12 THE NATURE STUDY COURSE. 



little value, and were even thought to act as a chill to the 

 spontaneous interests of the children. Dr. Bigelow argues 

 that the drawing and writing may be carried to the extent of 

 annihilation of the Nature Study. But the majority will 

 agree with Prof. Jackman that " appropriate and adequate 

 expression is indispensable" to the best results in Nature 

 Study, and further that "it is of the greatest importance 

 that the expression shall be preserved," if it be of a kind 

 that can be preserved. 



Exhaustive expression involves several arts. A learner's 

 enthusiasm may be chilled if he is compelled to express 

 himself by a mode that he uses with difficulty. But the 

 child who has seen or done something in which he is interested 

 naturally desires to give expression to his experience, and just 

 here the competent teacher will see and use his opportunity 

 to teach now one and now another of the arts of reading, 

 writing, spelling, composition, color-work, or modelling in 

 clay, card or wood, according to the suitability of all the 

 circumstances. 



For example, the children interested in the ground-bird's 

 nest, referred to on page 6, will take pleasure in describing the 

 nest and the bird by speech, in writing a composition relating 

 the circumstances under which the nest was found and how the 

 bird's name was learned, modelling the nest and eggs in clay, 

 coloring the drawings of the eggs and of the bird, imitating 

 the bird's song, writing a petition to the farmer to spare the 

 nest when reaping-day arrives if the fledglings have not 

 left it, making a diary of the events in the life of* the bird- 

 family, reading good prose or poetical literature relating to 

 the bob-o'-link, and finally composing all their observations, 

 drawings, color-work and conclusions into a neat systematic 

 record worthy of preservation in their "Nature Study books." 

 Imagine the zest with which they would then study Bryant's 

 "Robert of Lincoln" in their reading-books! In all these 



