of the seed and
then it is a true seed and can grow,--and can grow into another plant that
can have flowers that can have seeds, and so on almost forever. No one
fully understands this very wonderful fact. We only know that it is a
fact,--that the heart of a seed from a father flower had to join to the
heart of a seed of a mother flower before a true seed that can grow into
a plant is born. And we only know that something like this is true about
father and mother animals, and that something like this is true of our own
human father and mother."

So much to show how the parent may "break in," for that is often the
crucial thing. After the start is made, details may be found in the books
provided for just this purpose.[40] Indeed, after beginning, it is
sometimes better to put the right book into the boy's hands; or better yet
to read the book with the child. Especially is the latter course
preferable if the book seems at any point unwise,--and there are few books
prepared for children which are not at some point or other unwise. Only,
in all this process of definite instruction in which analogies from the
life of plants and animals are used, the instructor must make sure that
the illustrations are thought of as analogies for the anatomy and biology
only, and guards must be reserved, implicitly and explicitly, against the
child's supposing that everything in plants and animals is normal for
human beings. All that the child learns of reproduction of plants and
animals should be related to the home and affectional life even of
animals, and the analogy between animals and man should stop far short of
that to which in all the animal world there is no real analogy--the life
and meaning of the higher order of human family life.

If the proper person to teach the child is the parent and if the parent
does not know how, the obvious thing to do is to call the parents together
and to try to teach them how. Besides meetings for parents (fathers and
mothers together), excellent results have come from meetings for fathers
and sons addressed by a man, and from meetings for mothers and daughters
addressed by a woman.

The following details as to arrangement and conducting of parents'
meetings may be of value. For such meetings in the public school, the
consent of the local school board must be obtained. This ought not to be
granted if those seeking permission are either cranks or quacks. The Viavi
people are said to be obtaining such