goethe] NATURE-STUDY IN THE WAR ZONE 323 



England's "school treat" has been woven into Japan's school 

 system. And, it was the slant eyed of Nipponese, peering thro' a 

 microscope that found the germ of the Black Death that for cen- 

 turies had periodically ravished Europe. 



One summer sunset, from Rigikulm, the long line of Alps was 

 rose red with the Alp en glow. In the near foreground, a herd of 

 goats were clambering unconcernedly around the rocky edge of a 

 precipice. Up the other side came climbing another flock as 

 nimble as chamois or goat. They were a nature study class from 

 one of the wonderfully effective Swiss schools. The boys wore the 

 green embroidered trousers of their valley. Each green mountain 

 hat had its sprig of gray edelweiss or rosy Alpenrosen. The girls, 

 who seemed to have made favorites of the brilliant blue Alpine 

 gentians, were also in peasant costume. 



"Yesterday we spent at Mortgarten" said the teacher. 'The 

 struggles of our ancestors with the Hapsburgs are not mere printed 

 words on a page. We study history on the ground once red with 

 blood spent for Swiss liberty. Today has been field work in 

 botany. They are not only learning to use their eyes and to know 

 the beautiful but they are drinking in a love of the hills and the 

 wild that will never leave them." 



These field excursions arc characteristic of the Northern civiliza- 

 tions. Not alone in Holland, in Scotland, in the land of the 

 Switzer, but in Germany and in Scandinavia. In Denmark, even 

 the blind school children go into the magnificent beech forest 

 known as the Royal Deer Park. Blindness may be even a help 

 in learning the music of birds. The pathos of a life of darkness 

 may make one of these a more effective missionary for the conserva- 

 tion of wild life. 



Thus the children of Baltic Hanse towns have their swimming 

 tramps. Hanover lads and lassies, with apple red cheeks, mingle 

 studies of their moorland nature with those of the quaint mediaeval 

 timber houses of Braunschweig and Hildesheim. Copenhagen 

 bairns take tramps to their wonderful museums, from Thor- 

 waldsen's, to those of the kitchen middens with the clothing and 

 even the women's hair nets, of the bronze period. Lubueck's lads 



