24 NATURE STUDY AND LIFE 



admitted to the nature-study course. Will it form or 

 help to form an important, lifelong interest, — an interest 

 not technical or superficial, touching life only on the sur- 

 face, here and there and at long intervals, but one that 

 lies close to the heart, to the home, and to all that makes 

 life worth living ? The value of such an interest is inesti- 

 mable. It may add a sparkle to the eye, elasticity to the 

 step, and a glow to every heart beat, and be the most 

 efficient safeguard against idleness and waste of time, 

 evil, and temptation of every sort. The love of some- 

 thing worthy and ennobling is a passport the world over, 

 for "All the world loves a lover." To find such an inter- 

 est in some worthy nature-love is to discover the fountain 

 of youth. 



Nature is the great mother of such interests, and in pro- 

 portion as education becomes thus alive and active, nature 

 study must form a prominent factor in the curriculum. 

 What is there for the whole child — hands, feet, eyes, 

 ears and brain, mind and soul — to work with actively, 

 except phenomena of nature, responses to which have 

 constituted the chief education of living forms through 

 all time.' Language has grown up out of and around 

 the things of nature to such an extent that even our 

 common-school reading and writing is little more than a 

 hollow mockery without the fundamental nature study to 

 give it life and content ; and much of our best literature 

 must fail to be appreciated if its allusions to nature are 

 not properly sensed. 



When we consider that the Engis skull is a "well-shaped 

 average human skull," indicating an average European 

 brain of the present, and when we think that Nature 



