NA TURE-STUD Y AND EXPRESSION 5 1 



the fifth grade, the pupils daily painted the landscape, having chosen 

 the time and place most convenient or that would best tell the 

 story of the day. By vote of the children, that landscape was chosen 

 which seemed to be the most faithful portrayal, and it was mounted 

 upon a card. Fig. i shows the record of the month of November. 

 Space forbids the reproduction of more of these, and the effective- 

 ness is also much impaired by the necessary loss of color in the 

 half-tone. As such cards are prepared, day by day and month 

 by month, they form a record of the transient aspects of the land- 

 scape that is far more graphic and impressive than any other form 

 of expression that can be used by the pupils. The series of cards 

 for the year show with surprising clearness and with panoramic 

 force the seasonal aspects that appear in color. No other form 

 of record brings out so well those subtle changes, occurring from 

 day to day and through the seasons, which appeal so strongly to the 

 aesthetic sense. All are invariably filled with surprise to find the 

 incessant change in the shades of green that sweep over the land- 

 scape during the summer. No two months are the same. The 

 earliest tingeing of autumn shades strikes the treetops, and through 

 a series of browns and yellows finally descends to the winter drab 

 of the ground. In the spring the earliest signs of reviving life 

 appear on the surface, and they gradually work their way, through 

 a new series of shades, to the treetops again. In the winter almost 

 the entire color effect is derived from the dead — the dried grass 

 and weeds, the bark on the trees — and from the inorganic domain 

 of nature — the ground, rocks, streams, bodies of water, snow, 

 and ice. That this scene does not become a pulseless monotony 

 through the long winter is very largely due to the infinite change 

 in appearance that is wrought by its constantly shifting background 

 — the sky. The rose and the pink, the purple, the lilac, the gray and 

 blue of the winter heavens in the evening and morning, seem to be 

 the finest of the year. 



In the summer time color speaks of life and of work. Every 

 hue and shade tells of something done — of a twig that has grown, 

 of a flower, or of a fruit. No record of tongue or pen that the 

 children can prepare will compare in its completeness and vividness 

 with this history which they can write with the brush. 



In descending to the details of the landscape the same mode of 

 expression may be used with equal effect. In Fig. 2 there is given 



