Shaw] PROGRESS IN NATURE-STUDY MATERIALS 67 



about them, making this a lesson in written and oral English ? As 

 we go farther up in school, shall we not add to this lesson an inter- 

 esting little stunt of making a key or plan by which a Boy or Girl 

 Scout may easily recognize any of these trees as it comes to them in 

 the park or in the woods? We can even go a step farther and 

 learn the difference between the hard and soft woods; study the 

 fruiting parts of these trees; understand why the term conifer is 

 better to use in this great group than evergreen ; read some of the 

 interesting stories about Christmas trees and be ready to tell them 

 in the assembly to the children of the lower grades. Think of all 

 the provocative elements existing in such a subject! To teach a 

 subject in nature-study, drop it, and go on to teach another has 

 always seemed to me, even in the beginning of my experience, a 

 most futile plan. The idea of life, which we are trying to give boys 

 and girls in all subjects we teach, is not a series of jerks, but ought 

 to be a continuous, vital, real matter, and so our nature-study 

 should tie closely not only with life, but with the life of our other 

 subjects in the classroom. 



So it would seem that in using nature materials in the course of 

 study today we are giving special heed to the application of such 

 materials, both to the life of the child and to the rest of the course 

 of study, choosing not only such materials as build up a complete, 

 comprehensive and continuous course of study, as we did yesterday, 

 but choosing live centers of interest, making those a real part of the 

 rest of the course of study. Great progress nas been made in this 

 line. 



Finally, in summing up the progress of the past twenty years, it 

 seems to me that we have progressed as a body or as a group of 

 people from a state of very scattered and diffused interests touch- 

 ing the high points as we have happened to; to a state where 

 materials used are far more practical and of greater life interest than 

 ever selected before. Our field of work has not changed. The 

 materials we are using today were always with us, but more of us 

 today are willing to teach things as they are, and more of us are 

 using those materials which make children think, which apply more 

 definitely to their everyday life a?id also to the life we trust they are 

 going to live as good appreciative citizens, to support their parks, 

 their museums, their homes, and if possible their own little estates. 



"The one or two who hold Earth's coin of less account than fairy gold. 

 Their treasure not the spoil of crowns and kings 

 But the dim beauty at the heart of things." 



