“Lessons on Country Life”

Abstract

IN your issue of September 24 you published a review of “Lessons on Country Life,” by Messrs. Buchanan and Gregory, but may I ask, with all deference, if your reviewer has not omitted to read an important part of this useful little book? He refers to Mr. Buchanan's earlier Works, “Country Readers,” Nos. 1 and 2, as “most excellent books for children,” but had he read the preface to the “Lessons” he would have found that these were intended, not for children, but for teachers. Your reviewer truly says:—“Country life is a vast subject, so vast that no child can learn during his school life even a fraction of the information it may be desirable he should possess,” and the same remark may be equally well applied to teachers. This book travels over much the same ground as “Reader” No. 1, but the matter is differently treated. In one case simplicity of language is aimed at, in the other the information is condensed, with a view, as it appears, to me, of leaving it to the discretion of individual teachers to use such lessons, or portions of each lesson, as are most suitable to their own districts.