INTRODUCTORY. 



has been successfully introduced into Indiana and has come to 

 many a harrassed and fretful pupil as a welcome recreation. 

 What nature study is and how it may be introduced into schools 

 is admirably outlined in Teacher's Leaflet No. 6 issued by the 

 College of Agriculture of Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. 

 In this leaflet Prof. Bailey says, "The proper objects of Nature 

 study are the things which one oftenest meets. Today it is a 

 stone, tomorrow it is a twig, a bird, an insect, a leaf, a flower. 

 "The child, or even the high school pupil, is first interested in 

 thing; which do not need to b^ analyzed or changed into unusual 

 forms or problems. Therefore problems of chemistry and of 

 physics are for th^ mosl: pirt u isaitibb to ex-rly Isisois i:i nxtur3 

 study; but it is often difficult to secure specimens when needed 

 especially in liberal quantity and still more difficult to see the 

 object in perfectly natural condition. Plants are more easily 

 had and therefore more practicable for the purpose, although 

 animals and minerals should by no means be excluded. 



"If the objects to be studied are informal, the methods of teach- 

 ing" should be the same. If nature-study were made a stated part 

 of a curriculum, its purpose would be defeated. The chiefest 

 difficulty with our present school methods is the neccessary for- 

 mality of the courses and the hours. Tasks are set, and tasks are 

 always lard. The only way to reach nature-study is, with no 

 course laid out, to bring in whatever object may be handy and to 

 set the pupils to looking at it. The pupils do the work, — they see 

 the thing and explain its structure and meaning. The exercise 

 should not he long, not to exceed fifteen minutes at any time crd 

 above all things, the pupil should never look upon it as a recita- 

 tion, and there should never be an examination. It should come 

 as a rest exercise whenever the pupils become listless. Ten min- 

 utes a day, for one term, of a short, sharp, and spicy observation 

 upon plants, for example, is worth more than a whole text book 

 of botany. 



"The teacher should studiously avoid definitions, and the setting 

 of patterns. The old idea of a model flower is a pernicious one, 

 simply because it doss not exist in nature. The model flower, the 

 complete leaf, and the like, are inferences, and pupils should al- 

 ways begin with things and not ideas. In other words the 

 ideas should be suggested by the things, and not the things by the 

 ideas. "Here is a drawing of a model flower," the old method 

 says, ''go and find the nearest approach to it." "Go and find me 

 a flower," is the true method, "and let us see what it is." 



