^2 The Ottawa Naturalist. fl""e 



optional, whereas it should be compulsory for every pupil. The 

 pupil at no stage of his school career should be left to chance tor 

 his sensory training, and this is especially true for those vvho live m 

 cities It is easy to persuade th. pupil to do much for himself, to 

 throw himself into contact with nature, to ramble through the 

 woods, over hills, and along river banks, to leave the prmted page 

 and the burden of memory studies, and view the hvmg tace of 

 nature in her wealth of objects, of phenomena and ot landscape. 

 The proper way to study nature is at first hand, and tne proper 

 way to train the senses is to use them on the abundance of material 



supplied bv nature. 



Besides the sensory training afforded by nature study there 

 is a constant challenge given to the best powers of the mmd, and 

 there are supplied problems sufficiently difficult and abstruse to 



satisfy the most exacting. 



It is a mistake to suppose that, for instance, the whole study 

 of Botany is made up of technical terms and the collection of 

 plants, giving them an unpronounceable name. Would Peter Bell. 

 of whom Wordsworth tells us : 



" A primrose by the river's brim 

 A vellow primrose was to him, 

 And it was nothing more,'" 

 be roused from his apathy, by the information that " the primrose 

 is a dicotyledonous exogen, with a monopetalous corolla and a 

 central pl'acentation," and by the statements of many other facts 

 in similar technical language ? Would his indifference not rather 



be tenfold increased ? 



\lthough technical terms are as necessary in Botany as they 

 are in any science or trade to the workers therein, yet botany 

 must ceriainly not be looked upon as a "modernized repository 

 of classical roots and derivations." 



The real object of the study should not be lost sight of. A 

 profitable study of Botany would lead one to investigate the struc- 

 ture of the plant, the infinite variety in leaf and flower, the intelli- 

 gent and useful arrangement of the parts of the root, stem, leaf 

 and flower, the assistance of a neighbor and the dependence o a 

 flower upon the insect, its allurements such as nectar and pollen 

 heralded by color and perfume for the purpose of attraction, the 



