NATURE PORTRAITS. 
PART III. 
SCIENCE FOR SCIENCE’S SAKE. 
The other day I attended a teachers’ convention. 
A demure little woman told of the enthusiasm 
with which her pupils collected butterflies and 
plants, and she described the museum that they 
had made. She showed a folio of mounted plants, 
and a cigar-box containing insects. I admired 
the specimens, and mentally I complimented her 
judgment in finding so good use for such a box. 
The tobacco odor kept the carnivorous bugs 
away, and I also admired the judgment of the 
bugs. There was genuine enthusiasm in the little 
woman’s manner, and I wanted to be a young 
naturalist. When she was talking, I strayed far 
in the fields and picked a dandelion. 
But there was a man in the audience who squelched the little woman. 
Her methods were all wrong. They were worse than wrong : the children 
must unlearn what she had taught them. She should have begun with some 
definite subject, and followed it systematically and logically. The pupil 
must be held to the task day after day, until he masters the topic. To skip 
from subject to subject is to be superficial. It does not result in mental 
drill. To make a collection is only play, and names are vulgar. The pupil 
must be impressed with the immensity and importance of his subject. When 
he was talking, I smelled alcohol and I saw a frog in a museum jar. 
Which was right ? No doubt each was right from the personal point of 
view, but wrong from the other’s point of view. I recalled that the little 
woman only recited what she had done; the man had upbraided her for not 
doing something else. Perhaps it is easy to advise and to criticize. The 
little woman was teaching children. She wanted to lead them to love the 
things they saw. She approached the subject from the human side, for are 
not the boy and the girl a part of what we call nature ? They are not yet 
17 
By L. W. Brownell. 
TREE-FROG. 
