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lawn, insect friends and enemies of man, thermometers, stoves, 

 pumps, water systems, weather, soils, the selection, cultivation 

 and marketing of corn, etc., etc. Wild nature, however, is not 

 neglected. General principles of life and of inorganic nature are 

 developed in such measure as the grade of advancement will 

 allow. In the eighth grade the study becomes distinctly scien- 

 tific in form on the side of plant study, for under the word 

 "Botany" appears "observation of the gross anatomy of types 

 of algae, fungi, liverworts, mosses, ferns, conifers, monocots, and 

 dicots." 



In the minds of these authors there is no confusion of nature 

 sentiment, nature fancy, and nature study. The relation of 

 literature to nature study, and of nature study to science and 

 to agriculture are sanely and firmly grasped. Nature study is 

 always to share the scientific spirit, in so far as science is 

 a method of problem solving. Sentiment, the love of nature, 

 which belongs of right to all healthy minded people, should be 

 present as an atmosphere. But it alone is not nature study. 

 Neither is nature study diluted botany, zoology, physics, etc. 

 Poetry may be an aid ; imaginative treatment is often a help when 

 it does not substitute interest in fancy for interest in nature. But 

 above all we must be clear to the fact that tmth itself when clearly 

 discerned is very attractive. 



The intellectual results which the authors believe may be 

 looked for are : A sustained interest in natural objects and the 

 phenomena of nature ; independence in observation and infer- 

 ence ; some conception of what an exact statement means ; some 

 conception of what constitutes proof. Their hopefulness is born 

 of experience with the children themselves. It is surprising and 

 gratifying say they — and the reviewer's experience agrees — to 

 see how rapidly young children learn to hold steadily to what 

 they have seen and to state it without exaggeration or verbiage. 

 " Whole systems of belief and lines of conduct have been con- 

 structed upon a basis of claimed fact which a child in the grades, 

 trained in nature study, could he understand the terminology, 

 would reject without hesitation. An injection of such children 

 in large numbers into any metropolitan community would work a 

 revolution." 



