5 4 THE NA TU RE-STUD Y RE VIE W ls . 2 - FE b., i 9 o 7 



the truth itself. Classification and comparison of forms in the system of 

 nature belong to the later stages of nature-study, for the pupil is not inter- 

 ested in classifying until he has something to classify. Occasionally they 

 "may serve as a foundation from which to investigate the forces of living 

 nature with a view to understand the laws of their action and to discover 

 means to utilize and control them." 



Children are not interested so much in matters of classification, origin, and 

 structure of the organism as they are in matters relating to its growth, its 

 habits and its dynamic power in the community. 



Macdonald College. W. LoCHHEAD. 



Ill 



While recognizing some exceedingly valuable elements in the article by 

 Director Hornaday in the October issue, I believe I also recognize some 

 which ought not to pass unchallenged. May I express my dissent in the 

 columns of your valuable journal? 



On page 242, lines five to nine, the author says: — "A more inadequate 

 foundation for zoological vvork could hardly be devised,'' than that of "get- 

 ting acquainted with the life about our homes.'' Now we teachers who 

 have been so fortunate as to read the lives of many of the greatest naturalists 

 that the world has ever seen, know that the true foundation for their zoologi- 

 cal, botanical, or geological work was laid through a childhood spent in the 

 observation and collection of natural objects in their own neighborhood, and 

 that at first they mixed up all living things "birds, bugs, flowers, mushrooms, 

 shells, crabs, and trees." Thus was produced those great men who made 

 the natural sciences possible. They became naturalists, not on account of 

 any sound basis laid in their school studies, but in spite of the influence of 

 those studies. Again, we teachers know of certain very prominent naturalists 

 of the present day and we can assert from our own knowledge that the love 

 of nature that led them to become her devotees was obtained in a very simi- 

 lar manner, not in the schools, but in the fields and woods. As the result 

 of the growing realization that the basis of all scientific development is the 

 direct study of natural objects and phenomena, our wiser educators have 

 induced us to bring this promising method into the school course, and modern 

 laboratory work is the result. The nature-study movement is but the attempt 

 to create a wider sympathy with nature and develop heretofore neglected 

 mental powers by bringing nature into closer contact with those whose long 

 term of school imprisonment and whose changed conditions of life have kept 

 them from nature. 



It should not be necessary to say that we teachers have seen and used both 



