194 THE NATURE STUDY C0URSK. 



proposing questions. Out of every three or four questions or 

 investigations proposed one or more may prove fruitful. A 

 boxful of miscellaneous objects, picked up from time to time, 

 will be found helpful. It may contain a snail's shell, a horse's 

 tooth, a lichi nut, a duck's and a chicken's foot, a feather, a 

 martynia pod, a bottle of pebbles in water, a peanut, a bit of 

 amber, an acorn, a tough fungus, a flint arrowhead, etc. If it 

 should happen some clay that you run short of subject matter 

 to fill the twenty minutes or half-hour devoted to Nature 

 Study take out one of these objects, make remarks, ask 

 questions, and offer suggestions about it in the hope of 

 exciting an interest that you can seize and maintain. 



Object Exhibitions. — Once a month the Nature Study half- 

 hour may be given over to an exhibition of interesting or 

 curious objects. Every child brings something, either his own 

 or a borrowed object, and writes a brief account of it or at 

 least a label for it. Among the articles shown at one such 

 exhibition in a certain school were five kinds of seeds with 

 hooks for dispersion glued on a card, a piece of nickel ore from 

 Sudbury, a bootjack that the child's grandfather had made 

 from a sapling's crutch, a book printed more than two hundred 

 years ago, a rubber bottle, a skate's egg, a watch chain plaited 

 from horse-hair, an ear of corn with purple grains mixed with 

 white grains, a large shell that " echoed the ocean's roar," a 

 photographic picture of high diving, a dandelion that seemed 

 to be two stems and flowers grown together, a weaver's shuttle. 

 On that occasion each child came forward, held up his exhibit 

 and made a little speech about it. After the speeches the 

 articles were laid on their labels on the desks and the children 

 were given liberty to pass around and inspect them. Out of 

 an exercise of this kind the teacher should be able to get a 

 few studies worth pursuing to educative ends. 



Discover the Answer. — Another method of starting or 

 discovering interests is by proposing questions the answers of 



