374 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [14:9— Dec, 191 3 



form of the plant and its life. The facts have a meaning. The 

 adaptation of a plant or animal to its environment should play 

 an important part in every story of its life. It is this form of 

 story that is lacking in the first grade readers. 



What literary development has the child at the end of the first 

 year? He has had a year of exciting reading. He probably 

 prefers this style, but, does that make it right? Most children 

 prefer candy but we do not make it 50 per cent of their diet. Is 

 "ding dong bell" the means or is it the object of education? 

 Education is a process of living. The child lives with a cat that 

 catches mice and laps milk with its rough tongue. These every 

 day subjects of child life are natural, fundamental subjects. It is 

 sort of a "See America first" idea. Why go by the fable-route 

 to tell about interesting things at home? 



If the child does not get true stories now, when will he? The 

 majority of children never will get true animal tales. The only 

 ones I know of, about cats, are the leaflets written for the 

 Humane Education Society and many of these are the "Do not 

 tie a tin can on the cat's tail" kind. (It would be better pedagogy 

 to get an interest in cats.) The writers of .real nature literature 

 may be counted on one's fingers. They are Bradford Torrey, 

 Frank Chapman, Ernest Ingersoll, Dallas Lore Sharp, Gilbert 

 White, Henry D. Thoreau, and John Burroughs. And, after 

 all, were not our great writers worth while naturalists? Emerson, 

 Longfellow, Whittier, and Tennyson were not nature fakirs. 

 What has a child in his early literature to prepare him for these 

 writers? Nothing. His early training prepares him to make such 

 books as Long's and Seton's successful. These writers tell about 

 animals, not as they are but as their readers like to think they are. 

 I well remember my bitter disappointment in the learning powers 

 of two pet rabbits after having read about rabbit intelligence as 

 "observed" by these two men. The average first grade reader 

 is the initiator of the appetite which enjoys nature faking, the 

 colored supplement of the Sunday newspaper, and shall we add, 

 ante-nuptial love stories, — situations remote from real life. 



The existance of gullibility as to fairy stories was illustrated 

 in class recently. I asked how deep in the ocean are growing 

 plants found? The answer was rather fabulous. Questioning 

 brought out the information that the pupil knew it was so because 

 she had read about it in Jules Verne's "20,000 Leagues Under the 



