clute] relatioxs of botany and nature-study 133 



to traverse much ground already covered should they take up 

 this study in high school. That nature-study has not entirely 

 found itself as to subject-matter, I judge from a recent text-book 

 wherein are suggested for pupils under high-school age such 

 topics as starch translocation, photosynthesis, respiration, 

 transpiration, digestion, stomata, chloroplasts, fibro-vascular 

 bundles, root-hairs, bacteria, etc. Many of these must of neces- 

 sity be studied by means of the compound microscope and to my 

 way of thinking are subjects with which pure botany and not 

 nature-study is concerned. They are not nature-study topics, for 

 they are parts of nature in which the student has no real or abid- 

 ing interest. The selection of such topics is but another instance 

 of the error all of us make in concluding that the proper course for 

 any grade may be made by diluting the course of the grade next 

 higher. The high school too frequently has an imitation college 

 course in botany, and it will require rare self-restraint upon the 

 part of the elementary schools if a dilute course in high-school 

 botany is to be avoided. 



We are to apt to conlcude that a knowledge of a certain set of 

 facts is essential to the proper educational development of the 

 child. As I see it, the only essential thing about nature-study is 

 to follow up and develop the child's interest in nature, if he shows 

 any, and to awaken such interest if possible, if he does not. Most 

 children early give indications of their line of interest. Their first 

 questions are naturally about the earth, the animals and the 

 plants and such interest usually lasts through life. There is 

 scarcely a person that is not interested in the names of things; 

 too often this is the only interest they ever manifest. Here, then, 

 is a fine place to begin any course in nature-study, but we must 

 not assume that because the child is interested in the larger 

 aspects of nature, that he is equally interested in the minute 

 things. If we can induce him to question further about the use 

 of things and how form has contributed to function we would 

 seem to have nearly solved the problem. Happily, information 

 upon the points in which the child is interested, is the information 

 that the teacher of botitny would most prefer to have in the heads- 

 of his pupils. Beginning botany students are surprisingly ignor- 

 ant of the appearance of our common food plants when growing, 

 and even country children can call \'ery few of our wild plants by 

 name. For the botany teacher's purposes, the more students 



