The teacher may then add thus:—­Thus you see, little children, that every living thing has some merit of its own, and can do many things which we cannot do, although God has given us the means to become so much wiser than they; and be sure you are not frightened at them, nor put them to unnecessary pain.  Some other day I will tell you what is the shape of the spider’s web, and shew you what a number of regular figures the spider’s web is composed of.

Almost every object, however simple it may be, will form an instructive gallery lesson; thus for example, you may take a piece of bog-turf, and after submitting it to the inspection of the infants, you may inquire, What is this?  If it be in a country where turf is used, a general exclamation will inform you of its name; if not, you may find a better and more familiar object for your lesson.  When you have got the name, you may then ask its uses, and will soon find that the children are well acquainted with them.  You may then proceed to give your own information on the subject in something like the following words, taking care that you use no word that the children do not themselves understand, or that you have not explained to them.

Little children, look at what I hold.  You have told me it is a piece of bog-turf, and it is used to make fires.  In Ireland turf is more used to make fires than coal, because it is very plentiful there, and many of the poor people in Ireland build their houses of it, and when they keep them well mended and covered, they are very warm and comfortable, and they burn good turf fires in their turf houses; but some of them are lazy, and do not keep their turf houses mended, so the rain comes in, and they are very miserable, and so will all idle lazy people be.  I hope no little child here will be lazy, Now I will tell you where they get all this turf, they dig it out of the bogs.  There are bogs in England; they call them mosses or fens, and in Scotland there are bogs, but the bogs in Ireland are much more plentiful.  Some of them are so very large that you cannot see across them, and a great many birds live amongst them, such as wild ducks, and geese, and cranes, and herons, and snipe, all of which I will tell you about some other time.  Those great bogs are very wild, lonesome, dreary places; no person can live on them, because they are so wet and soft, and they are full of great deep holes with water in them, which are called bog holes, and if any person fell in they would be drowned.  Sometimes in the middle of this great bog you will see a pretty green island, where the land is firm and strong, and the grass is nice and sweet, so that the poor people make a dry path across the wet bog to these islands, that they may drive their cows, and goats, and horses to feed there; and some of these islands are very pretty places, and look so green in the centre of the black bog.  Those bogs which are now such wet, black, nasty places, were once forests