568 NATURE STUDY. 



crowded part of a great city, in any place where air and 

 water can be had. Sunlight is not a necessity, although, of 

 course, plants thrive better, and are more apt to reach ma- 

 turity, when they get sunlight. 



If more attention is given to the study of seeds and 

 leaves and buds, it will lessen the destruction of the wild 

 flowers, which has been and will be one of the serious re- 

 sults of the growing interest in plant study. Teachers and 

 others are apt to think that the study of plants means the 

 study of flowers, and their first efforts to cultivate a love 

 for nature and for the beautiful in nature too often result 

 in almost exterminating for miles around the most beauti- 

 ful gifts of nature, the flowers. 



OPPORTUNITIES FOR ACTIVE WORK IN NATURE STUDY. 



Seeds can be planted by the children in their homes. 

 The writer has seen beans and peas and morning glories 

 shedding their refining influence in the windows and scanty 

 dooryards of scores of very humble city homes, the only 

 verdure to be seen, planted and cared for because the chil- 

 dren had become interested in them at school. 



Seed study furnishes one of the best opportunities for 

 carrying on what we may call active work in nature study, 

 getting the children to do something for nature, to take 

 care of the plants. One of the most gratifying experiences 

 in the writer's work in interesting children in nature study, 

 resulted from an experiment in this line. He offered one 

 spring to give sweet-pea seeds to any pupils who would 

 agree to plant and care for them. Scores of girls asked for 

 them, but only one boy ventured to get them. The next 

 year, when the same offer was made nearly a hundred boys, 

 as well as an increased number of girls, asked for sweet 

 peas or nasturtiums. Each summer scores of hitherto bar- 

 ren dooryards were brightened by the flowers. This did 



