1903] Nature Study — No. 3. 83 



6. While supplementary readers, pictures, lantern illustrations 

 and prepared specimens are of great service when properly used, 

 their advantages can easily be over-estimated. Nothing can take 

 the place of living interest and actual contact. The pet squirrel 

 that the child knows as a companion and cares for day by day, the 

 flower which he has planted and watered and provided with proper 

 light, heat and moisture conditions, is a thousand times better 

 than any dead specimen. 



7. Technical terms and static classification should not to any 

 great extent enter into the initial work. In this connection, Bur- 

 rough's criticism is well taken when he says : "The clerk of the 

 woods is so intent upon the bare fact that he does not see the 

 spirit or the meaning of the whole. He does not see the bird ; he 

 sees an ornithological specimen. He does not see the wild flower ; 

 he sees a new acquisition to his herbarium. In the birds nests he 

 sees only another prize for his collection. Of that sympathetic and 

 emotional intercourse with nature which soothes and enriches the 

 soul, he experiences little or none." 



8. The best results will never be obtained until Public 

 School classes are reduced to a sufficiently small number (say a 

 maximum of forty) to admit of individual supervision, and until 

 teachers know enough of natural science to make them enthusi- 

 astic and wise leaders. Under present conditions in graded 

 schools, the latter difficulty may in a measure be overcome by an 

 interchange of teachers of different classes, which will make it 

 possible for the specialist in science to teach in diff"erent grades. A 

 primary class in a well organized school does not suffer by a 

 change of teachers several times during the day. 



9. Nature Study should be correlated with other cognate 

 studies, especially with form study, drawing, and colour work. 

 The representations should be mainly from life and imagination 

 and not from copies. Modelling should form an important feature. 



The subjects studied in Nature lessons may be made the basis 

 for drawing lessons. The study and representation of abstract 

 conventional type forms should not precede the investigation and 

 expression of the forms of the individual objects met with in the 

 child's experience. It is not surprising that the schools do not 

 develop more and better artists, when we consider the character of 



