Books published by publisher Harr Wagner

This little book is written for the use of children in the elementary grades. "Tidepool Animals", one of the California Series in Elementary Science, was designed for the guidance of classroom teachers. Published in Bulletin from. it was necessarily encyclopedic in treatment, being planned to meet the need for a relatively condensed reference for the identification of classroom specimens, and to indicate the interest-arousing possibilities of directed study in this field. If, through its use, the healthy curiosity of boys and girls has been aroused, it will accomplish its major purposeThe present volume feeds this curiosity, applying the answers to some of the many questions in the minds of young readers regarding the flora and fauna of the Pacific coastline from Puget Sound to San Diego. The sequence of topics will not seem orderly and scientific to the systematic taxonomist, himself an expert in the field of marine biology; however, organization along lines of greatest interest has been undertaken deliberately in the light of considerable experience in the presentation of scientific material to young audiences. Readers of pre-junior high school age cannot begin with the "simplest" organisms and progress in an orderly manner to a consideration of the "more complex". Such procedure may be advisable from the viewpoint of comparative morphology and physiology, but is clearly erroneous psychologically. Latin derivations and Linnaean principles are deadwood to young people as well as to untrained adults. Their excessive use in elementary references is fatal. At the same time general taxonomic groupings, together with all factual information presented, must be accurate and reliable... From the preface of tis book.