Professor Thomson's Address 133 



during its first five plastic years, when it gets its first 

 impressions — how deep and lasting, who shall say? — 

 of the spring flowers, the summer heat, the harvesting, 

 and the birds in the snow. I firmly believe that there 

 is profound biological and educational truth in Walt 

 Whitman's poem of " Appreciations " : " There was a 

 child who went forth every day, and what he saw 

 became part of him for a day, or a month, or a year, 

 or a stretching cycle of years ". As Blackmore says 

 in one of his novels: "It's the thousand winks of 

 childhood that widen into one clear dream of age". 



In the third place, the seasonal method of study is 

 in correspondence with the grip which the seasons 

 have upon us all — physiologically and psychologically 

 — especially in the country. Our life is rhythmic, 

 and it is punctuated by the seasons. The trajectory 

 of our year's life is not uninfluenced by the curve of 

 the biosphere around us, and by the still wider sweep 

 of the cosmosphere which is around all. " As is the 

 world on the banks," as Matthew Arnold said, "so 

 is the mind of man"; and the impressionable child 

 mind is at any given time most likely to be educated 

 along lines which are in harmony with the actual 

 aspect of nature around it. 



In the fourth place, the seasonal method of study — 

 primitive for the race and for the individual, justified 

 physiologically and psychologically as sound, works 

 well in practice. It has the particular advantage of 

 being always relevant to what the pupils are seeing 

 and feeling out of school. It facilitates the most 

 desirable co-operation of the class after hours and 

 on holiday rambles in securing appropriate specimens 

 for actual work. It links itself naturally to concurrent 



