Otago Institute. 741 



natural plienomeiia. How best to accomplish this object is a matter 

 worthy of consideration, and your Council has this evening adopted a 

 small scheme which aims in this direction. It is proposed to offer prizes 

 in our primary schools for the best sec of natural history observations 

 kept for a consecutive period by the pupils. These observations, recorded 

 m the form of a note-book or diary, would deal with such phenomena 

 us came under the direct observation of the young people. Daily notes 

 of the weather ; the direction and amount of the wind ; dates of ieahng, 

 flowering, and fruiting of plants; appearance of birds, with notes 

 on their song, their nests and eggs and habits ; observations on the 

 insects and other animals met with — these would form the staple subject 

 for such a record. In the case of those whose parents were in a position 

 to keep such instruments, daily readings of the barometer and thermo- 

 meter might be added. The object of such records is not to be able to 

 show merely a well-written exercise-book on any stereotyped model, but 

 to induce young people to observe and to take the trouble to record the 

 phenomena which are noticeable round about them. I am not sanguine 

 enough to imagine that the attempt to encourage observation among our 

 school children will work any great revolution among them, or in our 

 method of teaching them, but it is an effort in the riglit direction, and if 

 it only led half a dozen young people to keep a record of what they saw 

 it would have justified itself. The lack of observation among even those 

 whose occupation brings them every day into close contact with the things 

 of nature is to me one of the marvels which I meet with. I have employed 

 and met with many working gardeners, but I do not know one among them 

 who can give a correct name — I mean a trivial, not a botanical name — 

 to the weeds which are met with in every garden. They know chickweed, 

 groundsel, docks, sorrel, and couch-grass — perhaps altogether as many 

 as they could count on the fingers of both hands, but there their know- 

 ledge stops. They turn up larva; and come across caterpillars, but can- 

 not connect them with the beetles and moths which fly around them. 

 And what is true of gardeners is equally true of farmers and others en- 

 gaged in outdoor purcuits. Wlien a Thomas Edwards or a Robert Dick 

 appears among the so-called working-classes he is looked upon as a 

 remarkable phenomenon, whereas he ought to be looked on rather as a 

 more than ordinarily enthusiastic observer. Of course, in one sense a 

 man may not be much the better of knowing anything about the things 

 that lie under his nose, as long as he is a faithful worker and 

 can earn his bread without such knowledge. Yet the marvel is 

 that, being blessed with eyes and a brain, he should not develope 

 some curiosity in them, especially as he has the means largely in 

 himself of satisfying that curiosity. The faculty of observing is usually 

 well developed relatively to other mental faculties in children, and it 

 should be part of every child's subsequent traming to continue this de- 

 velopment. We talk a great deal about doing this in our educational 

 work, and a distinct move towards it has been made in the growing use 

 of kindergarten methods in our infant schools, but the real thing is a 

 great way off. The examination curse dominates everything. Depart- 

 ments and Boards want everything in the shape of a written report and 

 a tabulated form. Cut-and-dried schemes of examination are so much 

 more easy to work with and to report about than any individuality 

 of teaching-power in a man. That originality tends to be stamped out 

 unless it is very conspicuous and assertive. In our own primary 

 schools apparent provision is made for the teaching of natural 

 science, but to attempt to examine the subjects on the lines of 

 text books, as is so liable to be done, is almost fatal to the work. It 

 reduces the thing to memory work, of which the tendency is to 

 make too much already. What is wanted is to a grtat extent to 

 banish text-books, and to work from the objects themselves, and 



