LESSON XV.
THE SCHOOL CABINET.
One of the wise teachers who are all the time thinking what will help and interest children wrote me a letter. In it, he said, “If you wish to do our school children a real service, write something about cabinets in our schools. In each school-house there should be a collection of natural history objects, brought together by teachers and children. This would be of great use, and the children would take pleasure in collecting specimens.”
So, right here, in the middle of this Third Book, I want to say a word about cabinets of natural curiosities.
In the Second Book I told you here and there how you might catch and keep a specimen. I told you how to dry beetles, star-fish, and a few other little animals.
If you make a collection of this kind, you can look at the object when you read of it in the book. That will help you to understand it and will interest you.
In a cabinet you could keep safely for use many nice things, which might otherwise be wasted. Also, you might spend some of your pennies in buying specimens. I think pennies are much better spent so than for candy and cake.
If you are collecting a cabinet of curiosities, I think you might write letters to other schools, or far off friends to ask them to send you specimens.
You might offer to trade objects, of which you have several, for something which other people have, and you have not.
I think, too, you would be very happy out of doors, looking for specimens. And I believe you and your teachers would be greater friends than ever, if you were all helping each other to get a cabinet together.
If, at first, you cannot have a cabinet case with glass doors, have some shelves. Have some boxes to set on the shelves, and lay pieces of glass over the boxes for covers. Those little paper boxes—, which jewellers and druggists use, are very nice for small objects,—as seeds, little shells, and so on. Nearly all children have some of these boxes.
When you have specimens in these little boxes, the teacher will write the name of the object on the box.
I knew a boy, who made a very nice collection of many kinds of wood. He cut the wood into wedges, with a bit of the bark left on. One side of the wedge he polished with glass and sand paper. One side he left rough. He wrote on each piece of wood the name of the tree from which it came.
I once saw some lovely pictures of leaves. They were made by a little girl. How did she make them? Could she paint? No.
She had some small sheets of stiff paper. She got some printer’s ink in a cup. She made two little balls of woollen cloth. She would take a nice, fresh, perfect leaf, and with one ball she would put a little ink, very gently, over all the under surface of the leaf. Then the next thing was to lay the leaf, inked side down, on a sheet of stiff paper, and pat it gently all over with the other woollen ball.
When she lifted up the leaf she had a picture of its shape, and of all its veins and edges. It looked like a nice engraving. She put the same kinds of leaves on the same sheet,—as the leaves of the rose family on one, the leaves of maples on another, and so on. Under each leaf she wrote its name.
Such a collection of leaf-patterns is fine in a cabinet. So is a collection of dried flowers,—called an herbarium.Your mother or teacher could show you how to make one.
You will find on the way-side, or in field and garden, some of those wonderful nests, built by spiders, wasps and bees, of which you read in the First Book of Nature Readers. And at the sea-side, you can find crabs, shells, and bits of coral, sponge and sea-weed.
Did you ever think what a pretty sight a row of pieces of many kinds of stone makes? Have you thought that stones are just hard, homely, brown things?
Have you noticed that marble is sometimes snow white, sometimes black, or veined with many colors? The granite is gray; sandstone is red, or gray, or purplish. Slate is black, purple, or veined in many shades. Other stones are black, red, yellow, brown, green, in fact of nearly all hues.
Each kind of stone has its own name. Some come from one place only, some from another. There is a reason why each kind has its color and grain. As you grow older, you may like to study about rocks and stones. Then how nice it will be to have on hand a collection of specimens.
A collection of birds’ nests is very fine. As we study in this book a little about birds, you will see howmany kinds of nests there are. If you have a cabinet you can put into it one nest of each kind that you can find. Put into each nest one egg of the kind that belongs to the nest. Then put into the nest a little card, with the name of the bird, and the number of eggs commonly laid in each nest.
Be sure you do not break up the nest of a sitting bird. That is cruel. To keep the eggs you must blow them. Make a hole with a large pin in each end of the egg. Then blow hard, steadily in the pin-hole in the large end. All the inside of the egg will fly out at the hole at the other end.
Our next lesson will be about grasshoppers and their cousins. As the bodies of grasshoppers shrink when they dry, it is well to stuff them. How can you do that?
Put a little cotton wool on the end of a short thread, threaded in a long, coarse needle. The grasshopper should have been dead an hour or two, before you try to stuff it. Take it by the head and pass the needle through from the back end of the body, and bring it out under the breast. If you draw it gently, the cotton will go in with the thread.
Several pieces of cotton drawn in, in this way, will fillthe body enough to hold it in shape. If the cotton is wet in alcohol, or camphor, it is better.
Worms, spiders, toads, minnows, and such soft-bodied things, must be kept in clear glass bottles, filled with alcohol.
Now the chief thing in a collection is to have it good of its kind. The specimens should be as perfect as possible, and be kept neat and clean. Especially they should be set in good order. They should all have labels, with their names on them.
A collection well marked will be worth much more than one without the names placed on the specimens. A collection all jumbled together, without order, will be of little use.
If you set a bird’s nest here, a wasp’s nest there, a bright stone next, and then a beetle, or a card of butterflies, your cabinet will have small teaching value. Remember a cabinet is not merely made to “look pretty” like a doll’s house, or a shop window.
Place things of a kind together. Then put kinds which are nearest like next each other. Put your insects together, and arrange them by their orders. Put the beetles together, the butterflies together, the wasps, and bees, and so on. Spiders come in as one order of the insects. Your crabs andshrimps must stand together, but be placed next the insects, as they are of the jointed class of creatures.
Put your birds’ nests, and eggs, and any stuffed birds, or pictures of birds that you may have, together. And so on, with all the other things.
Your cabinet may be a small one, but if it is neatly arranged, and all the specimens are good of their kind, rightly named, and kept clean, it will be of real value.
Do not be in such a hurry to collect, that you put in rubbish, instead of good specimens. A butterfly with broken wings, a beetle without a head, and a spider that has lost half its legs, are not worth a place in a cabinet.
To get together even a small cabinet of objects in natural history, takes time, care, and patience. I knew a girl who was carefully collecting and mounting beetles. In a whole summer she got only twenty-five. But each one was perfect, different from the rest, nicely fastened in place, and had its name written beside it. So her collection was of real value.
After you have secured a nice little cabinet, the trouble will be to keep it safe, and in order. Specimens must be taken care of. All specimens of plants,and insects, are very liable to be destroyed by little bugs. Only the things kept in alcohol are really safe from being eaten.
Camphor and red pepper are of some use to keep out these enemies. Your teachers will know, or can easily learn, how to prepare the specimens with poisons, which will kill the mites and not harm you or the specimens. You must leave it to them.
It is nice to have a case with glass doors. If you cannot have that, arrange as many of the objects as you can in boxes with panes of glass laid over them. For open cabinets it is well to have a piece of fine gauze to lay over each shelf, or over the whole set of shelves, when the cabinet is not in immediate use.
Dust makes a cabinet look very ugly. But you cannot clean off beetles and butterflies with a dusting cloth or brush. It would ruin such delicate things.
You can gently move the boxes and specimens, and wipe off the shelves, and the sides of the boxes. Then blow, or fan, the dust from the specimens. Even minerals should have the dust blown from them, not wiped off. It is easy to rub the bloom and the little fine points, and edges, from a mineral specimen.
When you have made up your minds to have a cabinetin your school, look about and see what your friends have to give you for it. Many people have a few natural history curiosities, for which they do not really care. Such persons would gladly give their treasures to a school cabinet. But there should be some bright little lad or lass to say: “Oh, we have a cabinet at our school. Would you not be willing to send these things there?”
Correct pictures of birds, fish, insects, and flowers, are useful in a cabinet, but you must be sure that they are correct before you give them a place. You must not put the pictures into your cabinet merely because they are pretty. If they are wrong they will give you false ideas. I have seen colored pictures of insects with some of the legs set upon the hinder part of the body instead of all upon the chest part. Such a picture is of no use.
Keen eyes to see what comes in your own way, and keen wits to suggest to other people what they can do for you, will steadily help to build up the school cabinet.