124 



The actual treatment of nature study materials is, as above 

 stated, largely utilitarian — necessarily so, since nature study in 

 this scheme leads to elementary agriculture — but the authors' 

 ideal outcome for all the training given by the school through 

 this medium is so broad and so fine that at once the whole system 

 is raised above the merely industrial and acquisitive plane. In 

 the light of this ideal, nature study becomes, let us dare to sug- 

 gest, something better than an "efflorescence of the sciences" 

 — as one eminent man of science phrased it to the present writer. 

 The authors believe firmly in the attainability of this ideal ; and 

 with good reason, as experiments in some parts of the middle 

 west are already beginning to demonstrate. Even those who 

 have looked with some contempt upon the nature study move- 

 ment will probably be able to discern in the following picture 

 the delineation of a condition highly to be desired : " We do not 

 want our country boys," say the authors, " to become merely 

 efficient farmers who have learned to do certain things that they 

 may make more dollars. We want them to be men who realize 

 the larger applications of the laws and principles they are follow- 

 ing, men who see and discriminate, who grasp situations, whb 

 think for themselves, and who have an abiding interest and 

 enthusiasm for their profession, looking upon their fields, orchards, 

 and meadows somewhat as laboratories in which to work out 

 experiments to the end that they may do their work more profita- 

 bly and enjoyably. We would have them men who take a keen 

 pleasure not only in making their soil more productive, and in 

 raising better crops and stock, but quite as much in making the 

 home and its surroundings and the Hfe within it more comfort- 

 able, more interesting, and more beautiful." 



Robert G. Leavjtt 



New York State Normal School, 

 Trenton, New Jersey 



PROCEEDINGS OF THE CLUB 



April 13, 1909 

 The Club met at the American Museum of Natural History 

 at 8:30 p. M. and was called to order by Mr. Charles Louis 



