122 The Nature-Study Idea 



make an herbarium, the modern teacher may say, 

 but tell them to study the plants. We all 

 sympathize with this point of view; but what 

 are we going to do with this native and exu- 

 berant desire of the child to explore and to 

 collect ? And what better way is there to know 

 plants and animals than actually to collect and 

 to study them? One of my friends will not 

 let his little boy make an herbarium, because 

 that is mere superficial amusement; so the child 

 collects postage stamps. He does not care to 

 have him know the names of plants, but he is 

 very careful to have him properly introduced 

 to visitors; and what is an introduction but a 

 conventional passing of names (p. 196) ? 



I think that science teaching has gone too far 

 in discouraging the making of collections. We 

 can make the collecting the means of securing 

 real information. We can fasten the attention 

 of the child. The one caution is not to make 

 it an end. The child cannot collect without 

 seeing the object as it lives and grows. It 

 appeals to him more in the field than it does in 

 the museum. Let him collect for the purpose 



