miller] NATURE-STUDY IN PRIMARY GRADES 313 



horse. A thousand other questions will suggest themselves. 

 Study the personality of the cows that come under your observa- 

 tion. No two cows are alike ; all possess individuality. We used 

 to have a cow that would never drink unless she were allowed first 

 place at the trough. Another, the personification of Wall Street 

 finance, would reach over and steal all her neighbor's hay before 

 beginning on her own* And so on ad infinitum. Study the com- 

 monplace things, and you will find that nothing is commonplace. 

 You will soon come to feel that the word should be blotted out of 

 every dictionary and forgotten. God never made anything 

 common. A gnat is as wonderful as the universe. 



This is not written to be startling or unique. It is genuine 

 Nature-Study, as useful and practical as it is interesting and 

 delightful. Learn to appreciate the beauty of the things around 

 you and you will be able to lead the children entrusted to your care 

 in paths of pleasantness which they will follow with ever increasing 

 delight all their lives. 



The duty of the teacher is not to tell, but to explain. Imagine, 

 if you can, a teacher standing up before her class and telling them 

 spelling or arithmetic! The child is supposed to have sufficient 

 mentality to gain his knowledge from the textbooks and the work 

 of the teacher is to aid and explain. Then why in the name of 

 common sense do we cease the parallelism when we come to 

 Nature-Study ? The nearest wood-lot is a text book, written with 

 the finger of God, and written so simply and so well that the child 

 and the grandfather may study there together and each be inter- 

 ested in what the other reads. The highest duty of the teacher is 

 to open the great Book of Nature to the title page, where the 

 nodding flower and the rippling brook and the singing bird will 

 entice the children into the beautiful mysteries beyond. Then 

 let them study the wonderful volume page by page, as Autumn 

 merges into Winter and Winter gives place to sunny Spring again. 

 The teacher's task, as in any other subject, is to guide their studies 

 and explain, when she can, the knotty problems which are con- 

 tinually coming up. Many of them are inexplicable. Why does 

 the screech-owl change its plumage ? That is only one of the thous- 

 ands of things we do not know, and concerning which ignorance is 

 no disgrace, 



Bird study will appeal to children perhaps more than any other 

 branch of Natural History, and this interest should be encouraged 



