BIGELOW] SCIENCE, NATURE-STUDY AND BIOLOGY 243 



brid of much nature-study, some elementary physics and chemis- 

 try, some real biology, some hygiene, and the required temperance 

 instruction. The nature-study part of the high school biology 

 (such as learning the names, habits, economics, and other interest- 

 ing facts concerning common animals and plants) can be taught 

 by good teachers in the fifth to seventh grades, the elements of 

 physical science needed for biology could be taught well in the 

 seventh or eighth grades, and all the hygiene which is not directly 

 based on bacteriological and physiological facts could be taught 

 in any grammar grades as part of introduction to science. The 

 "temperance instruction" required in some leading States can not 

 now be eliminated from the first high-school year by any organiza- 

 tion of preceding science work, for the laws definitely prescribe 

 for this year twenty pages in a text -book. However, this can be 

 arranged so as not seriously to break the continuity of the first- 

 year biology; and therefore I believe that we could approach the 

 ideal arrangement of science studies if the biology in first year of 

 high school could be preceded by one or preferably two years of 

 well organized introduction to science in years corresponding to 

 the last grammar grades. 



Of course, this ideal arrangement of introduction to science with 

 reference to nature-study on the one hand and biology on the other 

 can not now be put into general practice, and, therefore, we must 

 consider how biology after the first year of high school can be 

 adjusted to general science in the first year. As I see it, the chief 

 changes in the biology would be in the following lines: (i) intro- 

 duction to science taught before or in the first year of high school 

 would give the foundation in physical science for which in many 

 schools one or more weeks of the first year course called "biology" 

 is now commonly devoted ; (2) such introduction to science should 

 (but usually does not now) give the essential general hygiene that 

 does not require a background of physiological or bacteriological 

 knowledge; (3) introduction to science should attempt, for the 

 present, to present some selected nature-study for the pupils who 

 have been so unfortunate as to pass through eight grades without 

 good teaching in that subject. Such introduction to science in 

 or before the first year of our four year high schools would not only 

 be a valuable study in itself, but also would make an almost ideal 

 introduction to a course of biological science for the first or second 

 year of high schools. Under present conditions, it seems wisest 



