ll 
~ 1900-1901.] Nature Study. 235 
“members with far more knowledge and experience than I have 
are incomparably better qualified to speak of nature study in 
schools, and the practical difficulties to be overcome before it 
_ ean be successfully taught there. What I am going to say will 
apply to young people both at school and in their homes; and 
_ home influences, to my mind, are the most important part of 
all true education, because they have the greatest influence on 
_ conduct. 
It has always seemed to me that the defects or failures 
of school education were largely due to the fact that the 
| British parent has no clear idea of what he wants when 
he sends his children to school. “You shall educate me,’ 
; says Emerson, “ not as you will, but as I will.” What the 
| aim of education should be is one of the most difficult 
| things to determine. The aim of nature study is to bring 
| us into sympathetic touch with our surroundings. The 
| nature student uses books as guides to nature, like so many 
| Baedeker’s or Murray’s handbooks, to direct him to what is 
most worth notice, and to tell him how to reach the best 
points of view in the shortest time. Nature study is the 
beginning of what receives later the name of original research. 
_ Nature study and research are pervaded by the same spirit. 
We cannot all be discoverers of new truths and publish our 
results, and it is well for our fellows that we cannot; but we 
can all learn to some extent the habit of getting at the facts 
_ for ourselves, of thinking for ourselves. Those of us who have 
spent happy semesters at German universities know what an 
amount of research goes on there, and still there is less origin- 
ality about it than we might at first be inclined to believe. 
Students get a great deal of direction and advice from their 
professor or privat-docent, so that it is really the training in 
how to investigate for oneself that is the most valuable part 
of the higher Sduexienss in Germany ; and this is just advanced 
: _ hature study. The nature student, or for that matter the field 
naturalist, follows the same path which the race has pursued 
| through the ages in acquiring scientific knowledge. His men- 
tal attitude resembles that of the early astronomers on the plains 
‘ of Chaldea: considering that they depended simply on their 
_ Own observation, they seem to have known a great deal; and 
like them the nature student gains higher stanaceum aad so 
