The Teaching of Nature-Study 21 



NATURE-STUDY AND AGRICULTURE 



UCKILY, thumb-rule agriculture is being pushed to the wall 

 in these enlightened days. Thumb rules would work much 

 better if nature did not vary her performances in such a 

 confusing way. Government experiment stations 

 were established because thumb rules for farming 

 were unreliable and disappointing; and all the work 

 of all the experiment stations has been simply ad- 

 vanced nature-study and its application to the prac- 

 tice of agriculture. Both nature-study and agriculture are based upon 

 the study of life and the physical conditions which encourage or limit life; 

 this is known to the world as the study of the natural sciences; and if we 

 see clearly the relation of nature-study to science, we may understand 

 better the relation of nature-study to agriculture, which is based upon 

 the sciences. 



Nature-study is science brought home. It is a knowledge of botany, 

 zoology and geology as illustrated in the dooryard, the corn-field or the 

 woods back of the house. Some people have an idea that to know these 

 sciences one must go to college; they do not understand that nature has 

 furnished the material and laboratories on every farm in the land. Thus, 

 by beginning with the child in nature-study we take him to the laboratory 

 of the wood or garden, the roadside or the field, and his materials are the 

 wild flowers or the weeds, or the insects that visit the golden-rod or the 

 bird that sings in the maple tree, or the woodchuck whistling in the pas- 

 ture. The child begins to study living things anywhere or everywhere, 

 and his progress is always along the various tracks laid down by the laws 

 of life, along which his work as an agriculturist must always progress if it 

 is to be successful. 



The child through nature-study learns the way a plant grows, whether 

 it be an oak, a turnip or a pigweed; he learns how the roots of each is 

 adapted to its needs; how the leaves place themselves to get the sunshine 

 and why they need it; and how the flowers get their pollen carried by the 

 bee or wind; and how the seeds are finally scattered and planted. Or he 

 learns about the life of the bird, whether it be a chicken, an owl or a 

 bobolink ; he knows how each bird gets its food and what its food is, where 

 it lives, where it nests and its relation to other living things. He studies 

 the bumblebee and discovers its great mission of pollen carrying for many 

 flowers, and in the end would no sooner strike it dead than he would 

 voluntarily destroy his clover patch. This is the kind of learning we call 

 nature-study and not science or agriculture. But the country child can 

 never learn anything in nature-study that has not something to do with 

 science; and that has not its own practical lesson for him, when he shall 

 become a farmer. 



Some have argued, "Why not make nature-study along the lines of 

 agriculture solely? Why should not the child begin nature-study with 

 the cabbage rather than the wild flowers?" This argument carried out 

 logically provides recreation for a boy in hoeing corn rather than in play- 

 ing ball. Many parents in the past have argued thus and have, in conse- 

 quence, driven thousands of splendid boys from the country to the city 

 with a loathing in their souls for the drudgery which seemed all there was 

 to farm life. The reason why the wild flowers may be selected for begin- 



