Parent and Child Vol. III. | Page 7

vital problem with parents is how to fill this period of plasticity, how to provide an educative environment of the right kind.
Luther Burbank, in "The Training of the Human Plant," expresses complete confidence in the power of the environment through appropriate training to fashion the normal child, just as he could a plant, into a most delightful and beautiful specimen of its kind. He says: "Pick out any trait you want in your child, granted that he is a normal child, be it honesty, fairness, purity, lovableness, industry, thrift, what not. By surrounding this child with sunshine from the sky and your own heart, by giving the closest communion with nature, by feeding this child well-balanced, nutritious food, by giving it all that is implied in healthful environmental influences, and by doing all in love, you can thus cultivate in the child and fix there for all its life all of these traits, and on the other side, give him foul air to breathe, keep him in a dusty factory or an unwholesome school-room or a crowded tenement up under the hot roof; keep him away from the sunshine, take away from him music and laughter and happy faces; cram his little brains with so-called knowledge; let him have vicious associates in his hours out of school, and at the age of ten you have fixed in him the opposite traits. You have, perhaps, seen a prairie fire sweep through the tall grass across a plain. Nothing can stand before it, it must burn itself out. That is what happens when you let weeds grow up in your child's life, and then set fire to them by wrong environment."
Mr. Burbank is probably over-enthusiastic in his belief that natural education can do everything for the child; but it is certain that environment does exercise a powerful influence, during the plastic age, in determining his character.

LESSON IV
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Compare the helplessness of the infant at birth with the ability of the young of other animals.
2. At one year of age, what is the comparison?
3. What is the significance of prolonged infancy respecting (a) possibility of adjustment to environment, (b) possibility of training and education, (c) possibility of profiting from experience, (d) the relation to heredity?
4. What advantage is it that man is born with the germs of many capacities instead of with a few activities that are perfectly developed?
5. What is the chief function of education?
6. What does Burbank say respecting the possibilities of training?
7. What common-sense training should every child be given during this period?
Good books, for further study on these points, are: "The Care and Training of the Child," by Kerr, and "Fundamentals of Child Study," by Kirkpatrick.
If these volumes are in the library or otherwise available, it may be well to have some member read and give a brief report on one or the other of them.

THE NEEDS OF THE INFANT
_The Infant's First Needs Are Physical, and May Be Summed up in the Word Nutrition_
The new-born child differs in nearly all particulars from the adult. It is very unfortunate that the child in the past has been regarded as a miniature adult and treated like "a little man."
The structure of muscle and bone and the proportion of various parts of the body differ materially; the bones of the child for some time are soft and largely composed of cartilages which may be easily bent out of shape and permanently injured. The ratio of some of the parts is about as follows:
* * * * *
Height of head of adult to that of infant--2 to 1 Length of body of adult to that of infant--3 to 1 Length of arm of adult to that of infant--4 to 1 Length of leg of adult to that of infant--5 to 1
Besides these easily observed differences, there are others of far more consequence not easily seen, such as differences in the size, structure and activity of vital organs, and in the almost total lack of nervous development in the child as compared with the adult. All of these things make of the child an individual so different from the adult that he must be treated in accordance with his own nature and needs and with little regard to the way in which an adult is considered.
Practically everything that the infant needs may be summed up in the one word nutrition. A sufficient supply of pure milk from the mother is the one supreme requirement. If this is assured, everything else is almost certain to follow. Of course, the little one must be kept at the right temperature, which is comparatively high during the first few months. An abundance of pure, fresh air also must be supplied to both mother and child. It is wise for both to spend much time in the