The Home Counties Nature-Study Exhibition. 213 
THE HOME COUNTIES NATURE-STUDY EXHIBITION. 
N ATURE-STUDY ” has “ caught on,” there can be no ques¬ 
tion of that. It may he sneered at by the superior person 
as a fad, but in scores of schools throughout the country, teachers 
are now busily engaged, each according to his or her lights, in 
trying to interest children in looking intelligently at natural objects, 
and in recording what they see in words and by pencil, brush or 
camera. That this is an enormous advance on the old state of 
things in which nature was either ignored, or so-called science was 
taught to children more or less by rote from frequently inaccurate 
text-books, can hardly be doubted. At the same time, as in the case 
of every form of activity which has the force of a popular 
“movement” behind it, the very enthusiasm with which it is taken 
up leads some of its devotees into mistaken paths. 
The recent exhibition at Burlington Gardens was most 
interesting to the teacher of botany, as illustrating both the 
excellent work that can be done along “Nature-Study” lines and 
the dangers which beset the enthusiastic teacher. 
The exhibition was organized by “ The Middlesex Field Club 
and Nature-Study Society” and delegates from “The Selborne 
Society;” the exhibits all came from the Home Counties, taken in 
rather a wide sense. They came from all grades of educational 
institutions ranging from primary schools to institutions of the type 
of University Colleges, and included some from Field Clubs and 
from individuals interested in nature-study. 
The first room was largely occupied by exhibits from primary 
schools. What can be done for quite tiny children in a London 
school by bringing natural objects to them was well illustrated by the 
exhibits from the Christ Church Endowed Infant School at Black- 
friars. Various living animals such as a snake, a rat, a tortoise, 
etc., kept by the children in cases made by the staff, charts recording 
weather, wind, sun, etc., kept by the children, were shewn. Whether 
the so-called “co-relation schemes” in which a lesson on a natural 
object is illustrated by a picture, a story, a poem, etc., an attempt 
we suppose, to bring all the child’s faculties into play in relation to 
the object, is a wise method, when the illustrations must necessarily 
often be rather third-rate, and the connexion not infrequently an 
artificial one, we leave the psychologist and the practical teacher of 
infants to discuss. In any case it hardly falls properly within the 
