44 NATURE STUDY AND AGRICULTURE 



When an outline becomes filled up with the records of such 

 experiences, it becomes very much more valuable. 



The worst phase of the outline danger, however, is the 

 use of a borrowed one. This means that a scheme of work 

 constructed for one neighborhood is applied to another, 

 and it can hardly fail to be somewhat a misfit. The school 

 of a teacher in the Central West was visited. The town 

 was small and surrounded almost completely by a mag- 

 nificent forest. In her eager search for instruction and an 

 outline for nature study, the teacher had gone far afield, 

 attending a summer course given on the Atlantic coast and 

 securing an Atlantic coast outline. On the day of the visit 

 the class was observing seaweeds! They had been ob- 

 tained, with great trouble, from the fish market of a 

 neighboring city, being the sad and broken sort of sea- 

 weeds that come as packing. They were slimy and form- 

 less masses, entirely foreign to the experience of every child 

 in the class, or of any fortunate child anywhere. But sea- 

 weeds were in the outline and so they must be observed ; 

 and in this same outline there was not a single tree or forest 

 ^study, the most conspicuous material of the neighborhood ! 

 This is an extreme illustration, but it is a true one. The 

 contrast of regions may not be so striking in every case, but 

 the same lack of fitness may easily appear when a borrowed 

 outline is used. 



Conclusions. All the dangers enumerated above can- 

 not be avoided at every moment of one's progress. The 

 chief thing is to recognize them as dangers, and to eliminate 

 them as rapidly as possible. A thoroughly good course in 

 nature study, one that includes all the advantages and avoids 

 all the dangers, is a thing of slow construction; and per- 



