106 THE NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [ 3 : 4 -apr., i 9 o 7 



and we all go early in the morning before school. We have a series 

 of pools, and in them we have several kinds of fish, and in one pool 

 we have some salamanders, and in another turtles, and in another 

 pollywogs. We feed them and keep the pools in order and the 

 children do have such a good time. Then once a little house-wren 

 came into the school-house and built her nest on the stove-pipe by the 

 chimney, right in the schoolroom. And the children would keep just 

 as still as possible so as not to disturb her." 



This dear girl assured me over and over again with tears in her eyes 

 that she would be so glad to have nature-study in her school, but 

 that it was simply an impossibility! This illustrates how difficult it 

 is for one to grasp the real significance of the study as presented by 

 even so plain and simple and straightforward a speaker as Professor 

 Bailey. 



Atmosphere is intangible at best, and not an easy mark for the in- 

 experienced. One may be sure the arrow will hit somewhere, even if 

 sent at random, and many of our public-school teachers have evidently 

 taken refuge in this thought, and the result is random and haphazard. 

 The result would be the same and perhaps the idea might seem more 

 definite if, with the idea of attitude as the ultimate goal we should 

 begin by aiming at some nearer mark. To inspire the boys and girls 

 with a vital rational interest in their immediate natural environment — 

 an interest that shall continually widen with the circles of growing 

 experience and knowledge founded on experience, and so lead to a 

 wider environment — this is concrete and feasible. 



In the country there is such abundance of material that the question 

 is one of choice; in the more cramped conditions of the larger cities 

 the question of choice is largely eliminated and here it is necessary to 

 seize upDn every natural object that comes within the reach of the 

 children and to widen their pathetically limited environment by con- 

 stantly reaching out, always from something they have seen or ex- 

 perienced, to the things beyond, and thus to inspire them with a 

 desire to learn what lies outside the few blocks which immediately 

 surround them. Settlement-workers tell us that most children in the 

 crowded tenement districts seldom go beyond the dozen blocks which 

 supply the necessities of life. A little girl of nine years was taken to 

 the country for the first time. She was amazed beyond measure; she 

 had attended the public-schools, but she had never been told that the 

 earth was not paved all over, and it had never occurred to her that it 

 could be any other way. 



