146 THE PI.ANT WORLD 



Book Reviews. 



The Nature-Study Idea. By L. H. Bailey. 8vo, 159 pp. Double- 

 day, Page & Co., New York, 1903. $1.00. 



Professor Bailey has presented here, in his interesting and enthusiastic 

 manner, some of his views regarding nature-study. Not only the teacher 

 but the parent should find the book pleasant and profitable reading. The 

 teacher need not look here, however, for any set examples of the dry-as- 

 dust method of presenting nature to children, accompanied by a set of 

 questions and answers regarding the number of pedal extremities of a 

 dog or other equally edifying matters. The author repeatedly insists 

 that this sort of thing is not nature-study. The first part of the book is 

 devoted to an explanation and definition of nature-study. It is suggested 

 that nature-sympathy would be a more expressive and appropriate term. 

 Prof. Bailey maintains very correctly, we believe, that nature-study and 

 science-study are quite different matters. To attempt to teach the ab- 

 struse facts of science by a prolonged microscopic study of the plant-cell 

 or a thorough dissection of the cat is to make impossible the attainment 

 of the true end and aim of nature-study. The prime reqhisite is that the 

 child become interested in the thing itself and be brought into sympa- 

 thetic relations with it. It is not important what the object is so long as 

 it is common and easily obtained. 



A few quotations will make the matter clearer than any remarks of 

 ours: "We must define nature-study in terms of its purpose, not in 

 terms of its methods. It is not doing this or that. It is putting the 

 child into intimate and sympathetic contact with the things of the exter- 

 nal world." "Again, nature-study is studying things and the reason of 

 things, not about things." 



What result should follow proper method of nature-study ? "By 

 their fruits ye shall know them." Let us quote again : " Its legitimate 

 result is education — the development of mental power, the opening of the 

 eyes and the mind, the civilizing of the individual. As with all educa- 

 tion, its central purpose is to make the individual happy, for happiness 

 is nothing more nor less than pleasant and efficient thinking." 



Nature-study should interest all, for, as the author remarks, "we 

 are all children of nature " ; and besides we are all obliged, either directly 

 or indirectly, to wrest from her the means of supplying our physical wants. 

 Might she not supply them much less grudgingly if we approached her 

 in a more sympathetic attitude, and might we not at the same time derive 

 some of the joy and happiness which she is ever ready to bestow upon 

 all who will accept? c. L. S. 



