266 NATURE STUDY REVIEW [9:8— Nov., 1913 



Outlook — Nature Month by Month, November, Ernest Ingersoll, 

 Oct. 25. The Doings out-of-doors in this month. 



Review of Reviews, — Hansen, America's First Plant Explorer. 

 William J. Kirkwood. An account of the introduction of some 

 hardy alfalfas into the United States. 



World's Work — Forests of Usefulness, Henry S. Graves. An 

 account of the conduct of the national forests. 



Editorial 



This is a period when educators are much concerned with the 

 problem of moral education. Some of the forces that formerly 

 made for high moral ideals have been eliminated from the school. 

 In the community itself the rigorous methods of moral discipline 

 that prevailed among the sturdy stock a generation ago, have dis- 

 appeared. Children are reared perhaps as wisely, but certainly 

 with much less insistence upon exact adherence to what were 

 considered essential moral standards. We welcome therefore in 

 the school and in all education, those things that tend to exert a 

 distinctly moral influence. Nature-study, we believe, is one of 

 these things. 



There seems to be something in the mere familiarity with nature 

 that imparts to the individual a sturdiness and integrity. Whether 

 it is the recognition of the regularity of Nature, the certainty of 

 effects that wins recognition for her laws, or whether it is a s^nnpa- 

 thy that stimulates ideals, it certainly seems true that the man 

 who lives close to Nature is, perforce, a man of upright character. 

 Seer, prophet and moral leader have always gone apart to the 

 mountains and the hills and the secluded spots to renew their 

 inspiration. Those nations which have lived among the fastnesses 

 of the hills have always been hardy, independent and noble. So 

 with the individual "One who has grown a long while in the sweat 

 of laborious noons, and under the stars at night, a frequenter of 

 hills and forests, an old honest countryman, has, in the end, a sense 

 of communion with the powers of the universe, and amicable rela- 

 tions towards his God. His religion does not repose upon a choice 

 of logic; it is the poetry of the man's existence, the philosophy of 

 the history of his life." 



