andbkson] MATURE-STUDY AS AN EDUCATION 107 



Let us teach the children to love the parks, not just as nice places 

 in which to play but as places where one can know the trees as in- 

 dividuals that in time may become one's comrades and friends. To 

 know the trees that are in our parks, to know them by their outlines 

 and buds and twigs and leaves and flowers and fruits, and to watch 

 the changes in them from week to week and season to season is to 

 have an unfailing resource for pleasure throughout life. To teach 

 the child appreciation of our parks and scenery and to make him 

 feel a sense of ownership in them is to make him some day a better 

 man. 



These aesthetic values of nature-study are not to be overlooked in 

 a time when utilitarian ideas are as prominent as today. Let the child 

 know that the sky and clouds and sunset coloring and the river and 

 hills beyond are his in the same sense in which the parks are his — to 

 appreciate and enjoy. Whatever one can see that is beautiful is his 

 own as much as though it were his individual property. All that any 

 one can do with a beautiful object is to contemplate it with apprecia- 

 tion and enjoyment. It is possible for the poorest child to be richer 

 than the multi-millionaire. 



Of the thousands of poor and ignorant people who visit the New 

 York Botanical Garden during the spring and summer and autumn 

 months, on the one day of leisure in the week, one does not dare to 

 venture a guess at the per cent of those who really care for the things 

 of the park aside from space and coolness. If only these people had 

 been educated to an appreciation of nature what an additional inspira- 

 tion this place would become in their sordid lives! 



President Cleveland went fishing when the affairs of state became 

 too taxing; President Roosevelt hunts bears. When the little boy in 

 the first grade of today becomes president, the same instinctive crav- 

 ing for nature may be satisfied in a simpler way if nature-study be 

 rightly taught. It was not the fish that President Cleveland wanted; 

 he could have bought them with much less trouble at the market. It 

 is not the bear-skins that President Roosevelt wants; he can buy them 

 at the furriers. What both men want is the free pure air, the un- 

 trammeled woods, the sound of rippling water, the call of the thrush, 

 ferns, moss, and wild things: in a word, nature. And, after all, 

 fish and bears are only excuses; just the same results could be had 

 by hunting with a camera, or in listing the trees of a region or study- 

 ing its ecology or in hunting for rare ferns. 



Nature- study, then, should educate for the best enjoyment of leisure. 



