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THE KNICKERBOCKER.

VOL. XXV.

APRIL, 1845.

No. 4.

THE STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY.*

THIS Magazine has always said its best word of encouragement to the cause of popular education; and now we purpose to take another onward step in this department. To introduce any science as a new classic among elementary studies, demands exact knowledge of that science, and a wide survey of existing institutions. It is the part of wise policy for our country to borrow from other lands all that is good, while we make better whatever we appropriate. We have no fear of any thing foreign, whether in science, literature, arts, or even manners, so long as we can filter them through our republican minds and our puritan hearts. Our country ought to take the lead in this business of popular education, and set such an example to our sister republics of the South as can be followed with safety. We should teach them to hope all things not impossible, and to believe all things not unreasonable. We maintain that all knowledge, which does not lead to error, is useful. Where there exists in a nation the greatest diversity of pursuits, there the business of society goes on with most precision; and where there are the greatest number of relationships in our ideas, there we advance most rapidly and securely. Happy then is he who in this stage of existence can acquire the most knowledge with the greatest degree of innocence. To educate is to form character; it is to develope all the powers in their natural order, proper time and due proportion, so that we shall see in that grown-up character all that God designed in the infant constitution. Education does not so much consist in carrying materials to the mind, as in bringing out materials from the mind. To the teacher falls the sacred office of education; (educo) of drawing humanity out of man; of tempting forth the various energies of thought, and of becoming a fellow-laborer with GoD in bringing out the godlike in the human soul. The universe, our globe, life, truth, art, science,

*I. CAHIERS D'Histoire NaturELLE, a l'usage des Collèges et des Ecoles Normales Primaires. Par M. MILNE EDWARDS et M. ACHILLE COMTE. Paris: 1838

II. A SYNOPSIS of NATURAL HISTORY; embracing the Natural History of Animals, with human and general Animal Physiology, Botany, Vegetable Physiology and Geology; Translated from the French of C. LEMMONNIER, and arranged as a text-book for schools. By THOMAS WYATT, A. M. pp. 191: Philadelphia.

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faith, immortality, in short, every thing our minds can know, or hope grasp, are means. Man is making his progress through matter; he is here at school, schooling for eternity. He has an interest, an inevitable positive interest, in every moment of the eternal future. We may therefore add to our statement just made: To educate is to form immortal character.

For the child's body God has prepared the best food fitted for every moment of its growth. For every moment of the child's mind he has likewise prepared the means of growth. These means are arranged in a naturally-ascending series, corresponding to the gradually-unfolding powers of the mind; beginning with those which arrest the eager curiosity of the youngest child, and ending with those which reveal themselves only to the searching analysis of the profoundest philosopher. To the teacher belongs the duty of applying these in their proper portions, suitable times, and simple forces. If the body has not so much of the natural food as it can well digest, it languishes, and is not such a body as God designed. If the mind has not so much of its natural aliment as it can well digest, it languishes, is stinted, and is not such a character as GoD designed. The question then is, what has GoD provided for the best nourishment of the young mind, and how should these means of development be applied so that we may realize God's idea of a man?

It is not our purpose to answer this question except as pertains to one particular branch of instruction, and that branch is NATURAL HISTORY.

GOD seems to have proposed his material creation as a standing, perpetual study to his intelligent creatures, where, ever learning, they can never learn all. We cannot open our eyes, nor stretch out our hands, nor take a step, but we see and handle and tread upon the things from which the most wonderful discoveries and the most useful inventions have been deduced. The subject of Natural History is no narrower than the vast creation; a history of nature. The study of this science, then, how comprehensive!-comprehensive, because it embraces a knowledge of all the beings and bodies spread over the surface of the earth, of all the substances under that surface which constitute its mass, of all the phenomena of which these bodies are the seat, the various characters which distinguish them from each other, and the part they all act in the great economy of the universe. The study of this science, moreover, how simple !-simple, because it has to do with what our eyes can see, our hands can handle, and our minds can know. Leaving the fields of conjectural criticism and vague hypothesis, it goes to plant itself on the sterling facts of nature and of life.

From this wide field of truth and inquiry we select one topic, suggested by the two works named at the head of this article; viz. the introduction of Natural History as a regular classic into all our colleges, academies, normal and high schools. The questions which seem to embrace our subject are these:

FIRST: Is Natural History a science which youths from twelve to eighteen years of age can understand?

SECOND: If they can understand it, is it a study which will help to

develope the powers of their minds and to elevate the affections of their hearts?

THIRD: If it can do both these, how can it be introduced as a regular classic into our seminaries?

I. We begin then with asking: Is Natural History a science which youths from twelve to eighteen years of age can understand?

We answer. In all the best private schools and in all the universities on the continent of Europe, pupils of both sexes study this science as a specific part of regular instruction; and we never heard it said that they could not understand it, but on the contrary, pupils there have repeatedly told us that they esteemed it the most attractive of all studies. In the Normal Schools and Colleges it is a fixed study, as much as Greek or Mathematics. If European pupils can understand it, cannot American?

But as this answer to our question may not be wholly satisfactory to some, let us answer it in the fullest manner by examining the topics most fit to be introduced into our seminaries; and this examination will convince us that our youth can understand them. We might here examine Botany, Mineralogy, Geology, Chemistry or Zoology, and a specimen-lesson might be selected from either of these sciences to illustrate the simplicity which could be introduced into an elementary work which successfully popularized Natural History as a study for youth. Such a specimen-lesson we will here attempt as an example. We care not from what department it be taken; but we have selected the Skeleton of Birds, because it is so little known, and because the statements concerning it can be so easily verified. Let us look, then, with the eye of a learner at the skeleton of birds; and the following questions and answers may introduce us into the school-room :

QUESTION: What circumstances claim particular attention in the skeletons of birds?

ANSWER: The materials of which they are composed, then their peculiar forms, and then their natural arrangement.

QUESTION: What can you say about these?

ANSWER: The materials of which the skeleton of birds is composed are bones, horn and gristle; and their peculiar forms and arrangement may be seen in the turkey and goose, which we have on our tables; though every different order of birds has a shape exactly fitted to its own peculiar mode of getting its living and rearing its young.

QUESTION. In making the skeleton of birds, what objects were chiefly to be regarded?

ANSWER: There were two objects to be secured; viz. strength and lightness.

QUESTION: Yes; and how were these secured?

ANSWER: They were secured, in the first place, by adopting quills, which combine strength and lightness more than any other substance in notice; and secondly, by making the bones hollow so that the bird can fill them with air, which air being warmer than the outward air, makes the bird a sort of balloon in the sky.

QUESTION: Can you state another curious fact on this subject?

ANSWER: I can; and the fact is this: that those limbs in birds which

are the most used in locomotion have bones the most hollow. For example, the wings of the ostrich are not hollow, because they are never used in flight; while the bones of its legs are remarkably hollow, because they are used in locomotion. So the leg-bones of great fliers are not particularly hollow, because these birds do not depend on running; while their wing-bones are remarkably hollow, because they are used for motion.

QUESTION: Can you mention another singular fact relating to the skeleton of birds?

ANSWER: There is one relating to the back-bone or vertebræ. The vertebræ in the mammalia are flexible, and unless they were so these animals could not move as they do; but in birds the several small bones which compose the back-bone, just opposite the wings, are all soldered together so that they cannot bend, and the reason for this is, that the wings in flying need a stiff, immoveable fulcrum or support to sustain them in their violent motions of striking the air. This contrivance, of making the vertebræ solid, nearly doubles the power of the wings. QUESTION: But do all birds have stiff vertebræ opposite their wings?

ANSWER: No; because all do not need a fulcrum. For example; the ostrich and cassowary, which do not fly, have moveable back-bones like the mammalia. If their vertebræ were stationary they would experience extreme inconvenience.

QUESTION: Is there any peculiarity in the articulation of the head with the vertebral column?

ANSWER: There is. It is more moveable than in the higher animals; and it is effected by means of one rounded eminence in the upper bone of the neck, (called condyle.) Thus, the head turns as on a swivel, and the bird can direct his face completely backward. None of the mammalia can do this, because in their bones there are two and three candyles.

QUESTION: Are there any interesting facts pertaining to the sternum, or breast-bone, in birds?

ANSWER: Yes, many; and one of them is this, that while in man and in the other mammalia the breast-bone is fastened to the ribs by cartilege or gristle, thus enabling the chest to expand and contract in breathing; this is not so in birds, because this motion of the bones would make the fulcrum of the wings unsteady and flexible, and thus fatally weaken it as a point of support. Nature knowing this has put bone in birds where gristle exists in all other animals, and thus has completely obviated every difficulty.

QUESTION: You say that the fastening of the breast-bone to the ribs differs from that in the mammalia. I would ask, if the breast-bone itself also differs from the same bone in other animals?

ANSWER: Certainly it does. Look at the sternum of a man; it is very small, while that of a duck is immense. The breast-bone in birds is a broad shield or concave buckler spread over the whole breast. QUESTION: But why are they so much more expanded in birds than in other animals?

ANSWER: Because the great muscles that move the wings must be

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