Mr. Rose's Address 207 



Such theorists must not expect the teacher to fall 

 in with any such suggestion. 



The whole thing would soon assume the aspect of 

 a fraud in a boy's mind. 



The enjoyment, and possibly the benefit, to him 

 of his ramble is in direct proportion to its freedom 

 from consequent essay writing. 



If he hates arithmetic, squeezing a sum for him out 

 of an oak-tree will not make him love the arithmetic 

 more. It will probably decrease his respect for the tree. 



Correlation and co-ordination have their limits and 

 their pitfalls, and most teachers will prefer to keep 

 Nature-study for the unalloyed enjoyment of their 

 scholars, and will not allow it to waste its beauty and 

 its usefulness by dribbling away in bifurcations here, 

 there, and everywhere. 



But having decided what shall be the main channel 

 of enquiry into Nature's secrets, the teacher will 

 descend from his rostrum and start to rediscover the 

 old things with his scholars' eyes and ears. 



And the recurrent joy will never wane for him. 



The cunningly-packed beech-mast bursting into 

 wrinkled loveliness of vernal green, the crimson star- 

 stigma on the hazel-twig, the silver gleam that betrays 

 the sand-hidden bivalve as it opens its twin canals in 

 the shallow sun-warmed sea-water, the capture of the 

 resting, gaudy dragon-fly, the fragile, fleeting snow 

 crystal caught upon a school-boy's sleeve, the perfect 

 equipose of unequal weights upon the balanced beam, 

 the line of tender seedling shoots which marks the start- 

 ing of the season's garden crops — be it what it may, 

 that which brings profitable delight to the scholar will 

 bring perennial pleasure to the teacher guide. 



