BIRD NOTES and NEWS 



Issueo (^uartcrln brj tlje Ito^al ^ocictg for the fjrotertton of fBiroa. 



Vol. II.— No. 8.] 



London : 3, Hanover Square, W. 



[DEC. 21, 1907. 



BIRD AND TREE (ARBOR) DAY. 



teachers and taught as to how 

 much knowledge could be in- 

 jected of the kind to produce 

 " payment by results." We know 

 now that this is not education 

 and that it does not produce 

 intelligence, and that without 

 intelligence tuition will not go 

 very far. A little later came the 

 craze for what may be called the 

 " suburban " system, by which 

 every child was to be fitted for 

 a city clerkship, and learned to 

 look upon town ambitions and 

 town glitter as the higher life. 

 Tales of mean streets, of sordid 

 poverty, and of declining physique, 

 with an answering cry from the 

 country of " no labour," brought 

 up theories of "back to the 

 land." The discovery that a 

 " suburban " education will 

 neither fit young people for the 

 land, nor keep them on it, led to 

 the companion discovery that 

 the things of the country afford 

 scope for as much study as 

 algebra or Pitman's shorthand, and must be 

 studied if they are to be understood, let alone 

 loved. With this perception there has arisen 

 the consciousness that these things are of 

 enormous importance to the nation. Hence a 

 demand for " nature-study," but with the demand 

 a hesitation and fear lest " natural history " may 

 prove only a synonym for the destruction of 

 wild life, and an excuse for the cage, the net, 

 and the " specimen." 



Of old there was a notion that people who 



THE INTER-COUNTY CHALLENGE SHIELD, 



Given by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds 



for competition among Elementary Schools, and won 



this year by Privett School, Hampshire. 



R.S.P.B. COUNTY CHALLENGE 

 COMPETITIONS. 



SHIELD 



INCE the first introduction of Arbor, 

 or Bird and Tree, Day into this 

 country, by the Royal Society for 

 the Protection of Birds, the trend 

 of thought and of events has been markedly 

 favourable to the adoption of such an institution 

 as a feature of National Education. 



Not so many years ago schooling was a 

 matter of books and desks, a struggle between 



