204 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [6:7- Oct., 1910 



to get a series of outlines that will fit into any conditions in our 

 state, but I think that two or three type studies can be worked 

 out that would be a great help to a very large number of the 

 teachers and pupils of our state. 



I think that more attention should be paid to nature-study 

 in the grades below the seventh. We have some good work along 

 this line in our fourth-year geography, but the scope should be 

 extended. If the right sort of work were done in grades I to W, 

 I think the pupils would come to the seventh grade, not only with 

 a keener interest in the study of agriculture, and a larger capacity 

 for observation, but with a greater knowledge of nature and her 

 laws which he would be able to bring to bear upon the problems 

 he would face in that grade. I think that this nature-study must 

 deal largely with the common things of the farm and the home, 

 the roadside and the school, with a view to developing capacities 

 of observation and stimulating a lively interest in the phenome- 

 na of nature and the discovery of nature's laws. This nature- 

 study is not properly study in its initial stages. It is observation ; 

 it is seeing. It leads to thinking, to reasoning, to comprehension 

 of principles. It then becomes study and may be classed as ele- 

 mentary instruction in agriculture, so that the change frotn 

 nature-study to agriculture is a gradual one. 



Since the materials are necessarily restricted to those which 

 are afforded by the particular environment, a course in this work 

 must be flexible, suggesting possibilties rather than giving rigid 

 prescriptions. 



If pupils have this nature-study work in the grades I to VI, 

 they will be ready for something more definite in agriculture in 

 the seventh and eighth grades. Some of our teachers have the 

 feeling that the work in our state course is rather scrappy and 

 disconnected. This is necessarily so, when no systematic work 

 in nature-study has been done in the grades below. With this 

 in the course, the work in the seventh and eighth grades could 

 well be organized around a few larger units, and definite outlines, 

 made to meet specific needs. If one course were made out on 

 corn, it would fit admirably into the conditions in many districts 

 in our state, and the work for the entire year could be on corn. 

 Some time could be given to a study of soils, not as separate 

 study, but in its relation to corn ; some could be given to a study 

 of plant foods in its relation to corn; some time to the produc- 

 tion of seed in a plant, the organs of reproduction, the function 

 of the pollen, cross-pollination, and methods used by corn breed- 



