we are not very rigid about periods or
climates, and that our long-ago people are of a generalised type. Our
business is not to supply correct information on anthropological
questions, but to call forth thought and originality, to present
opportunities for closer observation than was ever evoked by observation
lessons, and for experiments full of meaning and full of zest. Naturally
we do not despise correct information, but these children are very young
and all this work is tentative. We are never dogmatic, it is all "Do you
think they might have ..." or "Well, I know what I should have done; I
should have ..." and the teacher's reply is usually "Suppose we try."

Children are apt of course to make startling remarks, but it is only the
teacher who is startled by: "Was all this before God's birthday?" "I
don't think God had learned to be very clever then." It is a curious
fact, but orthodox opinion has only twice in the course of many years
brought up Adam and Eve. Probably this is because we never talk about
the first man, but about how things were discovered. The first time the
question did come up Miss Payne was taking the subject, and she
suggested that Adam and Eve were never in this country, which disposed
of difficulties so well that I gave the same answer the only time I ever
had to deal with the question.

When we come to the problem of fire, we always use parts of Miss Dopp's
story of _The Tree-Dwellers_. If the children are asked if they ever
heard of fire that comes by itself, or of things being burned by fire
that no human being had anything to do with, one or two are sure to
suggest lightning. They will tell that lightning sometimes sets trees on
fire, that thunderstorms generally come after hot dry weather, and that
if lightning struck a tree with dry stuff about the fire would spread,
and the long-ago people would run away. A question from the teacher as
to what these people might think about it may bring the suggestion of a
monster; if not, one only has to say that it must have seemed as if it
was eating the trees to get "They would think it was a dreadful animal."
Then the story can be told of how the boy called Bodo stopped to look
and saw the monster grow smaller, so he went closer, fed it on wood, and
liked to feel its warm breath after the heavy rain that follows
thunder--why had the monster grown smaller?--found that no animal would
come near it and so on. We never tell of the "fire country," thoug