Land Problems and National Welfare 



I have referred to school gardening and 

 nature study, but I do not mean to suggest that 

 nature study cannot profitably appear in the school 

 curriculum unless there is a garden ; it is only 

 necessary to see the splendid way in which 

 instruction in nature study is given in some of 

 the London schools, to realize how successful it 

 can prove even without a garden — but the con- 

 verse is not true ; the garden without nature 

 study does not justify its existence. 



The exhibition of nature study, now held 

 annually in connection with the show of the 

 Royal Agricultural Society, is intensely inter- 

 esting, alike to those actively engaged in the 

 subject, and to the casual observer. The story 

 of the habits and construction of plants and 

 flowers is often astonishingly well told, and the 

 child's unaided delineation from nature is some- 

 times truly delightful ; but what horrors result in 

 those cases where, under the influence of an 

 " artistic " master, the child has been con- 

 strained to contort the simple outline of some 

 flower into the design for a tile ! It is not the 

 business of a school teacher or his pupils to 

 design tiles. 



Nor does it come within the scope of nature 

 study to concern itself with a little case of 

 neatly packed samples of artificial fertilizers, 

 and to specify in a crude and inaccurate way 

 the uses to which they should be put. But 



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