Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 November 1886 — The Boy in Nature. [ARTICLE]

The Boy in Nature.

The book for every farmer’s boy to read is the open book of Nature. There was none ever written that contains one-half of the information, none other half so fascinating, none so perfect and pure. Nature teaches us to dwell as much as possible upon the beautiful and good, and to ignore at all times the evil and the false. Let us take a single tree for an object lesson and see what it will teach us. Vegetable and animal lives in no way differ in principle; there is a perfect analogy between the two. All plants possess real life—they eat, drink, feel, sleep, breathe and secrete —in short perform all the functions of supply, repair, development and reproduction. The intelligence they manifest in searching for food is simply wonderful, while the actions of climbing plants in search of supports are equally strange. All these wonderful peculiarities of plants are but little seen or appreciated. Not one man in ten ever saw the true roots of a tree, or knows that they are put forth in spring simultaneously with the leaves and are shed with them in autumn. To make the farm attractive, show the child its attractions; how plants know when there has been a storehouse of food placed within their reach, and will immediately turn their attention to it. Show how each and every plant takes from the earth and atmosphere different elementary substances, and how they are. stored up for our use. Show the child the plant’s adaptation to the necessities of other living organisms in the localities where they are indigenous; how that in every locality the animal and plant support and sustain each other. How interesting it is to watch the plant industries as they are carried on side by side, each doing its own work wisely and well and without exciting in the least the envy of its neighbor, and without contention or strife. We see the Maple collecting saccharine juices, the Pine, rosin; the Poppy, opium; the Oak, tannin; and so on through the list. In our gardens the Aconite collects a deadly poison which it stores up in its tubers, and by its side the Potato gathers in starch for the sustenance of man. The plant’s adaptation to the soil and climate in which it is to grow, is one of the most beautiful and useful studies for the old as well as the young. — C. L. Allen.