8 THE NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [i, i, jan. 1905 



number of common animals and plants has been attained the value 

 of scientific methods may be appreciated. 



The greatest difficulty just now in making a clear distinction 

 between nature-study and science in practical teaching is con- 

 cerned with the purely scientific training of the teachers. They 

 have had technical biology — or botany and zoology — either in 

 college or in normal schools under college educated instructors. 

 They have not been given the nature-study point of view ; and 

 consequently, when they are called upon to give lessons on ani- 

 mals and plants, they have nothing else and hence can teach only 

 college science. This situation has drawn the dreariest train of 

 absurdities in its wake to be found in our whole educational sys- 

 tem — " lessons "(?) in the classification of animals and plants 

 the children have never seen or heard of, technical details of form 

 and structure which, with the difficult terminology, are wholly 

 meaningless and unrelated to any interests of either the children 

 or the community. 



Nature-study, as I conceive it, is so natural and easy and so 

 refreshing to teachers and pupils alike that a frequent reaction 

 among teachers, I find, is : " Why, this is too good fun. You 

 really do not call this work, do you?" Well, call it what you 

 please, but the more freedom, spontaneity and delight there is, 

 for both teacher and pupils, the better nature-study it is. These 

 are just the things that will develop genuine love of nature, one 

 ounce of which is worth in life-value pounds of mere acquisition 

 of facts. All I ask of nature-study is that it bring the child out at 

 fourteen with a genuine and abiding love of nature ; and the thing 

 that has stirred me to the quick in this whole subject is the hatred 

 and the consequent abuse of nature which Gradgrind methods 

 develop in the child. 



In order to develop love we need not only acquaintance but inti- 

 macy, and intimacy requires time. Love is active. It is the great 

 motive source of action in the world. Its best definition is : " the 

 desire or passion to do good to the object loved." Hence, trans- 

 lated into these terms, we should have as the end result of our 

 nature-study the abiding desire to do good to the nature in which 

 we live. But the good in nature is set off, bounded and defined 

 by the evil. A child cannot love the plants in his garden without 

 pulling the weeds and destroying the insects that would harm 

 them. So with trees and birds and the whole list of nature inter- 



