260 Fifth Conference 



room for pride or that knowledge that puffeth up. 

 Did not Lord Avebury tell us that the known is 

 infinitesimal as compared with the unknown, and 

 that it is almost impossible to ask a question that 

 science can adequately answer? 



To train the child to perceive, appreciate, and 

 express even some of the beauty of Nature is to give 

 him a life-long joy a power ^aipelv d/oOo>? which in 

 time may help to transform society, from the village 

 loafer and town hooligan upwards. It is a power 

 which leads some of us to appreciate the idealiza- 

 tions of old Greece, " the fair humanities of the old 

 religion ". Through their eyes we can see the 

 beautiful Daphne in the Mezereon of spring; in the 

 Silene the neglectful attendant of Minerva's owls; 

 or the vain Narcissus in the graceful lily bending 

 admiringly to see its own fair form in the stream. 



It is a power which will help us to understand and 

 love our Wordsworth and our Keats, and the undying 

 word-pictures of Nature to be found in classic Milton 

 and in Shakespeare. 



In conclusion, may I beg of teachers not to despair 

 because of their ignorance of botany and of biology 

 and the like? Let them begin as learners with their 

 children. I believe the secret of success lies in con- 

 current study. It is Nature-study we have to know 

 Nature, not natural history. 



"The Highlander worships his purple hills; the 

 Swiss clings to his flower-strewn Alp amid the 

 snows; the humbler but not less loving cottager finds 

 a large place in his or her heart for the gilliflower of 

 the garden or the honeysuckle of the hedgerow." It is 

 not patriotism, it is something more subtle than that. 



