Psychology of Country Life. 39 



ning of time, are nothing to many of us but servants who are to 

 warm, feed and clothe our bodies. Why is this? I believe in 

 the main it is because we are wrongly educated. We go to school 

 to learn something of the ancient Greeks and Romans, of Alex- 

 ander, and Napoleon, of French and Latin, but of ourselves and 

 this wonderful life about us we know but little. I would not 

 like to be understood as condemning classical studies — far from 

 it; but from the infant school onward we would have the young 

 instructed in Natural History. By this course of study they 

 would early become familiar with nature and her laws, and with 

 the life that is about them, and life would become greatly en- 

 riched ; lives that are being frittered away on sensational reading, 

 cards, vain society, and useless fancy work. 



The eminent Dr. Playfair says : " The whole yearnings of the 

 child are for the natural phenomena around him, until they are 

 smothered by the ignorance of the parent. He is a young Lin- 

 naeus roaming over the fields in search of flowers. He is a young 

 conchologist or mineralogist gathering shells or pebbles on the 

 seashore. He is an ornithologist and goes bird-nesting; an 

 icthjologist and catches fish. Glorious education in nature is all 

 this if the teachers know how to utilize it." We are not educated 

 in country or city until we can name all the birds of the air, the 

 animals and insects of the field, and know of their haunts and 

 habits. We should name all of nature's plants, and understand 

 their virtues, and upon turning the soil know what it is, and how 

 it was made, and tell at a glance whether the rocks dug out of it 

 were formed by fire or water. We should know much of the 

 clouds and wind currents, of summer's heat and winter's cold. 

 We want to be educated in the living truths of the living present. 

 Thomas Carlyle wrote: " For many years it has been one of my 

 constant regrets that no school master of mine had a knowledge 

 of natural history, so far at least as to have taught me the names 

 and habits of the little winged and wingless neighbors that are 

 continually meeting me with a salutation which I cannot answer, 

 as things are." 



How much I want women to enjoy this science of true and 

 happy living, for it makes the very atmosphere full of love, light, 



