206 Third Conference 



It matters little. 



Let him take his own best-loved subject, and, with 

 no dominating desire to obtain tangible results, let 

 him re-travel with his scholars the road along which 

 he himself has derived such pleasure. 



It is not desirable that during the all too-short 

 period of school-life the child should only have par- 

 taken in a hurried scramble here, there, and every- 

 where. 



Better far for both teacher and scholar that one 

 branch of Nature-study should have been taken sym- 

 pathetically and soundly. 



And let that one branch have been what it may, 

 there will have been woven into it, and attached to it, 

 gleanings, purposeful gleanings, gathered here and 

 there where Nature's many pathways intersect; glean- 

 ings which will have created in many eager young 

 minds longings for wider digressions along those 

 other far-reaching tracks. 



So that it will be prudent to set out with a smaller 

 intent which may perchance widen as it proceeds, 

 rather than to start encumbered with an all-embrac- 

 ing scheme which will probably prove only a weari- 

 someness to all concerned in it, and which will almost 

 certainly have to be largely jettisoned before the end 

 of the journey. 



There are some enthusiasts who would make the 

 subject dominate the whole of the curriculum who 

 would teach boys to recite Wordsworth's " Little 

 Yellow Celandine" rather than Tennyson's "Revenge", 

 who would make all mensuration dependent upon 

 hay-ricks and corn-fields, and would have the boy 

 sketch a rhubarb leaf and not a rifle. 



