HOW NATURE STUDY SHOULD BE TAUGHT 41 



situation, and partly, perhaps largely, from very 

 force of circumstances. Instruction may be im- 

 parted, but the real educational value to be 

 had in learning of some detail of nature, is about 

 as valuable as to learn the population of some 

 little village a thousand miles distant. Neither 

 fact will be the child's own. The instruction has 

 been given, but the value of the educational prop- 

 erty is not appreciated and is lost. 



There may be a large love of nature, yet wholly 

 unknown because dormant. To suggest a method 

 for the winning of this love is the purpose of this 

 chapter. A love for nature must be won and in- 

 creased by a corresponding love on the part of 

 the teacher, expressed freely and practiced fully. 

 As Barnet Phillips in the preface to " Eye Spy " 

 has it : 



" What I want to discover is the precise time, 

 in the lives of certain boys and girls, when the 

 steel first struck the flint, the spark flew, and out 

 streamed that jet of fire which never afterwards 

 was extinguished." 



William Hamilton Gibson tells us how this was 

 in his boyhood days : 



" I was very young and playing in the woods. 

 I tossed over the fallen leaves, when I came across 



