110 



Among- the several reasons why nature study does not hold 

 the place it should, there are two with regard to which beginning 

 teachers should be warned, for, strange as it may seem, nature 

 study has suffered greatly from its ardent advocates. 



"Assume a virtue if you have it not," has often been con- 

 sidered good advice, but it does not work in this field. A young 

 lady, acting on this principle, once said gushingly to a gruff col- 

 lege professor of botany, "What would this old oak say, if it 

 could speak?" He, being more honest than polite, said, 

 " Madam, it would say, ' I am an Elm.' " 



Less amusing have been the attempts of many actually en- 

 gaged in the teaching of nature study. Nature study came in 

 with a rush some years ago, and every school had to include it 

 in the course of study, or appear hopelessly behind the times. 

 Teachers, wholly unprepared for the work, were forced into it. 

 Many others, misled by the attractive materials it involves, rushed 

 into it, in spite of their complete ignorance of all foundation 

 material. For, while nature study — both from the point of view 

 of the child and method^is a very different thing from botany, 

 ■zoology, chemistry, or physics, no teacher of nature study can 

 escape shipwreck — many a time and oft — if she lacks command 

 of the basic principles of these four sciences at least. 



Undreamed of dangers lurk in the harmless little ijold fish in 

 the school room aquarium, for any minute a child may ask, 

 "How does a fish rise and sink in the water?'' It is so easy 

 to give mistaken deductions from what seems to be the most 

 evident relationship or striking analogy. For example, teachers 

 often say, ''The sycamore leaf-stalk covers the little bud to keep 

 it warm'" A little investigation w^oukl bring out two objec- 

 tions to this conclusion: (i) the leaf-stalk drops off before the 

 cold weather comes, and therefore docs not function in the way 

 described; and (2) sycamores arc warm-latitude, not cold-lati- 



tude plants. More common still are faulty generalizations about 

 coloring (attractive coloring, protective coloring, etc.) although 

 many of the errors are obvious even to a child. Very commonly 

 heard is the statement that aninials are dark-colored above and 

 lighter below to aid them in escaping from their enemies; whether 



