98 THE NATURE-STUDY IDEA 



well devote his life to a single cell, but the layman 

 wants to know the trees and the woods. 



I dislike to hear people say that they love flowers. 

 They should love plants ; then they have a deeper 

 hold on nature. Intellectual interest should go 

 deeper than mere shape or color. Teachers or 

 parents ask the child to see how ; * pretty" the 

 object is ; but in most cases the child wants to know 

 how it lives and what it does. 



It is instructive to note the increasing love for 

 wild animals and plants as a country grows old and 

 mature. This is particularly well illustrated in 

 plants. In pioneer times there are too many 

 plants. The effort is to get rid of them. The 

 forest is razed and the roadsides are cleaned. The 

 pioneer is satisfied with things in the gross. If he 

 plants at all, he usually plants things exotic or 

 strange to the neighborhood. The woman grows 

 a geranium or fuchsia in a tin can, and now and 

 then makes a flower-bed in the front yard ; but the 

 man is likely to think such things beneath him. 

 If a man has flowers at all, he must have 

 something that will fill the eye. Sunflowers are 

 satisfying. 



But the second and third generations begin to 

 plant forests and to allow the roadsides to grow wild 

 at intervals. Persons come to be satisfied with their 

 common surroundings and to derive less pleasure 

 from objects merely because they are unlike their 

 surroundings. Choice plants come into the yards 

 here and there, and the men of the household begin 

 to care for them. The birds and wild animals are 



