IT is of advantage to know why a given occupation is profitable, why it is attractive or otherwise, to what sort of minds it is best adapted, and how it should be conducted to yield the best returns.

Other things being equal, the mind acts most healthfully on what is most pleasing. Children are attracted most by things having life, character, color, and rarity. Whatever has life appeals directly to the young mind, especially where the various stages of life are apparent. Birth, infancy, the family relation, society, paternity, sickness, death, joy, sadness, homes, building of nests, eggs, incubation, flying, singing, fighting, foraging, searching covert places, digging, boring, hammering, wading, swimming, catching, devouring, sentry duty, migration, gregariousness, dress, differences in appearance of sexes and ages, moulting, mimicking, special equipment for occupations, anatomy, physiology, hygiene, usefulness to man, assistance in agriculture and arboriculture, destructiveness to noxious life, swiftness, deliberation, expertness, stupidity, instincts for remarkable performances, lack of judgment in certain lines, loquacity, vivacity, sympathy and mutual helpfulness, resemblances to humanity and differences, and apparent moral sensibility, are among the leading features of birds in general which make them attractive to the youthful mind.

Where any of these subjects may be utilized in the ordinary instruction of children the results are more permanent and direct than where the same sort of instruction has been attempted with material that appeals less strenuously to the soul of the learner. That which arouses the most intense activity makes the most lasting impression. Even where the impression is a painful one the result endures; as in old England the memory of landmarks was impressed upon young boys by showing and flogging the boys at once. The unreasoning pain and the sight of the landmark remained forever associated. Modern research has found that pleasant sensation opens the mind and that attention is easily concentrated where inclination also leads. Whatever is discovered by the pupil while thoroughly aroused is of most lasting value. The ideas which school men have for centuries been trying to beat into the minds of children by senseless and dull repetition have been found to be easy of acquisition and in many instances matters almost of intuition if they may first be brought into the consciousness in a natural manner.

The instructor who has not the time nor the tact and invention needed to open the minds of his pupils first and then arrange matters so that self-directed activity will follow, will have a great deal of hard work before him if he hopes to compete with those who have found the secret of the mind's growth and act upon it intelligently. Such teaching cannot produce the results which are now being acquired in our best schools.

A whole system of education could be arranged with bird life as material for arousing and fixing the interest of the learner. But this is not our purpose. A whole system should take in all of the universe that is capable of interesting the learner. Our purpose is to take the most intensely absorbing field and show how it may be tilled.

Birds are used because so much more and better activity is to be secured by using them as the material for school work than from any other.

Why birds are so commanding to the growing mind will become clear to one who will patiently follow the thought in the remainder of this article. In avoiding technical terms the statement has been weakened, but it is believed that those who would enjoy the reading better if the terms were technical and closely accurate do not need to have the matter stated to them at all. Hence the statement is made in the terms of common speech with the object in mind of giving the reasons to those not much accustomed to the terms used by writers on psychological topics.

The mind is somewhat like the eye. It takes in whatever is before it. It is never concentrated upon one object alone, but has to occupy itself to some extent with the surroundings of the object. It is impossible to fix the mind, or the attention, exclusively upon one thin 0 1. We frequently ask our pupils to do this, but it is impossible. The mind at any one instant resembles the surface of a wave of water, part of what it carries is low, another part higher, and some other things are highest. But few things can be at or near the crest at once. Many things are around the base. As with the eye a few objects are at or near the focus, many things are where they are sensed but are not in the supreme position. And as the wave of water runs along its course so the mind moves forward. It will either run directly away from the subject or it will turn the subject over and carry it along in continually changing aspects. The mind cannot stand still. It cannot keep anything more than an instant except by turning the thing about and perceiving it in relation to other things. We still consider we have the thing in mind after we have ceased to think of it as a whole and pass on to thinking of its relations to other things.