schmucker] SCIENCE AND NATURE-STUDY 51 



does. Hence the almost certain criticism which he will make 

 against nature-study, that it is too scrappy, too unsystematized, 

 that it gets nowhere. As a matter of fact the mind of the child is 

 scrappy, unsystematized, and gets not very far in its earlier years. 

 And while the child is in these years, and this means until he has 

 reached the stage of his grammar school life, thoroughness is 

 foreign to him, and when attempted simply makes of school life 

 drudgery. Thoroughness comes with the years of reason and 

 training, and conscious attention. And these are not yet, with 

 the child. 



I trust I am not misunderstood in this matter. I have not the 

 faintest trace of the scorn for the scientist which the scientist 

 commonly visits on the nature teacher. I marvel and admire the 

 thoroughness of many of my scientific friends, and I wish everyone, 

 if it were possible, could have in his training a part of this thorough- 

 ness. The mass of detailed information which some men carry 

 concerning obscure matters, unknown almost to the entire world 

 outside of themselves is to me marvelous, and I often long to know 

 some field of knowledge as some of my friends know theirs. But 

 my lot has been cast in other lines, and those lines have so fully 

 occupied my time, that there is for me no possibility of the inten- 

 sive study of any one line. 



No teacher can have too much knowledge, providing he-does not 

 lose his perspective and knows which of his knowledge to use which 

 is appropriate to the event which has called it out. Certain it is 

 that the student of zoology who comes to teach nature to children 

 may himself have what knowledge he can gain of the internal 

 structure of an animal, but he must practically leave all of it out 

 of his nature-study teaching. I have even come to doubt whether 

 it is good nature work to kill, dry and mount insects, and am quite 

 sure that the shooting and stuffing of birds is not nature-study. 

 The more children can see all of these creatures alive and active in 

 their own environment, the more nearly they will approach true 

 nature-study. 



The aspect of things which is best worth while is that of life 

 relations, the study of birds in the field and the wood as they 

 gather their food, as they woo their mates, as they build their nests 

 and rear their young, these and other studies like them make the 

 best nature work for children. To watch the insects on the 

 flowers, to find the seeds carried by wind or animal, to see the tall- 



