24 NATURE STUDY AND LIFE 



admitted to the nature-study course. Will it form or 

 help to form an important, lifelong interest, — an interest 

 not technical or superficial, touching life only on the sur- 

 face, here and there and at long intervals, but one that 

 lies close to the heart, to the home, and to all that makes 

 life worth living ? The value of such an interest is inesti- 

 mable. It may add a sparkle to the eye, elasticity to the 

 step, and a glow to every heart beat, and be the most 

 efficient safeguard against idleness and waste of time, 

 evil, and temptation of every sort. The love of some- 

 thing worthy and ennobling is a passport the world over, 

 / for "All the world loves a lover." To find such an inter- 

 i est in some worthy nature-love is to discover the fountain 

 of youth. 



Nature is the great mother of such interests, and in pro- 

 portion as education becomes thus alive and active, nature 

 study must form a prominent factor in the curriculum. 

 What is there for the whole child — hands, feet, eyes, 

 ears and brain, mind and soul — to work with actively, 

 except phenomena of nature, responses to which have 

 constituted the chief education of living forms through 

 all time ? Language has grown up out of and around 

 the things of nature to such an extent that even our 

 common-school reading and writing is little more than a 

 hollow mockery without the fundamental nature study to 

 give it life and content ; and much of our best literature 

 must fail to be appreciated if its allusions to nature are 

 not properly sensed. 



When we consider that the Engis skull is a ''well-shaped 

 average human skull," indicating an average European 

 brain of the present, and when we think that Nature 



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