ABSTRACT
The interest in pets and plants of children of kindergarten and infant-school age, has long been recognised, and needs no demonstration. The children’s minds turned more freely and steadily towards the non-interfering, observational attitude of many modern naturalists towards living animals in their own setting, whose work has won an important place for itself in the world of biological science to-day. A more active and inquiring interest is called out when some easily noticed change occurs—such as the quick germination and growth of cress seeds, the bursting of flower or leaf buds, the sudden appearance of the green shoots of bulbs from the bare earth. The changes occurring in animal life, moreover, are much more easily seen and grasped than those in plants—feeding and drinking, breathing and sleeping, the processes of excretion, the changes of growth. For the problem is further complicated by the contradictory impulses of the child himself.
