The Audubon Societies 367 



curricula? Are you quite sure that you are converting the raw material of 

 youth into citizenship of vision, a sense of duty, responsibility, creative thought 

 and spiritual understanding? Are you teaching children the value instead of 

 the dread of laws, the inevitableness of the results of transgression instead of 

 fear of those results? This is not a sermon nor is it intended to be one. It is 

 a plea for the highest standards of education by means of the application 

 throughout the world of knowledge to human welfare. 



Especially urgent at this time seems the need of training with regard to 

 the relation between natural resources and human welfare. On every hand we 

 are asked to conserve without always understanding the reason. A carefully 

 prepared brochure from the Conservation Department of the General Federa- 

 tion of Women's Clubs states that "these resources touch every phase of our 

 national and individual life at some point of contact," and "that they are vitally 

 essential to the prosecution of the war." Enumerating soil, forestry, water- 

 ways, water-power, minerals, natural scenery, birds and flowers and wild 

 animal life, as well as related matters such as good roads and the planting of 

 the Lincoln Highway, food production and the conservation of human as well 

 as material resources, an appeal is made for a "practical, comprehensive study 

 of nature as a formal part of the public school course," on the ground that 

 "in children, the study of natural objects of the outdoor world is essential to 

 a well-balanced, rational mental development." 



The opportunity to broaden our educational basis is certainly at hand, and 

 not alone boards of education, but you and I, as citizens and as members of 

 societies for the betterment of conditions, should stand ready to help this 

 movement. Audubon Societies are particularly responsible in this matter of 

 conservation and education for present needs and future demands. — A. H. W. 



JUNIOR AUDUBON WORK 



For Teachers and Pupils 



Exercise XLI: Correlated with Geography, Elementary Agriculture, 



and Conservation 



A striking example of the need of some imperative necessity to awaken us 

 to the possibilities within our grasp is the relation of the war to agriculture and 

 conservation of resources. In 1898 a report of existing conditions in the United 

 States showed that "for several years prior to 1897 the price of wheat in the 

 North and West was so low as hardly to cover the cost of harvesting, while in 

 the southern states not enough was raised for local consumption," so tha.t the 

 price was more than double in that section of the country. At the same time, 

 cotton, the staple crop of the South, was so low in price as "to yield no profit," 

 while wheat was so high "that if a fair division of acreage had been made 



