Some useful animals and what they do for us

Preface

The subjects treated in this little book are primarily adapted to the use of children in the second and third years of progress in reading, and have in view a twofold object : to assist in nature study and to give aid in the natural and rational method of learning to read. The form of treatment was suggested by actual experience in the schoolroom and in the home circle.

In the progress of information one of the first steps is to introduce the child to nature and to human society; in other words, to the child's environment. The story of animals that are emphatically useful necessarily involves both nature and human nature, inasmuch as it requires the cooperation of animals and men to produce useful results. The point of view is taken in the city, where animal products are more in evidence, and where the larger number of readers is found. The road leading from the products to the sources of production always ends in the fields, forests, and waters. To trace this path from either end is nothing less than a revelation to children both of the city and of the country. Not one child in a thousand realizes where the articles of individual and community use come from, or what industry and sacrifice of life and power are involved in producing them.

As a means of conveying moral impressions, the useful relations of animals furnish a resource especially rich and effectual. The dependence of animals upon human care and their submission and service to a higher power and intelligence impose moral responsibility, and call for the exercise of justice and humanity on the part of their masters and beneficiaries. Moral lessons derived from the actions of animals are to children more vivid and engaging because animals are more ingenuous and dramatic than men in their ways of acting.

As an aid to the young reader in mastering words and sentences, the principle is here recognized that facility in learning to read is best promoted by making interesting knowledge the primary object, and words subsidiary to thought. Historical and geographical allusions passing beyond the experience of the child furnish his teacher or parent opportunities to introduce episodes of story, history, and earth study, which will serve to enhance interest in the subject in hand, and to create a relish for those regular studies yet to come with which animal subjects are correlated.

While the text is fully illustrated by cuts, it is always well to examine the objects themselves when they are attainable.

Acknowledgment is due Messrs. Small, Maynard & Co. for permission to use the poem from " The Wayfarers," entitled "Caravans," by Josephine Preston Peabody.

Contents

A Hunt in the House A Witty Game A Famous Lamb Mary's Lamb {poem) Everybody's Friend Little Boy Blue {poem) What the Sheep give Us Billy and Nanny — the Goats

Our Cow

A Little Professor of Cattle Tony finds Cattle in the City .

II

One kind of chair cover is made of wool. This grows on the sheep's body. Another cover is made of silk. This is w r oven from fine thread spun by silkworms. Still another cover is leather, made from the cow's skin.

The pillows on the couch may have silk or woolen covers ; but the covers are filled with soft feathers taken from ducks and geese.

in

Animals have done a great deal for the furniture of the house. Let us keep on with the hunt.

Turn to the bookcase. The shelves, of course, are vegetable, because they are wooden. The books, too, are vegetable. The paper in them is made from wood. The cloth covers are from cotton and flax plants. The books appear to be all vegetable matter.

Wait a minute! Some of the books are covered with leather. This is animal, too, and is from sheepskin, calfskin, or goatskin. Find a book with the cover nearly off.

Something sticky held the leaves and the cover together. This is animal again ; it is glue, and is made from the skins, bones, and feet of sheep, cows, and dogs.

Open the piano. The black keys are of wood. And the white keys, what are they ? They are ivory from the elephant's tusks. Look within, at the wire strings. Are they animal ? Notice the soft leather on the hammers that strike the strings. It is sheepskin.

Here is the sheep again, helping the elephant, and the living fingers of another animal, to make music in the house.