400 NATURE-STUDY 



first 3'ear, the next year a few new ones, and so on. In 

 this way the child will have a knowledge of quite a Ust of 

 trees or flowers when he is through with the eighth grade. 

 But this can only be done by the different teachers agreeing 

 among themselves what to teach — generally entirely out of 

 the question — or else by adhering more or less closely to a 

 well-arranged outline, planned by some one who had in mind 

 the requirements of the whole course. Where there is a 

 supervisor of the nature-study, or where the superintendent 

 makes such a course, nature-study is generally efficiently 

 taught. Unfortunately, there is not enough such super- 

 vision. We would not think of teaching our arithmetic 

 without organizing it into a graded course. Tradition and 

 long experience with this subject have evolved some kind of 

 system in it, and it has been formulated into text-books. 

 Nature-study is still in the transitional stage, largely unor- 

 ganized and not taught with a book. Of course, this is in 

 a measure an advantage, but it makes it difficult to get defi- 

 nite results. The course presented here is a contribution 

 toward the organizing of this great mass of nature material. 

 It is a suggestion rather than a solution. 



We have an embarrassment of riches in nature-study, and 

 the problem in making out a course is as much one of elimi- 

 nation as one of selection of material. The guiding prin- 

 ciples in the selection of this course have been the natural 

 interests of the child in his home and neighborhood envi- 

 ronment, the social motive, and the principle of correlation. 

 The nature-work is closely correlated with geography. In 

 fact in the primary grades no attempt is made to distinguish 

 between the two subjects. Likewise, much of the nature 

 material suggested is also historical, for example, the life 



