44 Education through Nature 



taste. Back of all this lies a delicate nervous organ- 

 ization; on which, too, depends intellectual power; 

 both being the result of slow growth amid external 

 forces and influences. 



Back of much of the so-called corrupt imagination 

 of school children lies ignorance. To the pure all 

 natural things are pure. Many adults betray their 

 fearful ignorance by what they regard as shocking 

 to the refined imagination and demoralizing to the 

 moral sense. A thorough course in nature study 

 should be a sure cure, on the one hand, for that squeam- 

 ishness and sickly sentimentalism which pretends to 

 see in the most natural objects and acts a reason for 

 disgust; and on the other, for that sickly and perverted 

 imagination which likes to dwell on vulgar and obscene 

 things. There is nothing that can overcome this so 

 effectively as enlightenment a knowledge of the pure 

 and simple facts. Ghosts lurk in darkness, and hob- 

 goblins are the creatures of ignorance. The pure light 

 of knowledge will disinfect many a filthy nook in the 

 child's mind. It is the mystery hovering around cer- 

 tain natural facts and events which often make them 

 the chief attraction to a child's morbid imagination. 

 Remove the mystery, and the nightmare disappears. 



Considered scientifically, and children can be made 

 to so consider it, there is nothing more beautiful and 

 interesting than the subject of fertilization in flowering 

 plants, and that of cross-fertilization through the 

 medium of insects. A careful presentation of this 

 subject will form a safe bridge on which to lead the 

 pupil to the less flowery fields of fertilization of the 

 animal ovum, and the development of the egg into a 

 chick or a tadpole. A scientific knowledge of these 

 things will dispel the foulness existing in the pupil's 

 mind, rather than in nature, and will make a cleaner 

 person of him. 



Nature study is well suited, also, to elevate the child's 



