64 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [17:2— Feb., 1921 



the birds just as they have been placed in that great museum to 

 show their natural habitat. These children are provided with a 

 series of questions about the birds, so that they may go from case to 

 case looking, discussing and inspecting. A similar class is seen in 

 the classroom with bird pictures or bird riddles or going to the little 

 neighborhood park to watch the sparrows and to study the habits 

 of these bothersome little creatures. The difference in these two 

 lessons, the bird lesson of yesterday, and the bird lesson of today, 

 is significant in that in one case any available material was used 

 and a perfunctory lesson was tuaght ; while in the other case, a live 

 lesson was taught, the interest of the children was awakened and 

 they became acquainted with nature at the great museum ; a real 

 civic lesson entered in here, a lesson especially needed in these days 

 for all of our children. One such trio a term, to the Natural 

 History Museimi, the library, the Children's Museimi or the 

 Botanic Garden, is better far than a whole series of perfunctory 

 classroom exercises. Such lessons as these visits represent, are, of 

 course, far more valuable if, after returning to class the work is 

 followed up as it is in many cases, and even if it is not, such a lesson 

 has gone toward the broadening and uplift of these children. 



Another nature lesson given in the same city some years ago was 

 a plant lesson presented to 40 or 50 children with one little specimen 

 in the teacher's hand held up for classroom inspection and yet how 

 impossible it was to inspect or see a bit of that specimen if one sat 

 in the back of the room ! A similar lesson two years ago, in a school 

 in the same neighborhood on the lower east-side shows the children 

 on the roof hovering about boxes, and pails and pans, in which 

 vessels, seeds have been planted and living plants are forcing their 

 way up. What keen interest and delight shown by these children, 

 how many lessons worked out from just this one center of interest ! 

 We might stop here to ask "How is it possible to avoid the first 

 type of lesson, how is one going to be able to gather a great deal of 

 nature-study material for city schools?" It is not always possible 

 but if a few specimens have been brought in by children and teach- 

 ers, such 'materials could be arranged as I have seen them many 

 times on a side table in the room. By each twig, or branch, or 

 fruit, or flower-pot is a definite inscription telling something about 

 the specimen, and in odd moments before or after school, when a 

 child has finished his work he may go to that nature-study table 

 and become acquainted with those things. In general, I think 



