148 THE NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [1. 4. julv 1905 



NATURE-STUDY AND AGRICULTURE 



BY F. L. STEVENS 

 Professor of Botany, North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts 



Agriculture, dealing with plants and animals, is of all the arts 

 most often confounded with nature-study. When agriculture is 

 abstracted to teachable principles it becomes a science, and the 

 science of agriculture may be differentiated from nature-study by 

 the criteria cited in the first number of this journal. The art of 

 agriculture furnishes numerous and valuable illustrations for na- 

 ture-study work, but as an art it cannot be nature-study. The art 

 of agriculture and nature-study may overlap so that part of 

 nature-study may rest entirely upon agriculture. Indeed agri- 

 culture is so vast that enough subject-matter may be drawn from 

 it to constitute an entire course of nature-study. Then this 

 course would be agricultural nature-study. It would be the 

 method of nature-study applied to the teaching of agriculture, but 

 that would not make nature-study and agriculture identical any 

 more than a selection of the subject-matter for nature-study solely 

 from the field of mineralogy would make mining and nature-study 

 identical. Nature-study is broad, inclusive, comprehensive. It 

 is an invaluable aid in the teaching of agriculture. It opens the 

 way to agriculture in the schools by awakening interest and quick- 

 ening observation, and creating a love for all out-doors, but it is 

 not agriculture. 



NATURE-STUDY IN THE SCHOOLS OF NOVA SCOTIA 



BY A. H. MAC KAY, LL.D. 

 Superintendent of Education for Nova Scotia 



[Editorial Note. — The article in No. 1 of this journal on " Nature- 

 Study and Agriculture in Canada " indicated great interest in nature-study 

 lines at the present time. But the new movement centered at Macdonald 

 Institute is not the beginning of nature-study in Canada, as the following 

 historical account shows. It is certainly interesting to learn that eighteen 

 years ago a Canadian journal was started with the object of giving special 

 attention to the work which we now call nature-study. The publication of 

 this paper, written several months ago, has been delayed; and meanwhile 

 essentially the same paper has been published in the Ottawa Naturalist. 



