SEVENTEEN] CONCLUSION 
J. Long says, “The only book to read out of is the 
book of nature herself.’’ Nature, after all, is our 
great educator; books are only translations of what 
is written on the leaves of the big book. 
Professor Whitman, so well known as Director 
of the Marine Biological School, at Woods Holl, 
says that the laboratory has gone as far as it can 
in its research into the problems of life; that we 
must now reach out farther and create “ biological 
> His proposed farm would consist of fields 
and woods and ponds and gardens and orchards 
and brooks — where he could investigate what 
nature has done and is doing at the present mo- 
ment. There is no reason why every country 
home in the land should not be a biological farm 
—a school for the study of life. A country home 
that does not widen the horizon of thought and 
power is a failure. Asa Gray used to speak of the 
trees that filled the Oriskany valley, before his 
residence in boyhood, as his “professors.”” ‘The 
college that he attended was the great amphi- 
theater, circled with orchard-covered hills, and 
everywhere man and nature in harmony. 
The best teacher in the country is the one who 
studies with the child; not one who imparts from a 
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farms.’ 
