104 THE NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [ 3 : 4 -apr., iqo 7 



Nature-study, then, has already passed through various phases 

 with us: first came the experiment followed by the exhibition which 

 so inspired the on-lookers that it straightway became a fad; then 

 came the period of reaction and criticism when nature-study became 

 less serious —more of a reaction — and here came the opportunity to 

 run in the unusual, the exceptional, the sensational in nature-litera- 

 ture (which is not nature-study at all, although it may be very 

 good literature); and now our leading lights tell us that nature- 

 study is an idea, an atmosphere, an attitude —in a word, it is 

 spirit. 



This then is the promise of the future, and our prophets prophesy 

 wisely and well; but we cannot hope for any universal fulfilment of 

 the prophecy for several generations to come, — not until there has 

 been time to train our teachers, and they in turn have had the oppor- 

 tunity of training the children who are to be the parents of the next 

 generation. Not until this time is reached can we hope to find many 

 parents who will not destroy that beautiful thing to which we look 

 forward, — the attitude, the atmosphere of nature-study which is an 

 inherent part of the nature of the normal child. He inherits from 

 ancestors remote a primitive love of nature and every natural object. 

 Any child of three years turned loose in a small space where there is 

 good clean dirt with worms in it, and pebbles, where green things 

 are growing, where the chance caterpillar and toad and small snake 

 are free to come and go, has amusement for a summer. Some one 

 has well said: 



"Out-doors, God amused him; in-doors his mother; 

 And the finite can never satisfy as the Infinite." 



It is only when the child learns from others that he must not 

 touch the toad tor if he does he will have warts, when he hears that 

 the harmless garter-snake is a poisonous reptile, and that the cater- 

 pillar will bite, only then is his faith in nature shaken, the nature- 

 study atmosphere darkened, and the nature-study spirit ham- 

 pered. 



Dr. M. T. Cook says that while in Cuba he frequently gave his 

 little one-year-old son small snakes to play with, and the child 

 considered them the nicest kind of a plaything until at the age of 

 four when he began to run with other children. In a short time the 

 boy became afraid of snakes and is still afraid of them. Professor 

 Hooker of Mt. Holyoke College had a little visitor whom she found 

 it hard to entertain, so she brought out some little snakes from a 



