262 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW 



Here then is where the nattire-study lesson can and should 

 function: to see that the children have perceptual experience with 

 these things about which they are reading. This requires, so far 

 as possible, contact with the actual objects, most of which can be 

 brought into the schoolroom or seen on a short walk out-of-doors 

 near the school except perhaps in the large cities. And let it be 

 noted here that any observation of creature or other natural object 

 indoors should lead to a search by the child for the thing in its 

 natural habitat. Let the true success of intra mural nature 

 lessons (excepting a few types) be gauged just so, i.e., by the extent 

 of the follow-up — the out-door observation by the children. 



The question arises, "May not the perceptual experience be 

 gained from the illustrations which are so abundant in the primary 

 readers?" To some extent, yes — at least with those illustrations 

 which are approximately true to nature. But no one will question 

 for a moment the superior value of experience with the real thing. 

 No one would claim that one's perceptions of Niagara Falls, the 

 Yosemite, the Ocean, Japan, gained from pictures (even moving 

 pictures), is comparable to those secured in travel. Suppose your 

 only experience with violets had been seeing pictures of them; 

 that you never had smelled or felt their freshness or plucked them 

 in the quiet woods? Well, that is all many children and perhaps 

 you yourself know of some of the animals and plants mentioned in 

 the readers. As regards much geographical knowledge, we must 

 be content with the word and picture substitutes for the things; 

 but with nature everjrwhere about us, why he content with mere 

 symohls of common objects in books ? Lowell wrote in that splendid 

 nature poem (too little known), Sunthin' In the Pastoral Line 

 "Why, I'd give more for one live boblink 

 Than a square mile o' larks in printer's ink." 

 Here he was referring to the custom of American poets before the 

 time of Bryant of mentioning only skylarks and other English birds 

 (which perhaps none of them had even seen) when they might be 

 writing of their own emotional experiences with American birds and 

 flowers. Entirely too much of our knowledge of nature (and 

 American nature at that) is in printer's ink — " words, words, 

 words" as Hamlet said; yes, even too much of it in the expensive 

 ink of colored pictures; — and not enough of it learned where 

 Whittier learned, — 



"In nature's unhoused Ivceum." 



