andeesonI NATURE-STUDY AS AN EDUCATION 105 



fernery. "Would you like to see my little friends?" she asked. 

 The child was delighted and played with them happily until she 

 heard some one call them snakes, then she dropped them in fear 

 and disgust. 



A child in the first primary grade of the University School for 

 Girls in Chicago brought a tiny leafless twig to her teacher and asked 

 her to use it for the nature-study lesson. The teacher thought it a 

 rather small affair for a class, but a leaf-bud or two offered suggestion, 

 and the teacher held out for what seemed to her a very creditable length 

 of time and then turned with relief to a gay picture of an oriole on 

 the wall. But the children did not want orioles in pictures on the 

 wall; they wanted a little live twig, and the small girl who had 

 brought it in raised her hand and asked severely, "Why don't you go 

 on with the Nature-science?" 



That which we are to aim for, then, we have at the very beginning; 

 but by the time that the child goes to school he has lost more or less 

 of it, and it is more difficult to restore it in a soil that has been ster- 

 ilized than it would be to start anew in fresh soil. Allowing for indi- 

 vidual exceptions, I have found it true that interest in nature-study 

 in schools where the subject is not a vital one varies inversely with 

 the age of the children, and that the difficulty in exciting an interest 

 varies directly with the age. 



The problem that confronts us is, how shall we recover that which 

 has been lost; how shall we reach the pervading atmosphere that 

 colors, the idea that permeates the whole life, the nature-study spirit. 

 The child of the graded school has many teachers. It is a chance 

 if he ever has one who reallv understands and fully comprehends 

 just what Bailey means by atmosphere and attitude and idea and 

 spirit. It is possible that one may be all this and that the school 

 may have the spirit and never know it. I am not sure but this is 

 the essence of the whole thing — the spirit free because unconscious 

 of itself. 



At one of the State Summer Schools held in Bennington, Vermont 

 a voung teacher came to me and told me how much she regretted the 

 impossibility of having any nature-study in the little rural school 

 where she taught. "The parents are not wiling that the time 

 should be given in school," she said, "the programme is already 

 crowded, we have no money with which to buy books. But," she 

 added, "there is a little brook back of the school-house, and the 

 children and I stav out there about all the time at recess and noon 



