12 HOW NATURE STUDY SHOULD BE TAUGHT 



instructors in nature study, and try to see our- 

 selves as others see us. 



John Burroughs' writings have been so read, 

 memorized, and recited in the schoolroom, that 

 he must surely have a good opinion of our nature- 

 study work. Listen to the glowing terms in 

 which he commends the labors of those who use 

 his writings : 



Not long since, in a high school in one of our large cities, 

 I saw a class of boys and girls studying Nature after this 

 cold-blooded and analytic fashion : They were fingering and 

 dissecting some of the lower sea forms, and appeared to find 

 it uninteresting business, as I am sure I should have done. 

 If there was a country boy among them, I am sure the 

 knowledge of Nature he had gathered on the farm was 

 worth a hundred-fold for human purposes, or the larger 

 purposes of science, all this biological chaff. Of the books 

 upon Nature Study that are now issuing from the press, to 

 meet this fancied want in the schools, very few of them, ac- 

 cording to my thinking, are worth the paper they are printed 

 upon. They are dead, dead, and neither excite curiosity nor 

 stimulate observation. 



John Burroughs has written this to me : 



I should have said in my Outlook paper that I would, by 

 all means teach the young people the elements of the great 

 sciences — ^geology, astronomy, and chemistry. They are 

 broadening and freeing, especially the two former. They 

 enlarge the whole mental horizon. I would also inculcate 

 the scientific habit of mind, accuracy of observation, care in 

 reading conclusions, etc. Darwin is full of good lessons in 

 this direction. But I would not encourage the young people 



