ANDEKSi IN] 



NATURE-STUDY AS AX EDUCATION 103 



sidered nature-study from one standpoint or another, the principles 

 set forth by Professor Bailey of Cornell and Professor Hodge of 

 Clark University are as sane and practical as anything that has yet 

 been presented. To little people shivering over their first experience 

 in the clear, cold atmosphere of science, a milder temperature and 

 more genial climate were eagerly welcomed. 



This meeting of the cold and warm currents, however, resulted 

 most naturally in a fog from which we have at last emerged into a 

 clearer, brighter sunshine than we have known before. During this 

 unfortunate fog — the confusion in regard to the real province of 

 nature-study — it was the privilege of anyone to enter the game and 

 pin a tail on the donkey. When the fog lifted, the result was incon- 

 gruous and ludicrous, for the tails were many and varied and some 

 did not even hit the donkey. 



There was the primitive-life literature including the marvellous 

 "Story of Ab;" there were Kipling's "Jungle Stories" and the often 

 beautiful and inspiring stories of Thompson-Seton; th -re were the 

 fascinating tales of the wilderness as told by Long, and the delight- 

 ful life-histories of Wabbles the song-sparrow and Bismark the red 

 squirrel as recorded by Walton the hermit of Gloucester; all these 

 were pinned to ihe curtain together with the works of Burroughs and 

 Thoreau and the great nature- poems of the ages. There, too, were 

 all the elementary botanies and zoologies of the day and some of the 

 more technical literaiure of Bailey's "Integument-man ' These 

 with a few books on general nature-study and a multitude of treatises 

 of all sorts and conditions on specific lines of nature study added to 

 the diversih and complication, and so long as the fog lasted, and 

 there was more or less squabbling among tho^e who entered the 

 game, it is not strange that the wonderful growth following the intro- 

 duction of nature-study received a set-back until the ideas of the 

 average teacher could become more definite as to material, and 

 those of the average principal of the grades more clear as to the scope 

 and place of nature-study in education. 



While there is no doubt of the constant advance of nature-study 

 over the country as a whole, yet the gain is not the mushroom growth 

 of the first few years, and this is well. There has been lack of fibro- 

 vacular tissue, and in more than one place nature-study has been 

 dropped after a trial. 'This has occurred in a few large cities where 

 the problem is most difficult, or where the school-board has failed 

 to recognize the value of nature-study as a means of education, or in 

 some cases where the teaching has been inadequate. 



