We have just added to our Public Educational 
Staff Mr. G. Clyde Fisher, a graduate of Johns Hop- 
kins, with a view to still more active coéperation with 
the nature study system of the schools. Our Curator 
of Public Education, Mr. George H. Sherwood, was 
trained in the public schools of Providence, before 
coming to his present position. 
It is absolutely essential that nature study should 
be objective and not from books—in fact, this is the 
distinctive value of nature study. Our circulating 
museums, which now reach over one million pupils, 
are designed to carry as many objects as possible to 
the schools. The children who come here are also 
given opportunities of direct objective study on a 
larger scale. 
At a public hearing of the Committee on Studies and Text- 
Books on February 18, 1913, Mr. George H. Sherwood, 
Curator of the Department of Public Education, represented 
the American Museum and made the following statement of 
the relations of the Museum to the educational system of the 
City and its active participation in the Nature Study work: 
The American Museum of Natural History has 
been from its beginning—thirty-four years ago—a 
strong advocate of Nature Study, and, with the intro- 
duction of this subject in the curriculum of the city 
schools, has placed selections from its wealth of 
material at the disposal of the teachers. 
One of the chief defects in the present course of 
nature study in the New York public schools is the 
lack of provision for supplying the teachers with all 
the necessary material called for in the Syllabus.* 
The ‘‘Syllabus” refers to a veritable host of speci- 
mens, but these can be obtained only at the expendi- 
ture of great energy and ingenuity on the part of the 
teachers. It is no wonder, then, that when nature 
study was introduced into the schools, many of the 
teachers appealed to the Museum, and in this emer- 
gency the Museum came forward and offered its 
assistance. 
With the approval of your superintendents, we 
have developed a system of circulating natural history 
* Course of Study and Syllabuses in Geography, Nature Study and El Science 
for the Elementary Schools of She Clap of Mar Yek. owe af ore 
3 
