HISTORY OF NATURE-STUDY 7 



in forwarding it. Cornell was perhaps the first uni- 

 versity to take it up as a distinct enterprise (1895), 

 but the movement was already well under way 

 in many places at that time. At this institution 

 it became an extension-teaching movement. 

 Professor C. F. Hodge of Clark University, under 

 the inspiration of Stanley Hall, began popular 

 work in nature-study in 1897. 



The nature-study movement is a natural out- 

 growth of the modern teaching and investigating 

 in what we call natural science. No doubt it 

 has been quickened, as a school subject, by the 

 making of what we know as outdoor books. 



Nature-study is not primarily a natural-history 

 subject: it is primarily a pedagogical ideal. 

 Natural-history subjects arc the means, not the 

 end. Its beginnings are certainly as old as the 

 time of Socrates and Aristotle. It is a fruit 

 of the great educational reformers — Comenius, 

 Pestalozzi, Jean J. Rousseau, Froebel and the rest. 

 In a large measure, the spirit of our present-day 

 nature-study movement — which seems so new to 

 us — is a recrudescence. Just now it represents a 

 reaction from the dry-as-dust science-teaching. 



What we may legitimately call nature-study 

 began to take form in this country from 1884 to 

 1890. Who first used the term I do not know; 

 and it is of small consequence, because the term 

 may mean much or nothing. The term appears 

 to have been at first a substitute for "object les- 

 sons," " plant work," ** elementary science," and 

 the like, because it came to be felt that these 



