Nature-Study in Milwaukee and Its Vicinity 



By Florence J. Kane 



Nature-study may be made one of the most profitable subjects 

 taught in the common schools. However, teachers should not 

 labor under an erroneous idea of what nature-study is. Reading 

 about the duckbill-platypus of Australia or the ant-eater of South 

 America or listening to the teacher's tale of the life story of the 

 octopus or the crocodile may be highly entertaining natural history 

 for a boy and may give him considerable erudition, but it can hardly 

 be called nature-study. First of all, nature-study should be 

 practical and suited to the environment in which the child lives. 

 Hence a lesson on the common house fly, the clothes moth, or the 

 cockroach — not from reading but from direct observation of the 

 insects' life habits — may be made practical nature-study for the 

 child, and if the lessons are conducted in a psychological way, may 

 give him no little mental training. Nor .need a teacher fear that 

 the material for study that lies within the surroundings of the 

 child's own home will ever be exhausted, however humble and 

 limited in area that abode may be ; for the living things of earth 

 are like the stars of the heavens in this : that the more intensified 

 study reveals but a greater infinitude. As Longfellow said of 

 Nature and Agassiz: 



"And whenever the way seemed long, 



Or his heart began to fail, 

 She would sing a more wonderful song, 

 Or tell a more marvelous tale." 



I like the idea of gardening and tree planting for the child 

 because from these useful activities may be derived innumerable 

 lessons in seed testing, seed sprouting, seed planting, soil cultiva- 

 tion and drainage, plant cultivation, and the conservation of that 

 animal life which is beneficial to man's existence. 



When it is almost time for a child to buy his seeds in the spring, 

 he will enjoy a lesson on seed testing. When he has buried his 

 seeds in the soil, seed germination under a bell jar will be highly 

 instructive and entertaining. He will be pleased with a lesson on 

 the earthworm and the ant when he knows they are directly con- 

 cerned in the fertilization, cultivation and drainage of his soil. 

 He will regard the bee as his assistant in fruit production. The 

 hideous, despised toad, the reptile-like salamander, the frog, the 

 loathed garter snake — animals he has been reared to look upon 



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