Horses and dogs, bears and elephants, parrots and monkeys, are all
teachable to some extent, and we have even heard of a learned pig, and of
learned asses there has been no lack in the world.

"But this educability of the higher mammals and birds is, after all, quite
limited. Conservatism still continues in fashion. One generation is much
like another. It would be easy for foxes to learn to climb trees, and many
a fox might have saved his life by so doing; yet quick-witted as he is,
this obvious device has never occurred to him."

The vital problem with parents is how to fill this period of plasticity,
how to provide an educative environment of the right kind.

Luther Burbank, in "The Training of the Human Plant," expresses complete
confidence in the power of the environment through appropriate training to
fashion the normal child, just as he could a plant, into a most delightful
and beautiful specimen of its kind. He says: "Pick out any trait you want
in your child, granted that he is a normal child, be it honesty, fairness,
purity, lovableness, industry, thrift, what not. By surrounding this child
with sunshine from the sky and your own heart, by giving the closest
communion with nature, by feeding this child well-balanced, nutritious
food, by giving it all that is implied in healthful environmental
influences, and by doing all in love, you can thus cultivate in the child
and fix there for all its life all of these traits, and on the other side,
give him foul air to breathe, keep him in a dusty factory or an unwholesome
school-room or a crowded tenement up under the hot roof; keep him away from
the sunshine, take away from him music and laughter and happy faces; cram
his little brains with so-called knowledge; let him have vicious associates
in his hours out of school, and at the age of ten you have fixed in him the
opposite traits. You have, perhaps, seen a prairie fire sweep through the