comstock] nature-study AND AGRICULTURE 145 



Both nature-study and agriculture are based upon the study 

 of Hfe and the physical conditions, like soil, water, air, etc., which 

 encourage or limit life. If we see clearly the relation of nature- 

 study to science we may perhaps better understand the relation 

 of nature-study to agriculture, which is based upon the sciences. 

 Nature-study leads to a knowledge of the sciences of botany, 

 zoology and geology as illustrated in the door-yard, the corn 

 field,* or the woods back of the house. Some people have had an 

 idea that to know these sciences one must go to college, and do 

 not understand that nature has furnished them with material and 

 laboratories on every side and close at hand. vSo by beginning 

 with the child in nature-study we make for him a laboratory in 

 the wood, the garden or along the roadside or in the field, and 

 his laboratory materials are the wild flowers, or the weeds of the 

 garden, or the insects that visit the golden-rod, or the bird that 

 sings in the maple tree, or the woodchuck that sits up and whistles 

 in the pasture. The child begins to study living things anywhere 

 and his progress is always along the various tracks laid down by 

 the laws of life, along which his work as an agriculturist must 

 always make progress if he is to make it an intelligent and suc- 

 cessful work. The child through nature-study learns the way 

 the plant grows whether it be an oak, or a turnip, or a pigweed ; 

 he learns how the root of each is adapted to the needs of the 

 plant ; and how the leaves place themselves to get the sunshine, 

 and why they need it ; and how the flowers get their pollen carried 

 by the bee or wind; and how the seeds are finally scattered and 

 planted. Or he learns about the life of a bird whether it be a 

 chicken, an owl, or a bobolink ; he knows how each bird gets its 

 food and what its food consists of ; where it lives and where it 

 nests, and its relations to other living things. Or he studies the 

 bumble bee, and discovers its great mission of pollen carrying 

 for many flowers, and in the end would no sooner strike it dead 

 than he would voluntarily destroy his clover patch. While learn- 

 ing all these things we call it nature-study, and not science or 

 agriculture. But the country child can never learn anything in 

 nature-study that has not something to do with science, and that 

 has not its own practical lesson for him when he shall become 

 a farmer. 



Some have said to us, " We, as farmers, care only to know 

 what concerns our pocketbooks ; we \vish only to study those 



