INTRODUCTION 5 



in drawing and modelling, should find due exercise. We 

 ought to encourage our pupils to draw to scale, to plot 

 experimental results as curves, and to make with their 

 own hands as many as possible of the boxes, stands and 

 glass tubes which their experiments require. Photography 

 and other methods of impartially recording natural fact 

 are often of great service in the schoolroom, and later on, 

 in the laboratory. 



Nature Study should co-operate with other kinds of 

 school- work, and I would here lay stress upon one parti- 

 cular discipline, which may well be closely associated 

 with the observation of nature ; I mean the study of the 

 pupil's mother-tongue. It is a national peculiarity of ours 

 that we cannot set forth our meaning clearly and con- 

 cisely, without embarrassment. Perhaps this is in some 

 measure due to the habit of repeating school-lessons from 

 books ; at any rate, the constant repetition of the words 

 of a book in all spoken class-work has its effect in pro- 

 ducing men who are timid and awkward in expressing 

 their own thoughts. I am not without experience of the 

 deficiency in English schoolboys which I here point out, 

 but am comforted by finding that the deficiency is more 

 one of education than of nature. The English schoolboy 

 is not incurably dumb ; after a short course of training, 

 which encourages him to think, and to express what he 

 thinks, he becomes in a measure vocal. His school has 

 generally been unkind to him in this matter. I could 

 wish that the schoolmaster would more often cultivate 

 the power of expression in his boys, and Nature Study, 

 among a score of other things, gives the opportunity. If 

 only the schoolmaster, when he has a plant, or an animal, 

 or a little scientific experiment in hand, would give his 

 class a little drill in the useful art of description ! Can he 

 not make it clear that the description must not begin 

 anywhere, and that there are certain essential points 

 which every good description must include ? With pupils 

 who are altogether untrained, I have been accustomed to 



