above
And from all human ways to dwell apart.
Strong was his hope on him such grace might fall
As would prepare him erring souls to teach
Their guilt and danger, and, oh, most of all,

He longed the Church's doctrines grand to preach.
In distant vision he himself could see

High over-topping some great chancel's gloom,
Tonsured and robed with awful majesty,

In tones sepulchral rolling words of doom.

Clement, the aged monk, who loved the youth,
And read his heart as 'twere an open book,
Was fain to lead the boy into all truth,

So to his cell one morn the way he took.
There in a book of homilies Jacob read,

Murmuring the stately phrases o'er and o'er,
As if to fix forever in his head

The words which held such wisdom vast in store.
Clement spake softly twice or thrice ere stirred

The youth, so far from earthly sounds away
He scarce could trust his senses when he heard:
"Jacob, come forth with me and preach to-day."

Yet meek he rose and followed while his face
Alternate flushed and paled, and his loud heart
Drove from his o'ertaxed brain each lingering trace
Of garnered sermons and of pulpit art.

Along a beaten path they slowly fared,

Clement oft stopping friendly words to speak,
The blessing of his kindly look ne'er spared,
But spake no phrase of Hebrew nor of Greek.

A little maid wept o'er a broken bowl,

And Clement slipped its price into her hand;
To way-worn beasts were given ease and dole
At Clement's word of counsel or command.
The morn grew to the noon, as rest they take
Beside a roadside fountain's shimmering play,
Their cup of water and their oaten cake

They shared with beggars who around it lay;
Then climbed a mount by a sick-bed to pray, -

T

While peace as if from heaven itself drew near;
And last to a poor hearth at close of day
They helped bring fagots, and spake words of cheer.

As homeward now they came forspent and slow,

Young Jacob asked, "Good father, went we then To preach ?" "Yea," answered Jacob, "Henceforth know We preach best when we serve our fellow-men."

Encyclopædia Biblica'

HE defects and the excellences of this encyclopædia are equally characteristic of the editor-inchief. He is a brilliant scholar; but he does not distinguish between what is known and what is surmised; between the conclusions and the hypotheses of scholarship. The student may be reasonably sure of getting in this volume the latest hypotheses of Biblical scholars; he cannot be so sure of getting those hypotheses tested and a careful and discriminating judgment applied to them. Some of the articles are exactly what the modern student wants: a careful and judicial statement, making free use of latest investigations, yet not accepting blindly the results, or supposed results, reached by individual scholars. In other articles he gets exactly what he does not wantnamely, a skillful and ingenious advocate's plea for the latest critical opinion, with no statement of other opinions, and no statement pro and con respecting the hypothesis adopted by the writer. Dr. P. W. Schmiedel's article on John, son of Zebedee, affords a striking illustration of this type of article. He is very sure that the Fourth Gospel was not written by the Apostle John, and he gives very fully the arguments against its Johannine authorship.

But he does not give the arguments for that authorship at all, except incidentally for the purpose of answering them; and some of his arguments against the authorship impress us as the special pleas of an advocate rather than as the impartial charge of a judge. Thus the crucial fact that the Fourth Gospel was made use of in Tatian's Diatessaron, already published A.D. 160-180, accord

1 Encyclopædia Biblica, Vol. II. E to K. By the Rev. T.K.Cheyne, M.A., D.D., and J. Sutherland Black, M.A., LL.D. The Macmillan Company, New York.

ing to Dr. Schmiedel, "shows to how small an extent each individual Gospel was regarded by this author as authoritative"! while the inevitable conclusion that the Fourth Gospel was almost certainly in existence by the first quarter of the second century is passed by in silence. So certain significant quotations from the Fourth Gospel by still earlier writers are dismissed as not quotations at all, but "winged words," peculiarly adapted to pass from mouth to mouth, and used by John simply as a common current coin, among which "winged words" he includes the phrase "In my Father's house are many mansions." So in dealing with the date of the Lord's Supper and the crucifixion the author does not even inform his readers of the opinion entertained by many scholars, that there is no inconsistency between the date afforded by the Fourth Gospel and that furnished by the Synoptists, because, as they think, the Synoptists use the phrase the Passover to mean the evening meal which preceded and initiated the week's festivities, and John uses it to indicate the Paschal week and does not include the true Paschal supper, which was, as Lightfoot says, “a thing rubbing up the remembrance of affliction rather than denoting gladness and making merry." We are by no means sure of the Johannine authorship of the Fourth Gospel; we are inclined to think that the best opinion to-day is that it was written by a disciple or disciples of John rather than by the Apostle himself, but contains his interpretation of the Gospel and his portraiture of Jesus Christ. But we are certain that no one unfamiliar with the present state of scholarly opinion on this subject would get a judicial statement of that opinion from Dr. Schmiedel's article. In striking contrast

treated together and the more difficult principles belonging to the same topics are reserved until the child reaches a mental development suited for their comprehension. Thus, instead of presenting addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, etc., as complete lessons in regular succession, each is divided into parts with reference to the difficulty of the principles involved. Such examination as we have been able to give to the book leads us to regard this method as both practical and sensible. The three treatises are notable for the absence of set rules and for the progressive character of the very large number of concrete examples and problems given. "£19,000." By Burford Delannoy. R. F. Fenno & Co., New York, 5×71⁄2 in. 297 pages. $1.25. Old Evangel and the New Evangelism (The).

By Charles Aubrey Eaton. The Fleming H. Revell Co., New York. 5×73⁄4 in. 162 pages. $1. Henry Drummond's book on "The New Evangelism," noticed in our editorial columns February 24, 1900, held that men do not accept the Gospel, because it is the Gospel adapted to the need of a former age which is preached to them, rather than the Gospel as adapted to the present. This is the Gospel they crave: the old evangel in a new evangelism. With such a view the present author has nothing in common; it does not clearly appear that he has a new evangelism. His diagnosis of the existing condition of the Church as needing revival from spiritual and moral lethargy is correct. His note of recall to the first principles of Christian faith is clear and strong. His utterance is a reveille for the Church, rather than an evangelism for the world.

Old Plantation (The). By James Battle Avirett. The F. Tennyson Neely Co., New York. 5x71⁄2 in. 202 pages. $1.50.

These sketches of old-time life in the South are not written with any controversial tendency. They recall amusing and characteristic phases of social pleasures, hunting, the relations between master and slave in their more agreeable aspects, and much else of similar nature. Generally speaking, the book is readable; but a little condensation and occasional repression of sentiment would have improved it. So far as the author has any thesis to maintain, it is that in the South the whites are the best friends of the blacks, and that the race-problem can best be solved by leaving the two elements to find their own relative positions without interference from non-residents.

Outlines of Political Science. By George

Gunton and Hayes Robbins. D. Appleton & Co.,
New York. 5×71⁄2 in. 228 pages.

Papacy in the Nineteenth Century (The). By
Friedrich Nippold. Translated by Laurence Henry
Schwab. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York. 6x9
in. 372 pages. $2.50.

Reserved for later notice.

Seven Great American Poets. By Beatrice
Hart, Ph.D. Illustrated. Silver, Burdett & Co.,
New York. 5x7 in. 323 pages. 90c.
This book has grown from the conviction that

readers, especially young readers, desire personal knowledge of the poets as well as of their works. Selecting, therefore, seven typical American writers, she has interwoven characteristic specimens of their work with biographical sketches, brightly and sympathetically written. Poems whose genesis is thus exhibited in the poets' experience are touched with the fresh color of real life. Both school pupils and ordinary readers will find this collection of biographies, illustrated by the poets themselves as well as by the artist, a serviceable book. The "seven are Bryant, Emerson, Poe, Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, and Lowell.

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She Stands Alone: The Story of Pilate's Wife. By Mark Ashton. Illustrated. L. C. Page & Co., Boston. 5x7 in. 339 pages. $1.50.

This is, for the general reader who does not mind its negligence of technique in points of Greek and Roman custom, a fascinating romance. Its portrait of a strong and noble character in the heroine of the story is attractive to any reader, however he may demur to some violent improbabilities. The author, or authoress, seems to be British. That he, or she, is not American appears in the remark "to-day the services of Christianity are that attended almost exclusively by women." Some misprints need correction, as "Zaides" for Hades.

Songs of the Susquehanna. By Alfred E. Hostelley. Sherman & Co., Philadelphia. 54×8 in. 202 pages. $1.25.

These "Songs," we say it kindly but seriously, should not have braved the criticism of a wider or less sympathetic world than that which cherishes the "poet's corner" in a village newspaper.

Ten Commandments (The). By Rev. G. Campbell Morgan. The Fleming H. Revell Co., New York. 5x7 in. 126 pages. 50c. This brief treatise is a simple and plain-spoken exposition of the Decalogue, with special notice of its present-day applications. The old Puritan austerity reappears in Mr. Morgan's censure of the devout Roman Catholic who kneels before his crucifix, and of other

good people who admire George Eliot's writings, notwithstanding the objectionable passage in her history.

What is Christianity? Sixteen Lectures Deliv

ered in the University of Berlin During the Winter Term 1899-1900. By Adolf Harnack. Translated into English by Thomas Bailey Saunders. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York. 5×9 in. 301 pages.

Reserved for later notice.

When a Witch is Young. By 4-19-69. R. F. Fenno & Co., New York. 5x7 in. 442 pages. $1.50.

Windfairies (The) and Other Tales. By Mary De Morgan. Illustrated. E. P. Dutton & Co., New York. 5x74 in. 236 pages. $1.50.

There is freshness and originality in these fairy tales.

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