It is of advantage to know why a given occupation is profitable, why it
is attractive or otherwise, to what sort of minds it is best adapted,
and how it should be conducted to yield the best returns.
Other things being equal, the mind acts most healthfully on what is
most pleasing. Children are attracted most by things having life,
character, color, and rarity. Whatever has life appeals directly
to the young mind, especially where the various stages of life are
apparent. Birth, infancy, the family relation, society, paternity,
sickness, death, joy, sadness, homes, building of nests, eggs,
incubation, flying, singing, fighting, foraging, searching covert
places, digging, boring, hammering, wading, swimming, catching,
devouring, sentry duty, migration, gregariousness, dress, differences
in appearance of sexes and ages, moulting, mimicking, special equipment
for occupations, anatomy, physiology, hygiene, usefulness to man,
assistance in agriculture and arboriculture, destructiveness to noxious
life, swiftness, deliberation, expertness, stupidity, instincts for
remarkable performances, lack of judgment in certain lines, loquacity,
vivacity, sympathy and mutual helpfulness, resemblances to humanity
and differences, and apparent moral sensibility, are among the leading
features of birds in general which make them attractive to the youthful
mind.
Where any of these subjects may be utilized in the ordinary instruction
of children the results are more permanent and direct than where the
same sort of instruction has been attempted with material that appeals
less strenuously to the soul of the learner. That which arouses the
most intense activity makes the most lasting impression. Even where
the impression is a painful one the result endures; as in old England
the memory of landmarks was impressed upon young boys by showing and
flogging the boys at once. The unreasoning pain and the sight of
the landmark remained forever associated. Modern research has found
that pleasant sensation opens the mind and that attention is easily
concentrated where inclination also leads. Whatever is discovered by
the pupil while thoroughly aroused is of most lasting value. The ideas
which school men have for centuries been trying to beat into the minds
of children by senseless and dull repetition have been found to be easy
of acquisition and in many instances matters almost of intuition if
they may first be brought into the consciousness in a natural manner.
The instructor who has not the time nor the tact and invention needed
to open the minds of his pupils first and then arrange matters so that
self-directed activity will follow, will have a great deal of hard work
before him if he hopes to compete with those who have found the secret
of the mind's growth and act upon it intelligently. Such teaching
cannot produce the results which are now being acquired in our best
schools.
A whole system of education could be arranged with bird life as
material for arousing and fixing the interest of the learner. But this
is not our purpose. A whole system should take in all of the universe
that is capable of interesting the learner. Our purpose is to take the
most intensely absorbing field and show how it may be tilled. Birds
are used because so much more and better activity is to be secured by
using them as the material for school work than from any other.
Why birds are so commanding to the growing mind will become clear to
one who will patiently follow the thought in the remainder of this
article. In avoiding technical terms the statement has been weakened,
but it is believed that those who would enjoy the reading better if
the terms were technical and closely accurate do not need to have the
matter stated to them at all. Hence the statement is made in the terms
of common speech with the object in mind of giving the reasons to those
not much accustomed to the terms used by writers on psychological
topics.
The mind is somewhat like the eye. It takes in whatever is before it.
It is never concentrated upon one object alone, but has to occupy
itself to some extent with the surroundings of the object. It is
impossible to fix the mind, or the attention, exclusively upon one
thing. We frequently ask our pupils to do this, but it is impossible.
The mind at any one instant resembles the surface of a wave of water,
part of what it carries is low, another part higher, and some other
things are highest. But few things can be at or near the crest at
once. Many things are around the base. As with the eye a few objects
are at or near the focus, many things are where they are sensed but
are not in the supreme position. And as the wave of water runs along
its course so the mind moves forward. It will either run directly away
from the subject or it will turn the subject over and carry it along in
continually changing aspects. The mind cannot stand still. It cannot
keep anything more than an instant except by turning the thing about
and perceiving it in relation to other things. We still consider we
have the thing in mind after we have ceased to think of it as a whole
and pass on to thinking of its relations to other things.
The mind differs from the wave of water in that it is not extensive
to the right and left of its course. It is like a hill with a small
crest that can hold but few objects upon its surface. When we say we
are thinking profoundly upon a subject we mean that that subject and
its connections are continuously upon the crest of the wave, and that
unrelated things are either not in the mind at all or they are at least
not at the focus.
The things that are in the mind but not focal are continually striving,
as if they were alive and very active to get at the focal point. Just
as the eye is continually tempted to wander, making one object after
another its focal one, so the mind is bound to travel unless it has
been trained to turn from the thing to its relations and related things
and from them back to the main thing again. That is the only way to
pay attention. You cannot pay attention to one physical thing for more
than an instant. But you can hold a chain of connected things running
through the mind, but the things are continually modified by their
relations and the absolutely same thing is never again in the mind.
When it appears again it is clothed upon or enlarged or modified by
what the mind has discovered about it and its relations or has invented
and attached to it.
It is easy to repeat the multiplication table without having it focal
in the mind. You may read half a page of print with your focal point
upon some other matter. You may pray and find in your mind at the same
moment a wicked thought. Worse than this, you may continue your prayer
and the wicked thought may become focal. Not by your desire that it
shall be so, but by the power of marginal things in the mind which
makes them focal without your apparent anticipation or desire to have
them at the focus. You cannot say that the multiplication table is not
in the mind when you are repeating it and wondering who will be at the
party this evening. It is there but not focal. When you are reading the
words of the page the words may be in your mind, but the focal point
may be occupied at the time by wondering how the baby learned to climb
so young and guessing whether you ought to catch her or run the risk of
her falling, and if she should fall how much she would be injured, what
the people would think of you for sitting there and letting her fall,
why babies have to fall so much, whether they really learn much about
slipping or center of gravity by falls so early in life, and a thousand
other items in child study. But the reading is in your mind much as it
used to be when your teacher said to you, "Now I want to see you keep
your eyes on your book for fifteen minutes without looking off."
The mind grows at first by use of the senses. The sight is the main
instrument of youthful mental growth. Things which can be seen or
visually remembered are most appropriate subjects for juvenile
thinking. You cannot well converse with children upon the pleasures of
hope, the uses of adversity, nor any of the forms of mind stuff that
are called abstractions. True, they like to play upon words and commit
them to memory so as to reproduce them. But this is not because of the
real meaning of the words committed but because the ear is pleased.
Children enjoy talking like adults as well as looking and acting like
them in their unstudied masquerades.
The proper material for juvenile mind action is what may be acquired
by the senses. All those subjects in the second paragraph of this
article are mainly appeals to the senses. These readily become focal
in any mind, but chiefly in the mind that has never been trained away
from the senses by abstract thinking. No child can pay attention to
anything else when a bird flies in at the window. The bird and its
act, its motive, its fellows, its appearance, its nest, its young, and
a thousand other notions rush to the focus of his mind, no matter how
diligently he may strive to keep them down. Instead of repressing in
the mind what is naturally inclined to become focal, education is now
finding out the value of permitting these things to come naturally into
the mind and so operating upon them that mental growth ensues with
little or no friction, and without asking the learner to flagellate
himself continually that he may have knowledge to use in that distant
and half-believed-in time when he shall be a man.
Everyone knows that children are delighted with colored pictures. But
there is an intensity of delight aroused by a certain class of colored
pictures which has been a matter of surprise to most educators and
parents since color photography has become practical for illustration.
Infants in arms, who have never seen any birds except a few of the size
of a canary, are so fascinated with the bird charts that psychologists
have found a new problem presented.
If we look upon the child as he views an accurate colored picture we
note that he is affected just the same as if the bird itself were
before him. His imagination carries him beyond the picture to the thing
itself, even in the instances where he has never seen the bird nor
any like it. As to his mental state, we can say that the bird rises
directly to the focal point in his mind, and it is not the bird picture
that holds him but the bird itself. For teaching purposes this is
peculiarly fortunate, for the child is ready to grasp any suggestion
from the teacher in order to enjoy the bird more at length. All the
subjects of school work will ordinarily appeal to the child, rising
readily into the focus of attention where the bird, its relations,
its acts, and things pertaining to it, become the material for school
activity.
This liveliness and readiness are not so manifest where mounted
specimens are used, because the element of death becomes focal at the
first instant, is displaced with difficulty, and continually recurs
with sickening frequency during the exercise. The acts associated with
the capture and death of the bird are too dangerously strong to be
avoided. They should by no means be suggested.
Mr. Aima B. Morton puts it in this way: Why do children like colored
pictures to abstraction? Because the child is father to the man. And
what do we love more than tone and color, music and pictures? It is
an inherent quality, the soul of life leading us back to nature, the
All-mother. We have hung up pictures and maps of a poor quality before
the class for years, and then lectured away at them _ad infinitum_ and
_ad nauseam_, thinking, because we understood, that the child also
understood. But this is not so. We nearly always suppose too much,
especially in lower grades.
Diesterweg said: "If you speak about a calf in the school room, bring
it in and show it." This principle is still true to-day. All things in
nature, as far as possible, should be present _in propria persona_.
Where not possible, we must try to approach that ideal by bringing the
very best, and natural pictures of the objects, that is colored ones,
and the vivid imagination of the child does the rest. It does not see
the picture, the object itself is there, nature has entered the school
room.
So we learn that bird study, aided by color photographs, is
psychologically the most valuable means to the attainment of school
ends. It is attractive to the young mind because it furnishes material
which rises most readily to the focal point in the mind. It relieves
teacher and pupil of the strain attendant upon work where it is
difficult to get the class to "pay attention." It is chiefly adapted to
growing minds. No matter how strongly the matured mind with its powers
of abstract thinking may be drawn toward it, it is yet more attractive
to the mind that has not been trained to any sort of restraint. To
get the best results, bird study should not be conducted with a view
to storing the child's mind with scientific knowledge, nor for the
sole purpose of employing it effectively to teach language and other
branches of school effort. But it should be pursued as a mode of
activity which develops mind, acknowledging the fortunate circumstance
that school learning and bird knowledge will both be acquired at the
same time, although they are not the direct objects of the pursuit.
[Illustration: SHELLS.
_Shells kindly loaned by J. M. Wiers._
CHICAGO:
A. W. MUMFORD, PUBLISHER.]
=SHELLS AND SHELL-FISH.=
_Scientific_ _Common_ _Named_ _Where_
_Name._ _Name._ _by._ _Found._
No. 1. Turbo Argyrostoma. Silver Mouth. Linn. Singapore.
No. 2. Strombus Kid Conch. West Indian
Bituberculata. Islands.
No. 3. Nerita Peloronta. Bleeding Tooth. Linn. West Indies.
No. 4. Strombus Urceus. Linn. Amboina.
No. 5. Turbo Sarmaticus. Turk's Cap. Linn. Algoa Bay.
No. 6. Cypræa Argus. Eyed Cowry. Linn. New Caledonia.
No. 7. Helix Hæmastoma. Red Mouth Snail. Linn. Ceylon.
No. 8. Murex Pomum. Smet. Florida.
No. 9. Oliva Inflata. Linn. Singapore.
No. 10. Conus Arenatus. Sandy Cone. Hwass. Red Sea.
No. 11. Fasciolaria Tulipa. Linn. West Indies.
No. 12. Conus Leoninus. Gmelin. Florida.
No. 13. Spondylus Pictorum. Chem. California.
No. 14. Conus Litteratus. Lettered Cone. Linn. Ceylon.
No. 15. Haliotis Iris. Green Abalone. Gmelin. Japan.
No. 16. Terebra Maculata. Marlin Spike. Linn. Sandwich
Islands.
No. 17. Murex Regius. Red Murex. Wood. Panama.
No. 18. Oliva Porphyria. Tent Shell. Linn. Panama.
No. 19. Murex Bicolor. Pink Murex. Val. Mexico.
Who does not love the beauty of shells? Who, when visiting the
sea-shore, has not sought them with eagerness? Their beautiful colors
are pleasing to the sight.
The Indians have always loved shells on account of their bright colors.
No doubt they many times tried to paint their faces the same color.
They used to make money from the pink or purple portions of them.
There are thousands of different kinds of shells. To get the full
beauty of them we must see them in their native homes amidst the sands
and stones and the roaring sea.
Mr. Emerson tells of finding the "delicate shells on the shore," and
how the fresh waves seemed to add new beauty to them. He wiped away the
foam and the weeds and carried them home. He could not take the foam
and waves and sky and ocean's roar. He says the shells
"Had left their beauty on the shore,
With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar."
Did you ever place a large shell to your ear and listen to its roar? It
sounds like the distant roar of the sea. Mr. Wordsworth says:
"I have seen
A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract
Of inland ground, applying to his ear
The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell;
To which, in silence hushed, his very soul
Listened intensely; and his countenance soon
Brightened with joy, for from within were heard
Murmurings, whereby the monitor expressed
Mysterious union with its native sea."
We can not all go to the sea to study its wonders. So we will have to
do the best we can studying pictures of shells, making collections of
as many kinds as possible and studying about the animals that have
lived in them.
Each shell, it matters not how small, has been the home of a living
creature. Each has an interesting story for us if we will but read it.
Shell-fish have no bones as other fish have. They, therefore, need
a solid house in which to live. The shells not only serve them for
houses, but for bones to keep their pliable bodies in shape, for ships
in which to sail, and for beautiful dresses, starched and shining.
If these soft animals had no solid shells they would immediately be
eaten by other animals of the sea or dashed to death by the waves.
But it is not alone the beauty of shells that renders them interesting.
Conchology, which treats of shells, is as a science at least as old
as the days of Aristotle, the study of which was resumed, along with
that of the other sciences, when the dark ages had passed away. Since
the beginning of the nineteenth century it has given place to a more
extended and comprehensive study of molluscous animals, the presence
or absence of a shell having been found not to constitute one of the
most important characteristics which distinguish different classes
of mollusks. Conchology was only the form of the science suited to a
time when the shell was more considered than its inhabitant. Yet it
is claimed that the relations between shells and the mollusks which
possess them are such that the labors of the merest conchologists have
contributed to the real advancement of science, both zoölogical and
geological.
Shells consist of carbonate of lime secreted by the animal and
intermixed with some animal matter. In the species in which it is least
developed it appears as a hollow plate, which serves as a protection
to the breathing organ and heart. The protuberances and ridges seen on
many univalve and bivalve shells appear in the course of their growth
by the margin of the mantle, turning out at a considerable angle and
thus building up a plate in this position for a certain distance. This
growth then ceases, the mantle retracts, or may be regarded as changing
itself into the shelly layers, and thus it extends in the original
direction, carrying out the shell with it, till it turns again to form
a second plate or ridge; and so the process goes on. Many mollusks
possess the power of altering and enlarging their shells to adapt them
to their growth, which they appear to do as if by an intelligent will.
The distinguishing marks of shells are the number of parts of which
they are composed, and their peculiar forms and prominences. Some
consist of a single piece, some of two pieces, and some of three.
The textures of shells are described as pearl, fibrous, horny, and
some are glassy and translucent. The pearly shells are in alternate
layers of very thin albuminous membrane and carbonate of lime, which
by their minute undulations give the pearly lustre. This structure
is the least permanent and in some geological formations the shells
that were provided with it have disappeared, leaving only their casts,
while those of fibrous texture are preserved unchanged. Colors, however
beautifully exhibited upon the surface of shells, are to them no more
distinctive features than to the minerals and flowers upon which they
are also prominently displayed. They are most richly developed upon
those surfaces most exposed to the light and in the class of shells
found in shallow waters.
The whole number of species of molluscous animals known is estimated
at about twelve thousand recent and fifteen thousand fossil. Many of
the living species furnish wholesome food, and some are esteemed as
delicacies. The marine shells, by the immense numbers in which they are
produced, perform an important office in abstracting from the sea-water
its excess of calcareous matter and thus aid in maintaining its purity.
As objects of beauty, shells have always been admired and frequently
been used as ornaments. Some varieties were used by the Athenians as
ballots, with the name upon them of the person to be banished, whence
the term ostracism. Some shells have served the purpose of coin among
rude nations. Others are noted for the pearls which are secreted
between their valves around some foreign substances. Mother-of-pearl
is the polished shell of nacreous. Rare species of shells are highly
prized by collectors, and single specimens have been sold for large
sums. The South Sea Islanders use the conch as an instrument of music,
blowing into the shell through the broken top, thereby producing a loud
and mellow sound. It is a species of sea conch which is represented
by the god Triton. In many rural parts of the United States conches
are used in place of dinner bells or tin horns to call persons from a
distance.