NATURE STUDY. 
46 
that follows or precedes it may be across the continent, be¬ 
yond the sea, or buried in the rocks. The complete chain 
can be found only in the museums or in the books, and he 
takes less pleasure in either than in the fields and woods 
and brooks of his own little world, where the “ links ” that 
we discuss so gravely are in a delightful jumble—the chain 
of development having been broken in pieces ages ago, but 
the fragments still in profusion all around him. 
It is refreshing to observe the matter-of-fact way in which 
a healthy boy, after watching the beetles scurry away from 
the overturned body of a dead snake, will turn to the con¬ 
templation of the grace and beauty of a milkweed butter¬ 
fly. He does not care how far apart the beetle and the but¬ 
terfly are in the scheme of development, or whether the 
snake has a place in the scheme at all. Gula sutures and 
subcostal veins are all the same to him—that is, nothing to 
him ; and it is just as well, for the present. Some day the 
mighty wonder of the order of the universe will dawn upon 
him, and with all the more force, delight and awe if he has 
not been made weary before he was able to comprehend. 
We shall do well, when going abroad with the children, 
to leave our speculations, if not most of our learning, at 
home. 
We sometimes talk complacently of the desirability of 
interesting children in nature study, when, in very truth 
it is ourselves who need the lesson. We have, perhaps un¬ 
avoidably, become so overwhelmed with business, encrust¬ 
ed with conventionality, that nowhere else in all human 
experience is a great truth, spoken long ago, so strikingly 
illustrated. In the fields and by the brooks, “a little child 
shall lead them.” If we are wise we will follow. 
In these August days, there is no more wholesome, soul 
strengthening, body restoring place for us than by the 
shore of the brook, river or pond, with the children along 
