PREFACE 



THE reason for offering to teachers and students this work 

 on Nature Study is best found in the history of its production. 

 It is now more than a decade since the author took charge 

 of the nature study work in the State Normal School of the 

 University of Utah. As no text-book could be found at that 

 time suitable to the environment of the pupils, and in har- 

 mony with the ideas of the faculty as to how nature study 

 should be taught in the grades, the author prepared written 

 outlines for the work in the grades each month, and hecto- 

 graphed a sufficient number for the use of each critic 

 teacher in the school. 



Many teachers and school superintendents visit the State 

 Normal School; and these, being pleased with the science 

 work done, requested that copies of the outlines be mailed 

 to them each month. These requests were granted cheer- 

 fully, until the number became so great that permission was 

 obtained to have two or three hundred copies printed each 

 month. Some of these printed outlines were sent with the 

 University's exhibit to Los Angeles, when the National Edu- 

 cational Association met there in 1900, and were distributed 

 free. Subsequently many requests for them were received 

 from various parts of the United States. Our mailing list grew 

 until it reached the number of nearly fourteen hundred ! 

 Almost every teacher in the state received a copy. 



Finally, at a meeting of the Utah state text-book commis- 



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