328 NATURE STUDY. 



animal study; but that obtainable near the school, such 

 as grasshoppers, crickets, caterpillars, spiders, and earth- 

 worms and " thousand legs," supplied most of the needs 

 of the class. For snails, fish, crayfish, and tadpoles it 

 was necessary to make trips into the country, or to 

 enlist the boys in the work of getting material. 



In great cities it is much easier to get and keep 

 material and apparatus for work with minerals and 

 physics and chemistry. For this and for utilitarian 

 reasons, the work in city schools is often practically 

 limited to the study of physical sciences. The very 

 fact that the children of cities are shut away from liv- 

 ing nature, see almost nothing of the plant and animal 

 life familiar to other children, makes it so much the 

 more essential that they have some study of living 

 nature, even if they study only the germination and 

 development of peas and beans, watch the growth of 

 flowering plants which can be kept in the schoolroom 

 windows, and are led to investigate the habits of the 

 omnipresent sparrows, flies, spiders, and mice. 



