122 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW 



some of the things which this paper discusses have been in his 

 mind so long that he can scarcely be accused of radicalism if he 

 ventures to give them expression. Yet he does not pretend any- 

 thing new. We've heard it all before, but some of us need to be 

 reminded occasionally of what we are already supposed to know. 



In the first place the girls are on their vacations, and anything 

 even remotely suggesting school rightly meets with their disapprov- 

 al. In our efforts to give them as much as possible I fear that we 

 sometimes lose sight of this fact. The girls come to camp to play 

 and they find waiting for them a formidable array of nature teach- 

 ers, nature books, nature periods and nature study with all the 

 paraphernalia of a well organized school, all anxious to help them 

 have a good time. Courses in nature are now given in many pub- 

 lic and private schools, and it may be that the poor child has some 

 very unpleasant memories of her previous experiences with nature 

 (such things sometimes happen,) and she probably at once decides 

 that she won't do nature work unless it is required. The psycho- 

 logical effect is decidedly bad. 



We have to compete too with other camp activities which have 

 a greater appeal for most girls. These are the various forms of 

 athletic and aquatic sports. Normal girls prefer to work with 

 their hands rather than their heads, and things which they can 

 learn to do by doing them such as tennis, swimming, handwork, 

 and riding are much more attractive to the average girl. The 

 girl in camp should be a healthy young animal and little else. 

 The nature teacher faces a real problem when he attempts to make 

 his subject as interesting as some other camp activities. Game 

 and group activities in which there is the element of competition 

 also appeal to some and here again we have to meet competition. 



Such are some of the reasons why nature-study is so frequently 

 a disappointment to the management, a bore to the girls, and a 

 bugbear to the teacher. Perhaps we can never hope to have the 

 girls leave a swimming lesson for nature, although last summer some 

 of the writer's girls when asked to choose, hesitated for a moment, 

 but for a moment only. They always decided in favor of the swim- 

 ming. We all agree that the nature lesson must be informal. The 

 writer believes that we should also drop the school terminology and 

 adopt some other system of nomenclature. Such names will readily 

 suggest themselves to the leaders. Dr. Vinal has made some good 



