HOW NATURE STUDY SHOULD BE TAUGHT 53 



repeated, " Don't you think this nature work is 

 good ? M 



And so I was forced to say, as I do to you, that 

 it seems to me that the mere drawing of natural 

 objects and writing about them, even if from the 

 objects themselves is not necessarily nature study. 

 A talent for original seeing, a love of natural objects 

 may be stunted by the requirements of drawing 

 and writing. The wintergreen seemed to be pretty 

 nearly all castor oil, judging by the taste. You can 

 correlate nature study in this manner till there is 

 no nature study left. 



Professor Hodge in his " Nature Study and 

 Life " (I like especially that word life in the title) 

 tells us regarding the experience of the children 

 in rearing plants : 



" No skilled gardener can even tell, much less 

 write down, a hundredth part of what he knows 

 about plants. ... It was thought at first that 

 the children might be induced to keep diaries or 

 records of their plants, giving just what they did 

 and just how fast the plants grew ; but it was 

 found that their writings were of little value, and 

 were even thought to act as a chill to the spontane- 

 ous interests of some of the children. Some chil- 

 dren have a passion to write, while in others the very 



