stewart] NATURE-STUDY IN ITS PRACTICAL BEARINGS 65 



rians ; a milk producer on a small scale among the Italians, where 

 a single cow and calf constitute a street dairy ; an object of wor- 

 ship among the people of India ; a milk and cheese producer 

 among the Dutch and Swiss, giving us our breeds of Holstein- 

 Friesian and Brown Swiss cattle ; and finally a beef-animal to the 

 Anglo-Saxon (who also cares somewhat for milk), giving us our 

 Shorthorns, Herefords, Anguses, Galloways and others. But our 

 packing houses do not stop here. Even the hair, horns, bones, and 

 hoofs are put to service. The hair is made into felt boots and mat- 

 tresses; the horns into combs, buttons, knife handles and orna- 

 ments ; and the bones into knife handles and fertilizers. 



The method of properly caring for cattle, the uses and mixing 

 of balanced rations, the bases for judging dairy and beef cattle, and 

 the status of "residual milking" carry us beyond the limits of this 

 paper, and can be better obtained from agricultural bulletins. But 

 if enough has been given to show the availability of our domestic 

 animals merely as an animal study, and especially if this indicates 

 a way to get the country boy to take more pride in his work, to get 

 a better understanding of it and consequently to become a more 

 effective worker in the world, our efforts will have been abundantly 

 repaid. 



We have now discussed why nature should, be studied ; we 

 have shown its relation to agricultural teaching, something of what 

 it should include, something of the principles that should guide us 

 in its organization and presentation ; and it remains for us to con- 

 sider where it should be taught. Industrially speaking this last 

 question is self-answering. The all-important place for nature- 

 study is in the country school ; and the farmers are beginning to 

 find it out. But why those schools are not yet doing their full duty is 

 due to two facts. The teachers are not yet awake to the importance of 

 the movement ; and when they do awake they are already so crowded 

 with recitations that they can't determine either what to do or how 

 to do it. The first part of our problem then is to reach the teacher, 

 and since he is so often the product of his own school this is not 

 easy to do. We have to reach the risinggeneration through one that is 

 nearly always an immediate offshoot of that generation. The open- 

 ing of the country schools to the elements of natural science has 

 been a problem in our state ever since the founding of this Normal 





