PRECIPITATION AND VEGETATION 39 



a result of the easier victory over nature in the monsoon regions, 

 which did not produce the same type of ingenuity as was necessi- 

 tated in the West. That the East has been obliged in these later 

 days to come and learn humbly from the West, is perhaps then a 

 consequence of the original difference in the type of rainfall in the 

 two regions. 



This may seem to be a far cry from the study of the local rain- 

 fall, but the object of its insertion is to emphasise once again 

 that in a Nature Study course the study of rainfall as rainfall, 

 as it appears to the meteorologist, is wholly out of place. If the 

 course is to have any logical coherence at all, the study of any 

 one technical problem like rainfall can only find place in so far as it 

 means the study of correlations. The fact that half an inch of 

 rain fell yesterday is only of interest at the Nature Study stage, 

 in that we may use it as a basis for a reasoned consideration of 

 the action and reaction of man and his environment. Without 

 this, and in the necessary absence of the previous knowledge which 

 makes it of importance to the meteorologist, it is a fact of no 

 importance whatever to the child. 



