caldwell] THE CRITERIA OF NATURE-STUDY 259 



It may be the enjoyment of the beauty of the creatures of the 

 living and lifeless worlds. It may be the enjoyment of a wider 

 speaking acquaintance with nature and of knowing more, just for 

 the sake of knowing. It may be enjoyment found in solving the 

 problems nature presents. It may be the pleasure that comes 

 through possession of useful knowledge and of a feeling of mastery 

 over those things that are of utility to men. Much of the nature 

 material used should be selected primarily because it offers 

 opportunities for new pleasures, it being known by the teacher 

 that to truly enjovable work many values other than pleasure 

 may be added. 



Nature-study materials should also make possible a large body 

 of knowledge that is useful in the broadest sense of that term; 

 knowledge of the domesticated animals, their ways of living, 

 their use by man, their histories, the selection and care of the 

 best breeds, the regions where different ones thrive best; know- 

 ledge of house pets; of wild animals, their relation to one another 

 and to man; of helpful and injurious insects; knowledge of 

 domesticated plants, house plants, vegetables and flowering 

 plants and the gardens in which they grow, agricultural plants, 

 orchard plants, nut and fruit trees of the wood, lumber and its 

 sources and uses, poisonous, medicinal and fibre plants; plants 

 and animals and climatic conditions as soil makers; building 

 stone, brick, lime, sand; minerals, coal gas, oil; knowledge of 

 factors having to do with public and private health; knowledge 

 of physical forces, of simple machines, of the applications of 

 electricity; of the transformations of chemistry and their uses in 

 industrial and household processes. 



These and many other possible topics suggest the array of use- 

 ful nature knowledge. Such nature material is quite as adaptable 

 as any other in developing the three general purposes mentioned 

 above, and is of much importance in making pupils potent factors 

 in the intellectual and social life in which they may find them- 

 selves. It is not to be inferred, however, that interest in even a 

 broadly utilitarian aspect of nature is to supplant interest in 

 things themselves. Interest in physical and chemical forces as 

 such, in what plants and animals are and how they meet their 

 own life needs, in how earth contours came to be and in what 

 they are going to be are more enduringly fascinating to one truly 

 engaged in nature-study than are the uses man may make of 

 these things. 



