HOW NATURE STUDY SHOULD BE TAUGHT 55 



Then, too, what beautiful drawings. I envied the 

 child whose letter I first picked up. So neat and 

 pretty. After my hard work over nearly a thou- 

 sand others, this instalment was indeed refreshing. 

 But when I had thus enjoyed about a half dozen, 

 there began to creep over me a feeling that I had 

 somewhere previously read that last one, and not 

 so long ago, either. Then I studied them with 

 keener interest and with growing amazement. 

 How could so many children have ascertained 

 certain facts with a clearness so uniform, and have 

 described them in expressions so similar? It was 

 bewildering. Eighty of them, and all cut on the 

 same bias. But that bias was really bright and 

 fresh. I could not gainsay that. 



After I had read about two dozen, my mind re- 

 called a visit to a factory in Waterbury, where I 

 saw a coil of wire fed into a machine and reappear 

 as a stream of glittering pins that were rolled 

 around in a " hopper," and shot out of a spout 

 neatly arranged in rows on paper. Some enthu- 

 siastic teacher had correlated a coil of a " nature- 

 study " story into a school machine, and the 

 hopper had evolved attractive language-pins beau- 

 tifully arranged on eighty papers, and then, alas 

 and alack ! she sent them to me. The thing I 



