192 NATURE STUDY REVIEW [9:6— Sept., 1913 



US confess our instinctive desires to get in touch with nature, that 

 kind renewer of youthful ardors. A few of us will keep up the 

 joy of this rejuvenating companionship. We shall go out to 

 walk, collecting, picture-taking, or just tramping regardless of 

 season and weather. We shall consciously cultivate that healing, 

 inspirating comradeship with the out-of-doors. "Our hearts will 

 beat and our eyes will be bright as we leave the town behind us 

 and we shall feel once again (as we have felt so often before) that 

 we are cutting ourselves loose forever from our whole past life, 

 with all its sins, and follies and circumspections and go forward 

 as a new creature into a new world." Time may seam the faces 

 of such with lines of care, but youth will rise perpetually in their 

 hearts. 



A few of us will lead little children into these paths of delight, 

 will teach them to appreciate the commonplace things about them, 

 to look with understanding eyes and hear with comprehending 

 ears. We shall stimulate our pupils by imparting our own con- 

 tagious enthusiasm. Blessings on that teacher who can put so 

 simple yet so far-reaching a source of delight, so sure a basis of 

 sturdy character, into a child's life . 



That teachers are seeking preparation for instruction along the 

 lines of Nature-Study is evident from our increasing summer 

 school attendance. Five hundred sixty-nine summer schools 

 were open in the simimer of 1912. The figures for 19 13 are not 

 yet in. There were 142,217 students in attendance at these 

 schools — about one-fourth of the entire teaching force. One 

 hundred thirteen of these schools were schools devoted to business, 

 medicine, and other subjects in which one would not expect courses 

 in any phase of nature-study. In the remaining schools every- 

 one gives some science instruction: 91 specifically announce 

 courses in agriculture, 36 in nature-study. Evidently teachers, 

 the country over are awake to the educative values of the things 

 of the out-of-doors. They are surely trying to find out what to 

 teach along these lines and how to teach it. 



