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 cooperate 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. 



