198 The Field Naturalist's Quarterly August 



are books intended to be used solely on the literary side 

 of the school, and if they are ever misapplied and used 

 as a science or natural history text-book, prompt action 

 should be taken by all nature lovers, so that the matter 

 may be rectified. 



As all our authorities who are interested in nature and 

 country life want to get the children in our primary schools 

 to take an interest in nature lore, the only feasible way 

 seems to be, to approach them through the teachers in 

 such schools. These teachers, however, have to work under 

 a " code," and if any matter, however interesting, is offered 

 to them which is not defined in this code, they are very 

 chary of having anything to do with it. The only way, 

 therefore, to make the movement general is to place it before 

 them in the light and on the ground that if they will interest 

 themselves and their children in nature lore it will in the 

 end repay them by reacting favourably on the compulsory 

 code work. Under such circumstances it is difficult to 

 eliminate the mind-training idea. It is therefore necessary 

 that we should keep before us a definable idea of what 

 constitutes " nature study." According to the authorities 

 of Cornell University, the original centre of the movement, 

 nature study is — 



"Seeing the things which one looks at, and the drawing of 

 proper conclusions from what one sees. Nature study is not the 

 study of a science, as of botany, entomology, geology, and the like. 

 . . . It does not attempt to teach elementary science, nor primarily 

 to popularise knowledge. It is wholly informal and unsystematic, 

 the same as the objects are which one sees. // is entirely divorced 

 from definitions or from explanations in books. ... It simply trains 

 the eye and the mind to see and to comprehend the common 

 things of life. ... 7/" nature study were made a stated part of a 

 curriculum, its purpose would be defeated." 



The parts in the above quotation which we have 

 italicised give to nature study, we think, some definition. 

 First of all, it must be regarded as an influence rather than 

 as a school subject ; at anyrate it is a thing that cannot 

 be time-tabled. Those who have taken it up in the proper 

 spirit use it generally, we find, as a rest exercise. If, say, 

 ten minutes here or fifteen minutes there at the end of a 



