264 THE NATURE-STUDY REVIEW Urg-DBc, 190I 



reasons, which would be valuable chiefly, if not exclusively, to 

 those who look forward to farming as a business. 



It may be a violent stretching of the term nature-study to apply 

 it to technical instruction in agriculture, and yet I am thoroughly 

 satisfied that the impulse that gave rise to this form of instruction 

 culminates in this very thing. It is well to study the grasshopper, 

 but I believe it is better to study the grass. It is well to study 

 the frog, but I believe it is better to study the horse and the cow, 

 the pig and the sheep. There is no plant known to botany more 

 significant in its histological and physiological aspects than is 

 Indian corn, which has the added advantage of a deep significance 

 to our social and economic welfare. In other words, when we are 

 studying corn, we are studying ourselves and our interests as 

 well, and in this we have a practical example of the large fact that 

 we learn more by inference, even in school, than we do by the 

 direct method. 



The importance of all this, it seems to me, and the matter of 

 chief concern at this time, is that teachers pretty generally realize 

 the full meaning of this modern movement which is expressing 

 itself in various ways from the simplest form of nature-study up 

 to the more complicated one which is agriculture. If we are to 

 stop with observation simply, the movement will mean little, and 

 will come to an end, because its full fruition has been prevented. 

 But if we look upon the observation form of nature-study as 

 suited to children, they begin there and expand the field and 

 intensify the problems as the child grows, then we shall have a 

 form of nature-study that will be effective in the schools, and 

 tremendously efficient in turning out resourceful men . Regarded 

 in this light, nature-study should free itself from the merely 

 curious and interesting at the earlier stages of child development 

 and undertake its study in a more serious aspect during those 

 years ot adolescence when the boy, especially, is bent on doing 

 big things. Tnat is a natural impulse that ought to be recognized 

 and developed through careful education lest it dwindle with the 

 years and die out, leaving the possessor to swell the ranks of the 

 learned incompetents. 



