406 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [11:9— Dec, 1915 



he needs these larger and deeper relations to realities of nature. 

 Leaders everywhere are emphasizing this need. — ^"A practical, 

 concrete course in nature-study, based not on books, but on the 

 phenomena of nature themselves, ought to form a part of every 

 elementary school curriculum, from the lowest to the highest 

 grade." — Portland School Survey, p. iii. 



Chiefly on account of the lack of this kind of instruction in the 

 vital realities of nature and of life our boasted public schools are 

 turning out all too many hoodlimis and tramps, reversions toward 

 savagery, armies of the unemployed and unemployable. Yoimg 

 animals, if they are not taught at the proper times may suffer 

 atrophy or blighting of instincts and either die in consequence or 

 live on permanently incapacitated for learning the particular 

 lessons related to the vanished instincts. There is little doubt 

 that many normal, human relations to nature suffer a similar 

 crippling on account of lack of proper development in the nascent 

 years of childhood and youth. 



Our best recent estimates (Penck) indicate that for at least 

 500,000 years nature has been weaving lines of interest into the life 

 of the human species. History covers scarcely one one-hundredth 

 part of this time, and our modern sciences are hardly more than a 

 single century old. We should hold these relations in mind when 

 we speak of the primitive, fundamental and universal in human 

 education. Here are the thousands of years of almost purely 

 biological nature-study which not only developed the brain and 

 mind so that man could begin the study of sciences, but laid the 

 fotindations in human character for civilization itself . 



The era of lowest savagery, the tooth and nail, club and stone 

 fight to "Subdue the earth," was undoubtedly much the longest 

 period in the history of the race — possibly 470,000 of the half 

 million years. Here the keenest interests center chiefly about 

 direct preservation of self. With the subjection of the larger 

 animals that hunted man for their food these longest, deepest lines 

 of human interest run down and attach to the smaller, but even 

 more powerful enemies — the rats and insects that, armed with the 

 germs of plague and other diseases, threaten life and even to the 

 bacteria and other parasites of man. Of course, during this period, 

 too, the interests that related to support of life indirectly were 

 active, and man learned the animals and plants that were of value 

 for his food, clothing and shelter. But, health, conservation aside, 



