Running through nature are great principles and laws which
can be studied upon concrete examples, plain and interesting to a
child. The study of the squirrel in its home, habits, organs, and
natural activities in the woods, will show how strangely adapted it is
to its surroundings. But an observation of birds in the air and of
fishes in water reveals the same curious fitness to surrounding nature.
The study of plants and animals in their adaptation to environment, of
the relation between organ and function; between organs, mode of life,
and environment, leads up to a general law which applies to all plants
and animals. The law of growth and development from the simple germ to
the mature life form can be seen in the butterfly, the frog, and the
sunflower. These laws and others in biology, if developed on concrete
specimens, give much insight into the whole realm of nature, more
stimulating by far than that based on scientific classifications, as
orders, families and species. The great and simple outlines of
nature's work begin to appear out of such laws.
Again the study of the whole _life history_ of a plant or animal, in
its relations to the inorganic world and to other plants and animals,
is always a cross-section in the sciences and shows how all the natural
sciences are knit together into a causal unity.
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