WHAT IS NATURE STUDY? 97 



Nature study is first nature study, a study of our 

 physical environment. It is not a study of books. 

 Books may help, may tell us about nature, but they are 

 not nature. It is not listening to the teacher as she 

 tells about nature, or what purports to be nature. It is 

 not merely gazing with awed attention at the interested, 

 observant, bright boy of the class, as he tells what he 

 has read, or even seen. This may be studying about 

 nature ; but it is not studying nature, it is not nature 

 study. 



Nature study is not merely a study of nature, but 

 of nature under natural conditions, so far as this is 

 possible. It is not merely schoolroom study. Nature 

 belongs out-of-doors, and out-of-doors we must go to 

 study many of her manifestations. Field lessons are a 

 necessity for the best work. Nature constitutes much 

 of the child's out-of-school environment. He is learn- 

 ing from nature, consciously or unconsciously, almost 

 continually. Much of what he thus learns out of school- 

 hours in nature's school must be utilized in his nature 

 study in school. When we confine nature study to the 

 schoolroom and school-hours, we shut out the best part 

 of nature. 



The word science is apt to be associated in our mind 

 with a laboratory, and an array of instruments and 

 appliances. The laboratory for nature study is all out- 

 doors ; arid the only instruments and appliances abso- 

 lutely necessary are the seeing eye, the hearing ear, 

 and the understanding heart. 



Nature, real nature, is instinct with life and action ; 



