been clear and deep, has come through their senses, 

 alert and wide awake, because of their interest. Nature 

 study will never succeed until and unless the child is 

 interested. Interest is not the end, but a means to a 

 much higher end. I would give as a second guiding 

 principle : keep the child interested. If interest lags, 

 something is wrong. Material or method is not adapt- 

 ed to your pupils. Change them. 



A third guiding principle which, as I have said, has 

 been most deeply impressed upon me by an experience 

 full of mistakes, many of j'ou, doubtless, educated with 

 and through and by the child, have long recognized. 

 In the elementary school, and I am firmly convinced, 

 as a result of experiment, in the secondary school also, 

 nature must be approached from the standpoint of life 

 and action, of function and work. The world that 

 appeals to the little child is the world of action and 

 movement. Nature study for the younger children 

 must be entirely a study of living nature — for the chil- 

 dren of all grades must begin with life and action. 

 Experience shoAvs that during their first year or two in 

 school children are much more interested in plants and 

 animals than in stones. The children have become 

 enthusiastic in watching the buds unfold and develop 

 leaf and flower, or in observing from day to day (as 

 thousands of our children did this spring) the develop- 

 ment of bean and pea and morning glory, the forma- 

 tion of root and stem and leaf and flower, and finally 

 of pod and seed, until the cycle of life is complete. 

 Even the earthworm, from which the chHdren would at 

 first turn in disgust, became very interesting w^hen they 

 had been led to study its burrows and food, watch its 



