322 NATURE STUDY. 



Much depends on the character and amount of pre- 

 vious work in personal observation which the children 

 have done. After a year or two of training they can 

 accomplish much more. Experience has shown that, in 

 beginning such work, the younger pupils, those in the 

 lower four or five grades, do more and better work in 

 nature study, absolutely, not relatively, than the pupils 

 in the upper grades. With the older pupils the habit 

 of going to books and depending on authority has be- 

 come more firmly fixed. As one principal expressed 

 it, " The power of seeing and thinking and telling for 

 themselves has been educated out of them." The older 

 children do not u see the sense " of spending so much 

 time observing for themselves, when they can get it 

 from a book in less time. They are apt, too, to feel, 

 with their parents, that they come to school to study 

 reading, writing, arithmetic, and geography, and not 

 to study " flowers and stones and bugs." The younger 

 children have not been so thoroughly educated away 

 from nature, have not had their senses so atrophied by 

 neglect, have not learned so thoroughly the lesson of 

 dependence on book and teacher. 



Where it is deemed impossible to introduce nature 

 study into all grades, it will be found much more satis- 

 factory and better to have the work in the lower grades 

 alone than in the upper grades alone. Not merely will 

 the pupils be more interested and do better work, but 

 they will be better trained and prepared for nature 

 study, or for any other work in the upper grades which 

 requires pupils to see and think and tell and do for 



