206 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [17:5— May, 1920 



slide lectures. Fallen Leaf Lake Auditorium was so crowded 

 that late-come listeners stood outside at doors and windows. 

 Meantime the League maintained free at each such resort modest 

 Nature Study Libraries. These enabled guests to check up their 

 field work, whether with mammals, birds, insects, wild flowers, 

 or trees. 



The Tahoe experiment discovered a real human hunger for 

 such knowledge. Even the typical "tired big business man" 

 dropped trout fishing for this other phase of the return to the 

 primitive. 



Director of National Parks Stephen T. Mather was an interested 

 observer. He has always given generously of his private fortune 

 to advance the best use of national parks. This year he has 

 underwritten an enlarged program for Yosemite National Park. 

 It seems probable that the movement, by its own gravitation, will 

 extend to all American national parks. 



Meantime, the first effort, the radiation of the bulletin, con- 

 tinues. The expense is slight. Obtain some scientist to write 

 the bulletins. Have soneone with a newspaper "nose for news," 

 reduce them to newsy form if, as in California, the bulletins are 

 to be published regularly in newspapers and in magazines. Then 

 comes printing and distribution by a good public stenographer 

 with an addressograph. 



The California Nature Study League believes earnestly this 

 experiment makes for better citizenship. 



Scientific education, in this sugar-coated form, tends to lead the 

 young to see accurately, to think clearly. Those who thus 

 acquire accuracy of vision and clarity of thought, on becoming 

 citizens, will be largely propaganda-proof. Nature Study work, 

 therefore, tends to protect our American democracy against 

 noxious propaganda from countries where medieval European 

 ideals dominate. 



Again, the expansion of this nature study in city schools, 

 results in attracting children and adolescents out of the city 

 environment into the health-restoring out-of-doors. Within 

 urban areas recreation only too often takes the form of com- 

 mercialized vice. The League's work builds habits leading city 

 dwellers toward salubrious roadsides and by-paths. Such work is 

 an antidote for certain poisons, the supply of which are largely 

 increasing with the rapidly intensifying congestion in cities. 



