2 1 8 THE NA TURE-S TUD Y RE I 'IE W u . ( ,_ SF .,. T ., l9o6 



Details of organization 

 The following rules have been found useful in carrying on such work: 

 (i) The students must be left absolutely free to choose their own president, 

 secretary and treasurer. (2) Assignments of magazines should be made by 

 the president. (3) Either the president or an elected committee must pre- 

 pare programs for the meetings. (4) Meetings should be bi-weeklv. (5) 

 Avoid roll-call and anything else which suggests class-room discipline. (6) 

 Have as many field trips as possible. (7 ) The organization should be 

 permanent, continuing year after year, with the same name and insignia. 

 (8) After the first year, have the old members select new ones on the basis 

 of demonstrated ability in natural science. (9) No visitors or outsiders should 

 be permitted to attend meetings. (10) Members doing extra good work in 

 the club may well be excused from final examinations in biologv in the 

 school. 



Teachers College, Columbia University. C. A. Mathewson. 



BOOK REVIEWS 



Ways Of Nature. By John Burroughs. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin. 

 1905. Pp. 280. $1.10. 



No reviewer could express the point of view of this book so well as the 

 author has in the following extract from the preface: "My reader will find 

 this volume quite a departure in certain ways from the tone and spirit of my 

 previous books, especially in regard to the subject of animal intelligence. 

 Heretofore I have made the most of every gleam of intelligence of bird or 

 four-footed beast that came under my observation, often I fancv, making too 

 much oi it, and giving the wild creatures credit for more 'sense' than they 

 really possessed. The nature lover is always tempted to do this very thing; 

 his tendency is to humanize the wild life about him, and to read his own traits 

 and moods into whatever he looks upon. I have never consciously done this 

 myself, at least to the extent of wilfully misleading my reader. But some of 

 our later nature writers have been guilty of this fault and have so grossly 

 exaggerated and misrepresented the every-day wild life of our fields and woods 

 that their example has caused a strong reaction to take place in mv own mind, 

 and has led me to set about examining the whole subject of animal life and 

 instinct in a wav I have never done before." 



