246 Handbook of Nature-Study 



6. Describe the bat's head, including the ears, eyes, nose and mouth. 

 What is its general expression? Do you think it can see and hear well? 

 How is its mouth fitted for catching insects? Does it shut its mouth 

 while chewing or keep it open ? Do you think that bats can see by day- 

 light? 



7. What noises does a bat make? How does it act if you try to 

 touch it? Can it bite severely? Can you understand why the Germans 

 call it a fiitter-mouse? 



8. Do you know how the mother bat cares for her young? How does 

 she carry them? At what time of year may we expect to find them? 



9. When making its toilet, how does a bat clean its wings? Its face? 

 Its back? Its feet? Do you know if it is very clean in his habits? 



10. How and where do the bats pass the winter? How are they 

 beneficial to us? Are they ever harmful? 



Supplementary reading — American Animals, Stone and Cram. 



Nature-study stionld not he unrelated to the child's life and circumstances. It 

 stands for directness and naturalness. It is astonishing when one comes to think of it, 

 how indirect and how remote from, the lives of pupils much of om education has been. 

 Geography still often begins with the universe, and finally, perhaps, comes down to 

 some concrete and familiar object or scene that the pupil can understand. Arithmetic 

 has to do ivith brokerage and partnerships and partial payments and other things that 

 mean nothing to the child. Botany begins with cells and protoplasm and cryptogams. 

 History deals with political and military affairs, and only rarely comes down to physical 

 facts and to those events that express the real lives of the people; and yet political and 

 social affairs arc only tht results of expressions of the ivay in which people live. Read- 

 ers begin with mere literature or with stories of scenes the child will never see. Of course 

 these statements are meant to be only general, as illustrating what is even yet a great 

 fault in educational methods. There are many exceptions, and these are becoming 

 commoner. Surely, the best education is that which begins with the materials at hand. 

 A child knows a stone before it knows the earth. 



' — L. H. Bailey in "The Nature-Study Idea." 



