CRONB ] TRUE NATURE-STUDY 181 



The competent teacher will make much use of these but she will 

 never allow herself and school to he in the condition described by 

 Agassiz when he said, " We study Nature from books and when we 

 go where she is we cannot find her." 



V. The Scope 



I think any scientist, be he chemist, physicist, biologist, or geolo- 

 gist, would undertake eagerly to prove that among the various branches 

 of science his own has at least equal importance with any other ; yet 

 experience, which certainly has come from efforts at nature -work in 

 every field, seems to show that the world of living things is best 

 adapted to have the child brought into that relation to it which is 

 stated in our fundamental aim. Learned men recognize the unity of 

 nature and hold reverence for all her parts; but such an attitude is 

 the result of breadth of knowledge and depth of experience. Children 

 are soonest reached by the animals and plants. They soonest and 

 easiest, like 



"The poet, faithful and far-seeing, 



[See in flowers and birds] alike, a part 

 Of the self-same, universal being 



That is throbbing in [their] brain and heart." 



And while I believe there is material for nature-study in the stars 

 and the rocks, the cloud and the brooklet, the sunset and the raging 

 storm, I also believe that living things, the plants and the animals, 

 should be the fundamental scope of the nature-study course. Not 

 the animals and plants, either of another state or of far-away lands, 

 but those in the immediate environment of the school and of the 

 children's homes. 



Nor must I leave the subject of the scope in nature-study without 

 calling attention to the fundamental element of that scope. The 

 activities and adaptations— the ecology— of the animal and plant are 

 to be emphasized rather than structure and classification. Children 

 need not know that the prairie-dog is a rodent; and they had far bet- 

 ter watch it munch a grasshopper than learn that it possesses a noto- 

 chord. They had far better sprout a seed than learn that the embryo 

 therein is surrounded bv an integument. 



