4 THIS NATURE STUDY COURSE. 



analogous to interest. Appetite for a particular food is an 

 indication that the healthy body is prepared to assimilate it. 

 Natural interest is an equally reliable indicator of the appro- 

 priateness of a particular kind of mental nourishment. In 

 Dr. Gordy's introduction to Dr. Bigelow's book — "How 

 Nature Study should be Taught " — he says that the author 

 never tires of insisting upon the difference between elemen- 

 tary science and Nature Study, that the concentration of the 

 attention upon the universal aspects (the class relations) of 

 objects is an entirely different thing from the concentration of 

 the attention upon an object as a whole, upon those charac- 

 teristics which make it an individual. "We have been 

 studying dead things so long, dissecting and analyzing 

 type-forms, that we have well-nigh gone blind to the 

 living side of Nature." — Hodge. "Nature Study is the 

 creating and the increasing of a loving acquaintance with 

 nature." — Bigelow. "The educational value of Nature Study 

 lies in its power to add to our capacity of appreciation — our 

 love and enjoyment of all open-air objects," — John Burroughs. 

 "All other efforts in education are futile till you have taught 

 your people to love fields, birds and flowers." — John Buskin. 

 " To put the pupil in a sympathetic attitude toward nature 

 for the purpose of increasing the joy of living." — L. II. Bailey. 



The writers quoted emphasize Nature Study as a means of 

 developing the emotional nature, and it would be worth while 

 pursuing it even if that view exhausted the ground. The 

 scientific interest in nature and the esthetic interest are dis- 

 tinctly different, but fortunately they are not incompatible. 

 Nature Study, rightly taught, is as good for the intellect as 

 for the emotions, and it touches the volitional and physical 

 powers at more points than most other school studies do. 

 Interest is the touchstone that determines whether or not a 

 particular topic or subject shall be introduced. But children's 

 interests though real and widely varied are fickle. It is com- 



