10 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [13:1— Jan., 1917 



leaves before its blossoms, and why the willows, the elms, and the 

 maples blossom before the coming of their leaves. 



Though the practical part of the lessons and the work in thought 

 development should be given due prominence, the side of moral 

 and esthetic training should not be neglected. A child should 

 learn how unrelenting and uncompromising Nature is in her pun- 

 ishment of him who disobeys her laws, how she rewards him that 

 heeds them. For example, when a child has once seen the inside 

 working of formica sanguinea, a species of ants common in Mil- 

 waukee County that capture and enslave other ants — he will be 

 forcibly impressed and ready to assimilate what the teacher has to 

 say on the inevitable degeneracy of the mistress ants and the 

 ascendency of the slaves. This lesson may be associated with his 

 history lessons on American slavery, and he will reahze as never 

 before how the abolition of the slave was necessary to save the 

 white people of the south. When man disobeys the decree, that he 

 must earn his living by the sweat of his brow, he will one day find 

 that Nature has meted out his punishment to him in his inefficiency. 

 The association may be carried still further to the child's work in 

 physiolog}^ where he learns how the unused part of his own body 

 deteriorates ; and thus he may be made to see how necessary it is 

 for him to solvfe his problems, to do his work so that his brain and 

 his body may develop to their greatest efficacy. 



It has fallen to my lot to teach among the poor, people with 

 homes usually devoid of artistic pictures, music, or literature, and 

 my pupil's parents are often too ignorant or too busy with life's 

 drudgery to give him any instruction that will lead to the formation 

 of a beautiful thought or a noble ideal. Certainly his school 

 should fill this breach for him, and if he is destined to become a 

 factory laborer like his father, how much richer his life will be if, 

 through his school literature, music, painting and nature-study, he 

 feels a thrill of delight at the fleck of the tanager's feather or the 

 melody of its song. What if he never hears the voice of Shumann- 

 Heink? He may listen to the mellow contralto of the bluebird. 

 His eyes may never feast upon the grandeur of the western moun- 

 tains, but the majesty of the flight of the great blue heron ascending 

 from Milwaukee River is his own. I should dislike having a pupil 

 of mine grow into the adamantean condition of an old farmer I 

 once knew who gave me a ride one fall day along a country road. 

 Suddenly a woods burst upon my view — a woods aglow in its 



