14 HOW NATURE STUDY SHOULD BE TAUGHT 



haps, more exact, and, therefore, more scientific. Nature 

 Study has a less formidable sound, and better expresses the 

 spirit in which the work should be undertaken. It seems 

 much the better term, at least, for the work in the first four 

 or five years of the school course. The former term includes 

 two ideas. First, it is elementary, as distinguished from 

 advanced. In the aim or purpose of the work, in the ma- 

 terial selected, in the methods pursued, it is elementary : 

 planned for, and adapted to the needs and capacities of the 

 pupils of elementary schools. In the second place, it is 

 science, classified knowledge. 



Here is offered the choice of another term for 

 " elementary science." That surely is liberal, and 

 nobody can find fault with the permission to use 

 a term that has a " less formidable sound ! " 



Let us get a few more examples, and we shall 

 then have the thing clearly in mind. Perhaps one 

 of the best, surely the most " taking," concise, 

 and euphonious, is that by Professor Clifton F. 

 Hodge : 



Nature Study is learning those things in Nature that are 

 best worth knowing, to the end of doing those things that 

 make life most worth the living. 



This is excellent as a definition of his own idea, 

 and that of many others. We will note, paren- 

 thetically, that what I have had in mind is not a 

 matter of learning nature, but of loving her. It 

 is not wholly a means to an end, it is an end in 



