3° THE NA TURE-STUD V RE I 'IE IV u . ,_ JAN;j , 9oS 



II 



By WILLARD N. CLUTE 

 Editor of American Botanist, Joliet, 111. 



It looks to me as if your remarks on the query as to children 

 being naturally naturalists are about right. I never heard of 

 anybody that collected more than I did when a boy, but I see 

 now that my collections were made to beat the other fellows. 

 All our long tramps for specimens were not taken for the know- 

 ledge to be gained, but for the specimens to be exhibited. I do 

 not recall spending much time with these collections by myself. 



I question whether many of the adults who claim to be in- 

 terested in nature are really so. How many do you know that 

 are enough interested in nature to prefer che study of it to other 

 things? How many who study nature b\ themselves and bring 

 home no specimens? Mighty few, I'll warrant! I have been 

 trying for seven years to get our people to take a real interest in 

 plants by publishing all the curious and remarkable things about 

 them that I can find in books, the periodicals and the field; but 

 to very small avail. Meanwhile Dana's "How to Know the 

 Wild Flowers," which guides one to the names of his specimens, 

 has sold 65,000 copies. How many of our students of botany 

 do you suppose keep up the study after they leave high school? 

 Not many. 



Possibly some such ruminations as these caused nature- 

 study to be dubbed a "fad" by that Chicago professor. It 

 seems to me that if nature-study is ever to get anywhere, it 

 will have to be used as a drill in observation not as a stimulus 

 to the child's interest in nature for which most children have 

 no abiding interest. The child is very much like an electric 

 motor. It keeps going and interested as long as you turn on 

 the current. All this in the face of the fact that in our high 

 school we have a club of 50 ex-botany students managed 

 exclusively by themselves. 



As you can see by the rambling nature of the foregoing, it 

 was not written for publication. 



CONFERENCE ON AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 



At the meeting of the Department of Superintendence of the 

 National Education Association in Washington, D. C, February 



