728 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE STUDY OF LOCALITY. 



By CEPHAS GUILLET, Ph.D., 



TORONTO, CANADA. 



A SIMPLE statement of what can be done and has been done with 

 children is attempted in this article by one who for five years 

 maintained a school in Ottawa for boys, limited in number to twenty 

 and ranging in age from eight to fourteen years. 



The afternoon work of this school was conditioned by the season. 

 In the fall, the topography and physiography and the geological history 

 of the city and surrounding country were studied The crust of the 

 earth was examined in outcrops, mines, quarries and excavations, and 

 collections made of soils, shells, fossils and animals for museum, 

 vivarium and aquarium.* 



In the winter when animate nature is in a state of torpidity and the 

 earth covered with a mantle of snow, the conditions are less favorable 

 for outdoor study of nature. As nature is asleep, we study her asleep. 

 The forest in particular is a convenient and interesting object of winter 

 study. We observed the general appearance of the tree-skeletons, stri- 

 ving to fix in our minds by memory-drawing the characteristic shapes 

 of the various deciduous trees. We examined the bark of the trunk, 

 the character of the wood (making collections of various woods), the 

 size, form, color, texture, taste and smell of the twigs and buds, and 

 the number and arrangement of the buds. The character of the 

 terminal twigs is an excellent means of distinguishing our trees 

 and shrubs. The various contrivances by which the buds protect 

 themselves are of great interest. The buds, being kept in water, open 

 out, showing how ready they are to cast off their winter clothes when 

 the moisture and warmth of spring shall come. 



Approaching Christmas reminded us of the evergreens, which we 

 learned to distinguish, the boys decorating their desks with them. In 

 this connection, I shall describe a typical winter outing. A few days 

 before school closed for the winter holidays, we went to a rugged, 

 swampy brush in search of evergreens, each boy being assigned a 

 particular kind to be responsible for, while all were on the lookout for 

 the rarest in the neighborhood, namely, ground hemlock or American 

 yew. Joyously shouting defiance to the frost king, they trudged over 

 the ridges, plunged down into the gullies, and ran across the tiny ponds. 

 Skirting one of these, they at last found the ground hemlock nestling 



* For a full account of the fall work in nature study, see ' A Glimpse at a 

 Nature School,' in The Pedagogical Seminary for March, 1904. 



