^40 Home Nature-Study Course. 



It may be asked just hozv these newer subjects are to be taught. 

 There certainly zvill he no hard and fast method; for method is only 

 incidental, and all theories of pedagogy go down before a good teacher. 

 I am not troubling myself about the details, for these will clear them- 

 selves as we proceed. There are a few fundamentals, however, that may 

 be briefly considered. I should hrst contend that the teaching, as to 

 both subject and method, should begin in terms of the child's normal 

 experience, that it should so develop as to have the greatest pertinence 

 to his physical, economic, and social relations. This is only another way 

 of saying that it should be natural. I fear tliat zve very often even yet 

 begin at the other end, taking the child out of himself and away from 

 himself in order that we may teach him. In the old-time geography, zve 

 often translated him to another sphere before zve began the process. We 

 are always in danger of giving him the complete systems of grown-ups 

 rather than the incomplete experience of himself. — L. H. Bailey, in 

 " The Outlook to Nature." 



Photo by O. L. Foster. 

 Which kind of hickory nut is this f 



