148 THE NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [i, 4, July 1905 



NATURE-STUDY AND AGRICULTURE 



BY F. L. STEVENS 

 . Professor of Botany, North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts 



Agriculture, dealing with plants and animals, is of all the arts 

 most often confounded with nature-study. When agriculture is 

 abstracted to teachable principles it becomes a science, and the 

 science of agriculture may be differentiated from nature-study by 

 the criteria cited in the first number of this journal. The art of 

 agriculture furnishes numerous and valuable illustrations for na- 

 ture-study work, but as an art it cannot be nature-study. The art 

 of agriculture and nature-study may overlap so that part of 

 nature-study may rest entirely upon agriculture. Indeed agri- 

 culture is so vast that enough subject-matter may be drawn from 

 it to constitute an entire course of nature-study. Then this 

 course would be agricultural nature-study. It would be the 

 method of nature-study applied to the teaching of agriculture, but 

 that would not make nature-study and agriculture identical any 

 more than a selection of the subject-matter for nature-study solely 

 from the field of mineralogy would make mining and nature-study 

 identical. Xature-study is broad, inclusive, comprehensive. It 

 is an invaluable aid in the teaching of agriculture. It opens the 

 way to agriculture in the schools by awakening interest and quick- 

 ening observation, and creating a love for all out-doors, but it is 

 not agriculture. 



NATURE-STUDY IN THE SCHOOLS OF NOVA SCOTIA 



BY A. H. MAC KAY, LL.D. 

 Superintendent of Education for Nova Scotia 



[Editorial Note. — The article in No. i of this journal on " Nature- 

 Study and Agriculture in Canada " indicated great interest in nature-study 

 lines at the present time. But the new movement centered at Macdonald 

 Institute is not the beginning of nature-study in Canada, as the following 

 historical account shows. It is certainly interesting to learn that eighteen 

 years ago a Canadian journal was started with the object of giving special 

 attention to the work which we now call nature-study. The publication of 

 this paper, written several months ago, has been delayed ; and meanwhile 

 essentially the same paper has been published in the Ottaiva Naturalist. 



