collections which are designed to place in the hands 
of the teachers specimens called for in the syllabus 
of nature study. 
The work began in 1903 with ten small cases of 
birds; to-day more than five hundred cabinets, in- 
cluding birds, insects, minerals and woods, are in use 
in the schools. Without expense to the Board of 
Education this material is sent to the very city limits 
—to City Island on the north; to Canarsie and 
Coney Island on the east and south, and to remote 
districts in Staten Island. 
The first year, 1903, only a few thousand children 
studied the collections; last year more than a million 
were reached. The first year fewer than a hundred 
schools were supplied; to-day there are nearly five 
hundred on our list. 
The Trustees devote from $10,000 to $15,000 a 
year of their funds to this work and are prepared to 
further extend it. 
As already stated, the work is carried on without 
expense to the Board of Education and is quite out- 
side of any obligation imposed on the Museum by its 
contract with the City, but the Trustees believe that 
the primary function of the Museum is educational 
and are very glad to codperate with the public school 
system in this way. 
As to the practical results of this nature study, 
the principals and teachers are far better qualified to 
judge than are we, but we do see the results in in- 
creasing attendance at the Museum; in the large 
numbers of children that may be seen almost daily in 
the exhibition halls; and in the return of these 
children, with their parents, on holidays and Sundays. 
We are firm believers in nature study. It stimu- 
lates the imagination; it exercises all the special 
senses—hearing, taste, sight, smell and touch; it is 
especially suited to developing independent judg- 
ment, the correctness of which can be tested. In all 
instruction from books, the child is dependent upon 
the authority of others. Nature study develops in 
the child a keen sympathy for all living things; and, 
most important of all, there is no subject so well 
suited to training the powers of accurate observation. 
4 
