The HATURAIIST: 



A Penny Weekly Magazine of Natural History. 



No. 121. FEBEUARY 25th, 1882. Vol. 8. 



NATURAL HISTORY EDU- 

 CATION. 



FEW will dispute that it would be 

 better if some instruction on 

 Natural History were introduced in our 

 National System of Education. In 

 fact the authorities themselves seem 

 aware that it is wanted, for there are 

 few schools in which we do not find 

 hung on the walls, pictures of various 

 animals, with some account of them 

 printed below. Unfortunately, how- 

 ever, those in authority, while they 

 have a sort of general idea that some- 

 thing is wanted, have little idea what 

 it is, and still less how to give it. The 

 pictures most generally seen are horses, 

 cows, sheep, occasionally a camel, an 

 I elephant or a whale. Now there are 

 few children able to go to school that 

 do not know as much or more about 

 most of these creatures than the school 

 authorities propose to tell them. They 

 know a horse when they see it, and 

 know it is used for drawing burdens, 

 for riding, &c., and that it eats grass or 

 hay. They have seen it so used every 

 day of their lives. So too with other 

 animals, and there are few children 

 whose acquaintance with animals does 

 not extend even to elephants and 



camels. Thus it happens that they 

 learn nothing on the subject beyond 

 what they knew before, or would soon 

 have picked up. 



With other matters of far less im- 

 portance, systematic instruction is 

 pushed almost to an extreme. Children 

 who will have no after use for such 

 knowledge learn the names and positions 

 of the mountains, rivers, capes, and 

 what not in all parts of the world ; 

 they learn how many different kind of 

 verbs or nouns there are, and all about 

 the cases, moods, tenses, and various 

 other things that may be all right and 

 necessary perhaps in their way. But 

 this sort of instruction is not of more 

 importance than similiar instruction on 

 Natural History. Why should words 

 be classified, nouns and verbs divided 

 and sub-divided, while the great book 

 of nature is practically closed ? "We do 

 not think there are any great difficulties 

 in the way of what we suggest, and 

 will endeavour to give a few hints as to 

 how it might be carried out. In the 

 first place we would have every school 

 to possess a museum to which the 

 children could have access. Not a mis- 

 cellaneous collection of rubbish from 

 the four quarters of the globe, but a 



