Meaning of the Movement 31 



be, their influence is pernicious if they are made 

 to be primary agents. Nature-study begins with 

 the concrete, as the child does if left to itself. 

 The child should first see the thing. It should 

 then reason about it. Having a concrete im- 

 pression, It may then go to the book to widen 

 its knowledge and sympathies. Having seen 

 mimicry in the eggs of the aphis on the willow 

 or apple twig, or in the walking-stick, the pupil 

 may then take an excursion with Wallace or 

 Bates to the tropics and there see the striking 

 mimicries of the leaf-like insects. Having seen 

 the wearing away of the boulder or the ledge, 

 he may go to Switzerland with Lubbock and see 

 the mighty erosion of the Alps. Now and then 

 the order may be reversed with profit, but this 

 should be the exception : from the wagon to the 

 star should be the rule. 



Nature-study is not the teaching of facts 

 merely for the sake of the facts, or materials for 

 the sake of the materials : its purpose is to de- 

 velop certain intellectual powers by the use of 

 the materials. It is not the giving of informa- 

 tion only — notwithstanding the fact that some 



