"Let every child be instructed in those general views of the phænomena of nature for which we have no exact English name. The nearest approximation to a name for what I mean which we possess is physical geography; the Germans have a better, 'Erdkunde' (earth knowledge or geology in its etymological sense), that is to say, a general knowledge of the earth, and what is on it and in it and about it. If anyone who has experience of the ways of young children will call to mind their questions, he will find that so far as they can be put in any scientific category, they will come under this head of 'Erdkunde.' The child asks, 'What is the moon, and why does it shine?' 'What is this water, and where does it run?' 'What is the wind?' 'What makes these waves in the sea?' 'Where does this animal live, and what is the use of that plant?' And if not snubbed and stunted by being told not to ask foolish questions, there is no limit to the intellectual craving of a young child; nor any bounds to the slow but solid accretion of knowledge and development of the thinking faculty in this way. To all such questions, answers which are necessarily incomplete, though true as far as they go, may be given by any teacher whose ideas represent real knowledge and not mere book learning: and a panoramic view of nature, accompanied by a strong infusion of the scientific habit of mind, may thus be placed within the reach of every child of nine or ten."