object. Any child of three years turned loose in a small space 

 out-of-doors where there is good clean dirt with worms in it, and 

 pebbles, where green things are growing, where the chance cater- 

 pillar and toad and small snake are free to come and go, has 



It is only when the child learns from others that he " must not 

 touch the toad or he will get warts," that the harmless garter- 

 snake is a poisonous reptile, that the caterpillar will bite ; that 

 his faith in nature is shaken, the nature-study atmosphere dark- 

 ened, and the nature-study spirit hampered. 



Dr. M. T. Cook says that in Cuba he frequently gave his one- 

 year-old son small snakes to play with, and the child considered 

 them the most interesting kind of a plaything, until at the age of 

 four he began to run with other children. In a short time the 

 boy became afraid of snakes and is still afraid of them. Profes- 

 sor Hooker, of Mt. Holyoke College, had a little visitor whom 

 she found it hard to entertain, so she brought out some snakes 

 which she called her " little friends." The child was delighted, 

 and played with them happily until she heard some one call them 

 snakes, then dropped them in fear and disgust. 



A child in the first primary grade of the University School for 

 Girls in Chicago brought a tiny leafless twig to her teacher and 

 asked her to use it for the nature-study lesson. The teacher 

 thought it a rather small affair, but a leaf-bud or two offered 

 suggestion, and the teacher held out for what seemed to her a 

 very creditable length of time and then turned with relief to a 

 gay picture of an oriole on the wall. But the children did not 

 want orioles in pictures on the wall ; they wanted a little live 

 twig, and the small girl who had brought it in raised her hand 

 and asked severely, " Why don't you go on with the nature- 

 science ? " 



That which we are to aim for, then, we have at the very be- 

 ginning ; but by the time that the child goes to school he has 

 lost more or less of it, and it is more difficult to restore it' in a 



