*« It is of course evident that a scientific interest and an 

 aesthetic interest in Nature Study are widely different 

 things. The aesthetic interest is the result of the appeal 

 Nature makes to our sense of beauty ; the scientific, the 

 result of the appeal she makes to our desire to know. If, 

 in the case of the average man, we had to choose between 

 them, it is at least doubtful whether it would not be wise 

 to sacrifice the scientific to the aesthetic interest. The life 

 of the average man is probably more enriched by the ca- 

 pacity to derive pleasure from listening to the knell of the 

 parting day, from watching the lowing herd as it winds 

 slowly over the meadow, than by a scientific interest in 

 nature. But the two interests are in no wise antagonistic. 

 And if the teacher of the nature subjects be herself a lover 

 of nature, if she looks upon the changes that pass over the 

 face of nature as spring blooms into summer, and summer 

 fades into autumn, and autumn gives way to winter, with 

 something of the same fondness with which the mother 

 watches the changes in her child as she traverses the road 

 to womanhood, there is no danger that the aesthetic inter- 

 est of her pupils will suffer through a development of their 

 scientific interest. Not only will the bugs and grasshop- 

 pers and butterflies, the trees and the leaves, the soil and 

 minerals, claim her attention, but the broad valleys, the 

 gently sloping hills, the sycamores bending over running 

 streams and, as it were, gravely bowing to the trees on the 

 other side ; and her enthusiastic love of nature will be as 

 contagious as her intense interest in science." — Dr. J. P. 

 Gordy, in *' A Broader Elementary Education." 

 164 



