STEWAKT] 



NA TIRE-STUDY IN ITS PRACTICAL BEARINGS 55 



will find as much individuality in the different school plots as you do 

 in the different pupils, and find also more scope for manifesting your 

 own individuality. Make the school-ground, the schoolroom and the 

 life of the school more attractive and you will have accomplished 

 something the end of which you will not live to see. " We could 

 never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in 

 it" — happy then is the man whose child life, whose school life, has 

 been brightened by tasteful surroundings and the influences which 

 make for good. If you should come to Ottawa it will give Bowesville 

 people pleasure to have you visit their school-garden, but you must 

 not expect to see the best results. These are not on the surface. 

 Endeavor to find such at your own schools. 



NATURE-STUDY IN ITS PRACTICAL BEARINGS 



BY JOHN P. STEWART 

 Professor in the Illinois State Normal University, Normal, Dl. 



[Editorial Note. — The following paper which was prepared for local circula- 

 tion in Illinois and for that purpose published in The Normal School Quarterly 

 contains many suggestions of value far beyond the limits of the State for which 

 it was designed.] 



In the preface to his excellent book, " Principles of Agriculture," 

 Bailey says, " A book like this should be used only by persons who 

 know how to observe. The starting point in the teaching of agricul- 

 ture is nature-study." Again he says, " The purpose of [agricultural] 

 education is often misunderstood by both teachers and farmers. Its 

 purpose is to improve the farmer, not the farm. If the person is 



aroused, the farm is likely to be awakened If the educated 



farmer raises no more wheat or cotton than his uneducated neighbor, 

 his education is nevertheless worth the cost, for his mind is open to 

 a thousand influences of which the other knows nothing. One's happi- 

 ness depends less on bushels of corn than on entertaining thoughts." 

 It is evident that no amount of agricultural precept will reveal to an 

 unobservant man what is going on about him. Our first duty, there- 

 fore, plainly lies in teaching how to see, how to reason from what is 

 seen, and to love and appreciate natural things. This is nature-study, 

 and the training it gives is good for living as well as for farming. It 

 is to set forth this relation of nature-study to agriculture and life, 

 and to call attention to the desirability and practicability of ex- 



