238 THE NA TURE- S TUD Y RE VIE W 



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habit means anything in connection with interest in nature-study. 

 If so, why do boys collect postage stamps? The answer seems to 

 be that stamps offer for many boys the best opportunity for the 

 competition so dear to a boy's heart. 



Many writers on nature-study have told us of toads and snakes 

 and lizards found in small bOy's pockets, and have thought they 

 saw natural interest in nature. But how about those lifeless and 

 unnatural objects found in the same pockets? I fail to see here 

 anything more than the play characteristic of young animals. 

 Young dogs are fond of collecting and a puppy's playground with 

 its miscellaneous assortment of bones, old shoes, sticks, leaves, 

 tin-cans, and especially pieces of cord is equivalent to the small 

 boy's pockets. 



Aside from the collecting habit, we are often told that most 

 very young children naturally have a sympathetic relation with 

 animals. I cannot believe this true. I have known certain small 

 boys who would not throw a stone to crush a toad; but it was 

 simply because the old farmer next door had said that "killing a 

 toad would make the cows give bloody milk." I well remember 

 that it was legitimate for these boys to kill frogs, because these 

 animals did not so affect cow^s. As school-boys we had ''sympa- 

 thetic interest" which kept us from stepping on earthworms, 

 because teacher said that "nice" boys did not do so. We did not 

 openly "whip out" bumblebee nests, because the owner of the 

 land next to the school said that "these bees made clover seed," 

 and that he would spank any boy who killed bumblebees. But 

 somehow our "sympathetic interest" was not naturally or peda- 

 gogically extended to harmless garter-snakes, rabbits, squirrels 

 and some other animals which we hunted by methods both fair 

 and foul. Is not this the experience of the typical boy? Where 

 is the evidence of an innate sympathetic interest which may later 

 develop into the naturalist's outlook? Certainly not in the 

 average small boy. It must strike the fair-minded observer that 

 the characteristic ethical and esthetic attitude of a naturalist is in 

 most cases a later development of an interpretation of nature 

 which, like* poetry and philosophy, is the product of mature 

 minds. 



And now one point with regard to stimulated interest in nature- 

 study. Even here there is not a marked tendency in favor of 

 living materials. It is largely a question of the knowledge and 



