We all recognise that the training of the senses is an important part of education. One caution is necessary: from the very first a child’s sensations should be treated as matters of objective and not of subjective interest. Marmalade, for example, is interesting, not because it is “nice”--a fact not to be dwelt upon at all--but because one can discern in it different flavours and the modifying effect of the oil secreted in the rind of the orange. We shall have occasion to speak more of this subject later; but a useful piece of education is this of centering a child’s interest in the objects which produce his sensations and not in himself as the receiver of these sensations. The purpose of so-called object lessons is, to assist a child, by careful examination of a given object, to find out all he can about it through the use of his several senses. General information about the object is thrown in and lodges only because the child’s senses have been exercised, and his interest aroused. Object lessons are a little in disfavour, just now, for two reasons. In the first place, miserable fragments are presented to the children which have little of the character of the object _in situ_, and are apt to convey inadequate, if not wrong, ideas. In the next place, object lessons are commonly used as a means to introduce children to hard words, such as opaque and translucent, which never become part of their living thought until they pick them up for themselves incidentally as they have need of them. But the abuse of this kind of teaching should not cause us to overlook its use. No child can grow up without daily object teaching, whether casual or of set purpose, and the more thorough this is the more intelligent and observant will he become. It is singular how few people are capable of developing an intelligent curiosity about the most attractive objects, except as their interest is stimulated from without. The baby is a wonderful teacher in this matter of object lessons. To be sure his single pupil is his own small self, but his progress is amazing. At first he does not see any difference between a picture of a cow and the living animal; big and little, far and near, hard and soft, hot and cold, are all alike to him; he wishes to hold the moon in his pinafore, to sit on the pond, to poke his finger into the candle, not because he is a foolish little person, but because he is profoundly ignorant of the nature of the contents of this unintelligible world. But how he works! he bangs his spoon to try if it produces sound; he sucks it to try its flavour; he fumbles it all over and no doubt finds out whether it is hard or soft, hot or cold, rough or smooth; he gazes at it with the long gaze of infancy, so that he may learn the look of it; it is an old friend and an object of desire when he sees it again, for he has found out that there is much joy in a spoon. This goes on with great diligence for a couple of years, at the end of which time