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To

THE CHILDREN

OF

AMERICA

THIS BOOK

IS LOVINGLY DEDICATED

BY

THE AUTHORS.

COPYRIGHT 1900

POTTER & PUTNAM CO.

NEW YORK

PREFACE.

THE Elementary Inductive Geography is designed for use in the third, fourth, and fifth school years. It is the outcome of several years of experience in teaching geography to all grades, and of the supervision of geography-teaching in certain particular grades. During these years the interests, needs, and difficulties of pupils in this subject were carefully noted and studied.

The authors have endeavored not only to produce a thoroughly usable book for pupils, but also to place in the hands of teachers a text in which is brought together such material as has usually to be gathered with much trouble from many different sources.

In its plan the book deals first, in Part I., with that in which the child is most interested: the life about him—in plants and animals and their various relations to himself and to the body of people he knows-in the diverse industries in which these people are engaged in order to secure a living-in the social life of the people as this may be affected by the peculiar nature of each season of the year. By means of illustrations and text the child's interest is awakened in the life of other countries, and he is led to note the influence of the various seasonal and climatic conditions upon his life.

The social or life phases should be studied first, for the reason that children's interests naturally center in these. They should be studied as a preparation for the more complete understanding of geography and to awaken a broader interest and give a deeper insight into the social life of the world.

Having secured and intensified these natural interests, pupils easily become interested in the physical features of the home district, in Part II., and the relation in which these physical features stand to the industrial and social life of the people. Physical features now assume a new and living interest, because pupils clearly recognize their influence upon the life of the people in its various aspects. Following the study of the physical features, a careful drill is given in

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the making and reading of physical and political maps, in order that with the knowledge gained through the study of the physical and social aspects of the home district, and through the interrelated reading, the pupils may be prepared to enter intelligently upon the study of the political divisions of the world in a much broader manner.

The authors have endeavored to present the study of the political divisions, in Part III., in such a way as to sustain the interest of the pupils in the different phases of social and industrial life and to emphasize their dependence upon the various physical conditions; thereby creating a living interest in the heretofore dry subject of locative geography.

Acknowledgments. The authors desire to express their thanks:

To Dr. Edward R. Shaw, for his valuable advice and helpful criticism in the preparation of this book.

To Dr. Thomas M. Balliet and Henry T. Bailey, who have kindly given many valuable suggestions.

To Isaac B. Beales, the artist, for the patient, careful, and artistic manner in which he has carried out the suggestions of the authors in the arrangement of illustrations and in the making of the relief maps.

To Miss Euphrosyne Bown, Teacher and Supervisor of Geography in the Normal Training School, Bridgeport, Conn., for the careful preparation of the excellent list of interrelated reading material to be used in connection with the study of the text.

To many others, the mention of whose names space will not permit, who have generously aided the authors by contributing valuable illustrative material.

It is to be hoped that this book will be a source of much pleasure to the children for whom it is written and that it will awaken in them an ever-increasing interest in the subjects which are presented.

MARY R. GALE DAVIS.

BRIDGEPORT, CONN., 1901.

CHAS. W. DEANE.

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