22 



Handbook of Nature-Study 



ning the nature-study of plants, is because every child loves these wood- 

 land posies, and his happiest hours are spent in gathering them. Never 

 yet have we known of a case where a child having gained his knowledge of 

 the way a plant lives through studying the plants he loves, has failed to be 

 interested and delighted to find that the wonderful things he discovered 

 about his wild flower may be true of the vegetable in the garden, or the 

 purslane which fights with it for ground to stand upon. 



Some have said, "We, as farmers, care only to know what concerns our 

 pocket-books; we wish only to study those things which we must, as 

 farmers, cultivate or destroy. We do not care for the butterfly, but we 

 wish to know the plum weevil ; we do not care for the trillium but we are 

 interested in the onion; we do not care for the meadow lark but we 

 cherish the gosling." This is an absurd argument since it is a mental 

 impossibility for any human being to discriminate between two things 

 when he knows or sees only one. In order to understand the important 

 economic relations to the world of one plant or animal, it is absolutely 

 necessary to have a wide knowledge of other plants and animals. One 

 might as well say, "I will see the approaching cyclone, but never look at 

 the sky ; I will look at the clover but not see the dandelion ; I will look for 

 the sheriff when he comes over the hill but will not see any other team on 

 the road." 



Nature-study is an effort to make the individual use his senses instead 

 of losing them ; to train him to keep his eyes open to all things so that his 

 powers of discrimination shall be based on wisdom. The ideal farmer is 

 not the man who by hazard and chance succeeds; he is the man who loves 

 his farm and all that surrounds it because he is awake to the beauty as well 

 as to the wonders which are there; he is the man who understands as far 

 as may be the great forces of nature which are at work around him, and 

 therefore, he is able to make them work for him For what is agriculture 

 save a diversion of natural forces for the benefit of man ! The farmer who 

 knows these forces only when restricted to his paltry crops, and has no 

 idea of their larger application, is no more efficient as a farmer than would 

 a man be as an engineer who knew nothing of his engine except how to 

 start and stop it. 



In order to appreciate truly his farm, the farmer must needs begin as a 

 child with nature-study ; in order to be successful and make the farm pay, 

 he must needs continue in nature-study: and to make his declining years 

 happy, content, full of wide sympathies and profitable thought, he must 

 needs conclude with nature-study; for nature-study is the alphabet of 

 agriculture and no word in that great vocation may be spelled without it. 



NATURE-STUDY CLUBS 



,HE organizing of a club by the pupils for the purpose of 

 studying out-of-door life, is a great help and inspiration 

 to the work in nature-study in the classroom. The 

 essays and the talks before the club, prove efficient aid in 

 English composition; and the varied interests of the 

 members of the club, furnish new and vital material for 

 study. A button or a badge may be designed for the club 

 and, of course, it must have constitution and by-laws. 

 The proceedings of the club meetings should be conducted 

 according to parliamentary rules; but the field excursions 

 should be entirely informal. 



