94 NATURE STUDY. 



what is complex for them may be simple to the child. 

 Both forget the long process of education, much of it 

 unconscious, by which they learned to analyze the com- 

 mon things about them, before they could even under- 

 stand that they were complex, much less resolve them 

 into their components, or build them by a synthetic 

 process from their components. The teachers of college 

 and high-school students, discouraged by their lack of 

 power to do careful work, and appreciating the need of 

 a better training in exact, thorough scientific methods 

 of study, may do, as did the writer, insist on the most 

 careful, exact, detailed work, even in the primary 

 grades, either not realizing, or forgetting, that the chil- 

 dren's minds and hands and eyes are not fitted by 

 nature for such work. This is science, but it is not 

 elementary ; it is not adapted in material and methods 

 to the nature and needs of the children. 



Other friends of our schools would place in the 

 hands of our children beautiful and interesting books 

 telling all about the wonders of the world about them. 

 They would introduce into the homes and schools 

 Nature Primers and Nature Readers, and Stories 

 Mother Nature Told Her Children, from which the 

 pupils can imbibe or absorb some of the -facts, or what 

 are supposed to be facts, concerning the world in 

 which they live. These books may be good, they may 

 be helpful, they may be elementary, well adapted to 

 children ; but this is not science, it is not even knowl- 

 edge. It is not " clear and certain perception ; " it is 

 not "familiarity gained by actual experience," 



