Patterson] PROGRESS IN NATURE-STUDY 55 



called a Graveyard. These trees had a pleasant family life, until 

 the shifting sands killed and buried them. Fickle and erratic 

 almost beyond belief, the dunes shifted in this particular locality, 

 leaving the Cottonwood family group exposed. All around the 

 dunes, we find debris, and here and there a twisted gnarled veteran 

 tree, dead or almost so, silhouetted, gaunt and defiant, against the 

 sky. 



A Survey of Twenty. Years' Progress Made in the 

 Courses of Nature Study 



Alice Jean Patterson 

 State Normal University, Normal, 111. 



In taking up for discussion the progress made in the course of 

 study in nature-study during the past twenty years, I have thought 

 it worth while to give a hasty glance at the ten preceding years. 

 These were the years which saw the birth and early growth of this 

 new school subject, a subject which had evolved from the object 

 lessons of the preceding decade aided by the introduction of the 

 laboratory method into high school and college science. 



I recall as a student in the Illinois State Normal University, in 

 1890 that a part of our training consisted of demonstration lessons 

 in elementary science. Each member of the senior class planned 

 a series of lessons designed to teach children some fundamental 

 scientific principles. These were taught to the class and afterward 

 thoroughly discussed. It was an easy step from the ideas embodied 

 in these lessons to the nature-study idea which we began to hear 

 about a few years later. 



The only complete course in nature-study belonging to those 

 early years that I was able to find was Wilber Jackman's Outline 

 published in book form in 1891. However, I came across reference 

 to a nimiber of others all of which planned to introduce some form 

 of nature-study into certain schools of Minnesota, Massachusetts, 

 New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Jackman made no attempt in his 

 outline to grade the work. He grouped his questions under the 

 names of the common sciences then taught in high schools — zoology 

 botany, physics, etc. He evidently expected teachers who used the 

 outline to choose the material best fitted to their own schools and 

 classes. 



It is of interest to note how early schoolmen l^cgan to recognize 

 the fact that a new subject had appeared upon the threshold of the 



