“NATURE STUDY. ive 
The President: I was very much interested in this paper that 
has just been read, for it seemed to me to furnish the key to the 
whole situation. We have all our lives been taught to think that, 
first, we must get up an interest in the subject, and when that in- 
terest is established then we may go and learn about that subject. 
There are a great many things that are possible, but that is one of 
the impossibilities, to get up the interest without knowledge. We 
must first learn something about the subject, and just as soon as we 
have learned a little the appetite is whetted for more. We want to 
know a little more. There is a door open there; it is ajar, we can 
peep through there and know a little; then we want the door 
thrown open wide so we can get a clear vision of what lies beyond. 
That lecture by Prof. MacMillan just gave us a glimpse of what is 
beyond. -Everybody that listened to that lecture wanted to know 
a little more about that great subject. Mrs. Underwood was just 
right when she said that the boys and girls that are brought up in 
the country see nature all around them, thousands of delightful 
things, if they could only make a beginning; but it is all going to 
waste, making no impression upon them because they have not 
learned the first thing about them. A school teacher who wanted 
to do some practical nature work took a fish into the school room 
and put it in his drawer. At the close of the afternoon when all the 
boys wanted to go home and the girls were sympathetic with that 
idea—and those of you who have taught school know that the last 
fifteen minutes are the worst of the whole day—he waited until the 
last fifteen minutes, and then he presented the subject in a dull, 
dreary and perfunctory way. The pupils were thinking of going 
home, whispering to each other. But some of them asked a few 
questions. One boy who was way back in the rear of the room was 
noting down some things that he had learned on a little scratch 
book that he had. He was paying attention and learning, and when 
the teacher was ready to put the fish away he had learned some 
things he did not know before and began to be interested. _ So he 
raised his hand. “What is it, John?” asked the teacher. ‘What 
is inside the bones?” The teacher looked at the clock; he didn’t 
know how to answer the question. He said, “It is four o’clock, we 
will think that over and take it up later because it is now time to 
dismiss.” About thirty years after that the same teacher went to 
Washington, and he saw there the members of the supreme court. 
There was one man there that he thought he had seen before some- 
where. He cudgeled his brain, thought it over, where had he seen 
that man? Somewhere, but he could not tell where, till at last when 
he heard the man speak hé said it is that boy who wanted to know 
what was inside the bones. That was the very boy; he had got to 
be a judge of the supreme court by trying to find out what was in- 
side the bones. He learned some things, and he wanted to learn 
more. 
When I travel anywhere in the country I get my mind drawn 
in one direction, I think of something in connection with the coun- 
try I am going through, I keep watching the results of the opera- 
tion, the work of streams, and when I see the great boulders, the 
