150 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [12:4— April, 1916 



Those who do not receive home encouragement in this line 

 of activity have shown their interest in his collection by various 

 contributions from their own hands or by accompanying him 

 upon his nature jaunts. 



After a visit to this boy's museum, and after witnessing his 

 interest in the things which he has collected and in the things 

 he hopes to secure, and after learning to what extent his teach- 

 ers are making use of this great interest of his, the thought 

 occurred to the writer that it might be worth while to examine 

 it and see if it really should be encouraged. There are those 

 who would not favor an enterprise of this sort. 



It can be readily understood why some mothers would not 

 welcome such a collection into their homes. Snakes are never 

 an attraction in the eyes of the mothers; there is some litter to 

 be expected from hornet's nests; leaves as imperfectly mounted 

 as his, are always crumbling off upon the floor; and above all 

 such a collection of things would hardly seem fit to have room 

 in a well ordered home. 



Some practical man of affairs might contend that he could see 

 no possibility of any money value in all this dead stuff, while on 

 the other hand it is costing good hard cash to buy formaldehyde 

 and other preservatives. Besides if the boy is encouraged to 

 employ his time in this form of activity will he not be more like- 

 ly to become a shiftless" Ne'er Do-well" unable to take care of 

 himself in later life? 



The old type teacher who is fast disappearing, thanks to prog- 

 ress, would probably say that he had better be at work solving 

 his arithmetic problems or diagramming his sentences or draw- 

 ing maps for his geography lesson instead of "trapesing" about 

 the country with a butterfly net or scraping around some fossil 

 bed. 



It is our task to meet those objections and criticisms if we 

 believe that not only this boy but that other boys should be 

 encouraged to pry thus into nature's affairs. In the first place, 

 in answer to the mother, as long as the boy is employed with these 

 specimens from the natural world he is not going to be polluted 

 by the questionable things of his social world. No one will 

 question but that the exercise in the open which the collection 

 of specimens for such a museum would require, is much more to 

 be i ireferred to stagnation in some barber shop or to the "sissi- 



