206. LANGUAGE LESSON

NOUNS: REVIEW

See Lessons 109, 184, 187.

Nouns are names for persons, places, things, or ideas. Nouns are divided into two classes, proper nouns and

common nouns.

Proper nouns are names of individual persons, places, or things; as, John, Smith, Baltimore. Proper nouns begin with capitals.

Common nouns are names that can be applied to many persons or places or things, as man, city, ice-cream.

Most nouns become plural by adding s to the singular. Some nouns form plurals in other ways (see Lesson 84).

Most nouns become possessive by adding 's to the singular and (') to the plural. In what other ways may the possessive be formed?

Nouns play an important part in the sentence. The subject is a noun or a pronoun.

From the compositions written in Lesson 205, select the following: five proper nouns, five common nouns, three nouns that are possessive, five nouns that are subjects.

207. ORAL LESSON

BEES

Although bees have been in the service of man for thousands of years, they have never been thoroughly domesticated. They are wild creatures still. They are still armed with a sting against man's interference, still take to the woods when conditions in the garden do not suit them, and still thrive in a wild state as well as under the care of man. Their service to us is still involuntary; and the tribute we levy is in the nature of a robbery.

The bees in the hives are queens, workers, and drones. The drones, or male bees, are useless for gathering honey, and are commonly destroyed by the females, or workers. The task of the workers is to build the cells of the honeycomb and to fill them with honey against the long winter season. The queen is the mother bee of the brood. She is wonderfully prolific. She will sometimes lay a thousand or more eggs per day for a month. These eggs are deposited in cells, and the larvæ or young bees fed with honey until fully grown.

Bees are great colonists. Their rapid increase will soon fill a hive. When they find themselves growing hot and crowded, a body of them, with a queen, will emerge from the hive, gather on some neighboring tree or building, and then all make off for a new home. This is called "swarming." Those that remain in the old hive will continue life there with a new queen, until the pressure of population again becomes too great; then another body of "colonists" will be sent out. The community or social life of bees has been closely studied, and shown to be one of the most marvelous things in nature.

Repeat the substance of this selection in the form of an oral composition. Can any one give further information about bees? about ants or other insects? Much interesting bee lore will be found in John Burroughs's Pepacton, in Sir John Lubbock's Bees, Ants, and Wasps. Charming stories about bees are Maurice Maeterlinck's The Life of a Bee and Maurice Noel's Buzz.

208. WRITTEN LESSON

A PARAGRAPH FOR STUDY

Bees, like the milkman, like to be near a spring. They do water their honey, especially in a dry time. The liquid is then, of course, thicker and sweeter, and will bear diluting. Hence old bee-hunters look for bee trees along creeks and near springs in the woods. I once found a tree a long distance from any water, and the honey had a peculiar bitter flavor, imparted to it, I was convinced, by rainwater sucked from the decayed and spongy hemlock tree in which the swarm was found. In cutting into the tree, the north side of it was found to be saturated with water like a spring, which ran out in big drops, and had a bitter flavor. The bees had thus found a spring or a cistern in their own house.

-From Pepacton, by JOHN BURROUGHS.

Copy this paragraph carefully. A paragraph should always have one subject or topic, and every sentence in the paragraph should have some connection with that subject. The topic of this paragraph can be put in a single sentence: Bees put water in their honey. Note how this idea is introduced in the first sentence of the paragraph.

In Lesson 207, what is the topic of the first paragraph? of the third paragraph?

Personal Pronouns

209. LANGUAGE LESSON

PRONOUNS: PERSONAL

See Lessons 112, 169, 187.

Pronouns are words used instead of nouns.

The subject of a sentence is a noun or a pronoun.

187

A personal pronoun shows by its form whether it stands for the person speaking, the person spoken to, or the person or thing spoken of.

John meets James and says, "Hello, James, I am going skating. Will you go with me? Do you think Fred will go? Shall I ask him?"

Who is the person speaking? What pronouns stand for the person speaking? Who is the person spoken to? What pronouns stand for the person spoken to? Who is the person spoken of? What pronoun stands for the person spoken of?

Pronouns that stand for the person speaking are in the first person; as, I, my, me, we, our, us.

Pronouns that stand for the person spoken to are in the second person; as, you, your.

Pronouns that stand for the person or thing spoken of are in the third person; as, he, she, it, him, his, her, its, they, their, them.

Exercises

1. What are the plurals for the singular pronouns I, you, he, she, it? What are the possessive singulars and plurals? 2. Find the personal pronouns in Lesson 92. Tell whether each is in the first, second, or third person; whether each is singular or plural.

Besides the personal pronouns there are many others, of which the most common are: who, which, whom, what, this, that.

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210. ORAL LESSON

A GAME WITH WORDS

Many games with words have been invented for the amusement of children of all ages, from seven to seventy. One of the most common games is to choose a word and see how many other words can be made with the letters of the word chosen. In playing the game it is not permitted to use any letter oftener than it is used in the original word. Suppose we try the word timber. We can get tire, met, bet, bit, rim, brim, mire, tier, and others from it. From earnest we can get ear, eat, east, earn, ease, ant, are, ate, rest, ran, rate, nest, neat, near, nearest, sear, seen, set, steer, stare, and, possibly, still others. Try some other words, your name, for example, and see what you can do with them. See who can make the longest correct list in five minutes. If you like this game, play it; it will not only be amusing, but will help you to spell correctly.

211. WRITTEN LESSON

This lesson may be devoted to a criticism of words misspelled, misused, or poorly chosen in the compositions of Lessons 202, 205, and 208. The incorrect words may be selected by the teacher, but the class should write the correct forms.

212. LANGUAGE LESSON

VERBS AND VERB-GROUPS

See Lessons 118, 121, 139, 169, 172, 187.
Verbs are words that tell or assert something.

Most verbs express action: as, run, jump, talk, find, chase.