stewart] NATURE-STUDY IN ITS PRACTICAL BEARINGS 59 



that make life most worth living What things are best worth 



knowing is indicated by the relations toward nature that the human 

 race has found necessary and valuable to develop." These relations 

 at first are mainly biological, including the mastery of animals and 

 plants. 



The keynotes to the first two views are power to see, and sympa- 

 thy ; to the third, the keynote is industrial improvement ; and at 

 Columbia University it is apparently the educational value that is 

 uppermost. Each one no doubt recognizes the validity of the claims 

 of the others, and emphasizes the most important phase from his 

 point of view. But from our point of view, it seems that we should 

 be after all these values. They are mutually beneficial— symbiotic, 

 in technical terms — and \here is danger of losing the whole coalition 

 if we emphasize one of the symbionts to the exclusion of the others. 

 The man who pins his faith to any single phase will fail to get perma- 

 nent results. Bringing this to earth, it follows that a boy is not likely 

 even to begin raising chickens, much less to become proficient in it, 

 unless he becomes interested in the life of the chicken, knows some- 

 thing of its relations to comfort and disease, and sees the advantage of 

 putting his ideas into practice. 



As to what we should study in nature work, we say the whole nat- 

 ural environment within the reach of the child. Everything the 

 Creator has made is worthy of our serious and continued study. That 

 was the idea that controlled Agassiz and that has controlled all his 

 famous pupils to this day. And we have done a great thing if we can 

 impress the child with this fact. He will never be out of something 

 to do. Of course, in the limited time of the class-room, selections 

 must be made bringing out the best that is in the environment ; but 

 they should be clearly seen as only selections, and by no means the 

 only objects worthy of our attention. The work should fit the season 

 and locality, have definite trend, and run at least through one year, 

 or through all the grades. We would make the emphasis largely 

 biological in the fall, meteorological and physical in' the winter, and 

 geological and agricultural in the spring; the bearing upon the needs 

 of actual life always being considered. The character of the agri- 

 cultural work has been well presented by President Felmley in 

 the Normal School Quarterly for January, 1903. This work 

 should give scientific insight into the fundamental farm pro- 

 cesses. We believe with Bailey that it is the fundamentals and 

 principles of farming instead of the incidentals that should get first 



