I62 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW 



California composed almost entirely of the children of foreign 

 peoples; but that our own boys and girls really lead in these 

 pursuits in that section is well shown in some of the beautiful 

 photographs sent me by Dr. Charles L. Edwards, who is Director 

 of Nature-Study in the schools of Los Angeles. Two of these 

 photographs are here reproduced on page 163 and they were 

 taken by an assistant of Doctor Edwards, Miss Frances G. Con- 

 rad. The upper picture shows the Annual Seaside Excursion 

 to Pt. Fermin, and 3000 school children of Los Angeles are seen 

 studying the animals and other things found in the tidepools 

 of that famous locality; below, we have another scene, taken at 

 the same time and place, in which some of the children are in the 

 foreground. 



The material for study in nature is practically limitless; and 

 were a million children to gather such specimens and to study them 

 in their minutest detail every day for many, many generations 

 barely a beginning would be made toward the completion of 

 what there is to be known about plants and animals and all the 

 rest that nature offers in our great coimtry, to say not a word of 

 all the rest of the world. 



It is not unusual to have parents, and, what is more discourag- 

 ing, teachers — though not nature-study teachers — ask what is 

 the practical use of this branch of study to children. What 

 does it lead to, and what is its value to grown-ups. Well, it 

 stands to reason that professional biologists and naturalists have 

 all the use in the world for it, as it constitutes their working-stock 

 of knowledge; but for the average boy and girl in private and 

 public schools it possesses, as a study and a training, no end of 

 uses — even though any particular boy or girl should not have it in 

 mind at all to follow up the subject as their life's work. 



Upon comparing any clear-minded, healthy boy or girl, who 

 has had a complete course in nature-study in a public or private 

 school — ^both class-room or laboratory instruction and field work 

 in its different departments — ^with those who have not enjoyed 

 such instruction, this comparison will, when properly made, 

 reveal the fact that the character, qualifications, and faculties 

 of the former, as contrasted with the latter, everything else being 

 equal, be foimd far and away ahead in many practical and im- 

 portant particulars. Take the boy, for example. It will be found 



