34 THE MA TURE-STUDY REVIEW [2 : ,-, AN1ARV , I9 o6 



needed materials with half the money spent in a single year on nature- 

 study, and most of these materials would last several years at least. 

 When I see the poor grade teacher coming home Saturday with her 

 arms full of branches and twigs, in fact most any old thing, as a 

 result of a forced trip to a roadside just outside the city limits, I 

 always think what a fine physical experiment could have been 

 arranged with half the time and trouble, and at a cost not exceeding 

 her car-fare. 



The one real obstacle to the immediate introduction of this class of 

 work into its proper place in the curriculum is, of course and as 

 usual, the teacher. It will be objected that here is another subject 

 for her to study, another demand on her already overloaded time and 

 energy, and she cannot be expected to know enough chemistry and 

 physics to teach these things properly. These same objections were 

 urged with equal application against the introduction of the present 

 form of nature-study. For the surmounting of these obstacles I 

 would make two suggestions : First, that the teachers in the grades 

 should obtain constant assistance and direction and instruction from 

 the specialist teachers in the high school, or from supervisors, as at 

 present in music, art, etc. The high-school instructor in chemistry 

 and physics should always be available to show the grade teacher 

 how to perform and explain these elementary exercises. Any good 

 high-school teacher would be glad to do this, realizing that thus would 

 the work be done properly and an early foundation be laid on which 

 later work in those sciences could the better be built up. Second, 

 there should be prepared a set of leaflets containing complete and 

 explicit descriptions of the exercises, directions for their performance, 

 the materials needed, as well as a statement of the points to be 

 specially emphasized and the conclusions to be drawn. Such a leaf- 

 let would enable any intelligent teacher to carry through the exercises 

 on the magnets quite as satisfactorily as she could the corresponding 

 one on the toad. 



I would not for the world use one period for indoor laboratory 

 exercises which could be devoted to a trip to real fields and real 

 woods, to nature's real laboratory. Only do not let us try to get 

 lively interest out of a lot of old dead leaves and sticks, or fool our- 

 selves and cheat the children by roaming over some vacant city block, 

 or through some very artificial park. When animate nature sleeps 

 let us turn with equal zeal and interest to so called " inanimate ' 

 nature. Nature in fact is always animate. Let us turn to this phase 



