WHAT IS NATURE STUDY? 95 



A third class, with a better appreciation of the needs 

 and capacities of the children, with a better understand- 

 ing of the conditions of our schools, would have the 

 children go to nature instead of the book, watch the 

 swelling bud, the developing seed, the opening flower, 

 note the flight and song of the bird, and peep into its 

 nest, glance at the fly or grasshopper, admire the bril- 

 liant coloring of the butterfly. They would have our 

 children, butterfly-like, sip a little here, a little there, 

 taste in this place, in that place. This is better, very 

 much better ; where the child is surrounded by nature, 

 almost immersed in nature, it may be an excellent 

 means of arousing in him the interest and sympathy 

 and spirit which are the first essentials in his best de- 

 velopment. It may lead to knowledge, to fairly " clear 

 and certain perception." It may lay the foundations 

 for science ; it is on just such foundations that all 

 science has arisen. 



But if it stops with sipping and tasting, if the knowl- 

 edge is simply taken in and not digested or assimilated, 

 if it is not expressed in a form intelligible to others, it 

 is only the beginning of science. Unless the phenom- 

 ena are observed or studied in some order or sequence, 

 unless their study prepares for and leads to a careful in- 

 vestigation of the relations of the various phenomena 

 observed, unless it results in comparison, in some natu- 

 ral classification by the child, and, finally, in broader 

 and broader generalizations and a better comprehension 

 of the unity of nature, it is not science. The method, 

 if it may be called a method, so prevalent in many of 



