BIRD NOTES AND NEWS. 



43 



trade lie. Where one milliner said the feathers 

 were too cheap to be real, another avowed they 

 were necessarily expensive because they were 

 manufactured ! Hundreds of plumes sold as 

 artificial had been examined by the Society and by 

 the experts at the British Museum, and all had been 

 proved to be the nesting plumage of herons and 

 egrets. The trade had been challenged to give 

 the name and address of a maker of artificial 

 feathers, and Mr. O'Grady had made a sporting 

 offer of ^ioo to the person who would take him to 

 such a factory, but no name and address had ever 

 been forthcoming. 



After an interval for tea and coffee and social talk, 

 the meeting took up the consideration of 



Nature Study. 

 The Headmaster of Eton (Canon Lyttelton), 

 who had hoped to be present, sent a letter, which 

 was read by Mr. Lemon, in which he said : — 



" On the subject of teaching Nature Study in 

 Schools, I should say that in the big Public 

 Schools there has been an extraordinary develop- 

 ment of interest in the last twenty years. I can 

 well remember the time when a boy at Eton would 

 conceal the fact that he was a budding naturalist. 

 Now no boy would do so. I also remember the 

 notion of a school-boy carrying wild flowers in his 

 hands being scouted, but I believe that even at 

 Eton (where fashion is very strong) it would riot 

 now be thought a strange sight. 



" But it must be admitted that this welcome 

 change has not been the result of direct teaching 

 so much as of the general increase of interest in 

 the country. Still there are now organised 

 lessons every week in Nature Study, given in the 

 lower part of the school, and the subject is found 

 to be well suited for young boys. Lectures on 

 Bird Life are given pretty frequently. Things are, 

 in short, moving in the right direction, and I am 

 not certain that any very special effort at this 

 moment is required. 



"There is a precaution, however, which ought 

 to be continued for the present. All school-boys 

 in the country are likely to be tempted to buy 

 birds' nests from village boys and others who 

 ransack woods for them, and if only two or three 

 of such nests are bought the news spreads, and 

 the spoliation of the copses is much stimulated. 

 I have sometimes sent round by special request, 

 by means of the Headmasters' Conference Secre- 

 tary, to headmasters of country schools, urging 

 them to give stringent warnings against this 

 practice. 



" We do not do much here in the way of prizes for 

 collections. I have a deep dislike of collections 

 of butterflies, and still more so of birds' eggs. 

 The moment a beautiful thing becomes rare, its 

 total destruction is almost a certainty, and these 

 are the very specimens that want most pre- 

 serving. 



" There is a good deal more that might be said 

 about teaching in town day-schools, but I have no 

 first-hand experience on the subject." 



Sir John Cockburn was glad that in the 

 realm of education, with Eton at its head, Nature 

 Study was finding its right place. Knowledge of 

 the external world covered the whole field of 

 education ; Nature Study was not a " subject " it was 

 an aspect ; it was a unifying as well as a vivifying 

 influence in education, giving to it a more intense 

 interest and correlating a mass of unrelated facts. 

 Without this thread, the pearls of knowledge were 

 a heap as dissevered and unedifying as printers' 

 pie. Every subject, drawing, modelling, geography, 

 geometry, was illuminated by the light derived 

 from the study of Nature. Physical, mental, and 

 moral lessons were derived from it, and he was 

 sure that religious education was not far absent, 

 for nothing inspired a greater feeling of reverence 

 than the study of Nature. As had been finely 

 said, " Earth's crammed with Heaven, and every 

 common bush afire with God." Nature Study had 

 taken hold on all schools and was a genuine 

 renaissance. It inculcated observation and appre- 

 ciation of the world at large, and it also cultivated 

 the scientific spirit, the enquiry into the how and 

 why of things. The child learned through it to use 

 the prehensile powers of its brain, to grasp know- 

 ledge, as it were, with both hands, in place of 

 remaining passive while all the facts it could hold 

 were jammed into its head. No phase of Nature 

 Study was more instructive and elevating than 

 that which was associated with bird-life. He 

 thought the Society was doing excellent work by 

 their Bird and Arbor day in encouraging this study 

 of creation which appealed to the best and highest 

 aspirations. 



Mr. Hastings Lees said that when he went 

 down to lecture at a Bird ar.d Tree Day festival he 

 found the whole village en jete, and such pleasant 

 rejoicings as made it well worth the trouble the 

 Society took in the matter. The Society's lantern 

 slides were most beautiful, and it was easy to 

 interest by these lectures both the wearers of 

 plumes and the village school-boy. 



Mr. Masefield added that efforts should be 

 made to get at the gamekeepers, they were excellent 

 men who tried to fulfil their duties, but no class 

 did more damage through ignorance. Elementary 

 school teachers should be approached, both by 

 lectures and through teachers' unions, etc. Their 

 influence was most important, and where not 

 already bird-students he had found them willing 



