64 The Ottawa Naturalist [July 



advanced in justification of these random remarks strung 

 together to form an article, are: first, that it is hoped that it 

 may assist those who wish to make the teaching of natural 

 history, in reference to insect life more particularly, of practical 

 value to the child in showing the relations which these animals 

 bear to man ; and secondly, to show that this can be accomplished 

 without any addition to already existing curricula, and how it 

 can be correlated with such, at first, seemingly unconnected 

 subjects as geography, hygiene and history. Teachers are 

 realizing that it is only by a correlation of subjects that a har- 

 moniously balanced system of education, as opposed to the 

 ancient, and in many quarters still extant watertight-compart- 

 ment and cast iron systems, that an all-round developed mind 

 and a mind capable of thinking and reasoning can be produced. 



For many years it has been the custom of a number of 

 teachers to give instruction, both in school and in the open field, 

 in the natural history of certain of the commoner creatures. 

 Every child knows the tadpole and is acquainted with the fact 

 that the butterfly is not always the gaudy creature it would have 

 us believe, but that it has passed through a far more lowly stage 

 before its promotion to a winged condition. Such facts as these 

 were commonly inculcated. Then, like a tidal wave, the cult 

 of "Nature Study" swept over the country; a new gospel to 

 many teachers, but an old one to those who were nature lovers 

 themselves. The great benefit of this insurgence was that it 

 assisted in establishing the importance, which all true educa- 

 tionalists have realized for many years, of teaching the child the 

 nature, relations, and meaning of the things around it, its fellow 

 inhabitants of the world. To teach the child to see, what to 

 many people is a closed book, the "fullness of the earth and the 

 riches thereof." To enjoy to the full the unsurpassed pleasures 

 of a country ramble, and to become an intelligent member in 

 the great fraternity of living creatures, instead of an ignorant 

 dweller on isolated Olympian heights. That to my mind is the 

 greatest value of a rational system of instruction and guidance 

 in this inexhaustible lore. 



But to-day, such instruction is even more important, for 

 with the advance of scientific investigations we are discovering 

 daily that these humble fellow creatures, especially insects, bear 

 a far greater relationship to the welfare of man than was realized 

 some years ago. What has prevented the penetration and coloni- 

 zation of immense areas of the continent of Africa? Not the 

 hostility of native tribes, nor impenetrable forests, for man has 

 overcome these obstacles in other countries ; it was nothing more 

 than the presence of two small insects, the malarial mosquito on 

 the one hand and the tse-tse flv on the other. It wasnot solely the 



