I30 HOW NATURE STUDY SHOULD BE TAUGHT 



viewing distant objects. The Yerkes telescope, 

 or an opera-glass used to view the skies, is nothing 

 more nor less than seeing ; it is another set of 

 eyes, if you please, with which to peer into the 

 infinitely great and distant world ; and to use the 

 microscope is to see into an equally wonderful, but 

 infinitely minute creation. As the reader now 

 knows, nature study, in its school sense, is informal 

 observation of nature. When we synthesize, class- 

 ify, and note details carefully, our observations 

 are scientific. Of the same objects we may thus 

 have with the unaided sight, either nature-study 

 or science. The seeing is not made science by 

 optical aid, but by our purpose and the standpoint 

 from which we view the objects. You do not 

 think it necessary to be an astronomer in order to 

 look up and enjoy the beauty of the glittering 

 stars. No one regards John Burroughs as an as- 

 tronomer deeply versed in that science, and yet 

 no one has expressed better than he this nature- 

 study phase of celestial seeing : 



11 How often do we really see the stars ? Probably a great 

 many people never see them at all, that is never look upon 

 them with any thrill of emotion. If I see them a few times 

 a year, I think myself in luck. If I deliberately go out to 

 see them, I am quite sure to miss them ; but occasionally, as 

 one glances up to them in his lonely night walk, the mind 



