CALDWELL] THECRITERIAOFNATURE-STUDY 253 



continued. It is through answers to these questions in some of 

 their many forms that we have secured modern adjustments to 

 nature, an appreciation of nature uninfluenced by man, and of 

 nature as transformable better to contribute to the needs of man. 

 They are fundamental questions in education. They appear in 

 a simple form in early nature-study, but later are differentiated 

 into those complex questions which lead us to an appreciation 

 of formal science. 



Young children constitute a group of inquirers about whom are 

 gathered all those myriads of things, the total of which is the 

 nature environment. They seek first to know individual or 

 closely grouped phenomena. In a few years they become more 

 interested in relating these phenomena to themselves and appro- 

 priating them to their own uses. This first study is distinctly 

 one of orientation of oneself relative to his nature surroundings, 

 a study of places and things. Nature, to a young child, is largely 

 an unorganized unknown but it is the "unknowness" that the 

 child first recognizes and attempts to remove, and not the 

 * 'unorganizedness. ' ' 



Out of this condition there gradually differentiates a tendency 

 toward a grouping of the observed nature phenomena. Some of 

 these phenomena are grouped directly about the earth interests 

 of man, and in this we have the beginning of geography. Other 

 phenomena begin to be grouped less directly about man's indust- 

 rial and social life, but more closely about the interests of things 

 themselves. The phenomena of hills and valleys begin to be 

 thought of with reference to the present, past, and future -of hills 

 and valleys, with reference to their influence upon life in general, 

 and not primarily with reference to use as homes for men. Plants 

 and animals begin to be thought of as having structures, habits, 

 and homes as related to their needs and processes as plants and 

 animals, not primarily as taking from or adding to man's well- 

 being. With the beginning of this sort of recognition of nature, 

 we may properly have the branching of geography from the 

 common stalk of nature-study. The branch, no matter how 

 extensive or spreading it may become, maintains its connection 

 with the nature-study tree. The subdivisions of the branch 

 must become somewhat interwoven with one another, with other 

 branches from the tree, and with branches from other trees. 



In the early period in the child's education nature is a mass of 



