QUEKR WAYS OF WARRING. 
81 
helps us to a better apprehension of the true proportion of 
things, broadens the horizon of our thought, and helps us 
to a more intelligent reverence for the Creator and the 
laws that govern the works of His hand. 
Happily there is less need now than formerly of demon¬ 
strating the value of nature study. That it does something 
more than merely keep children ‘ ‘ out of mischief, ’ ’ that it 
helps wonderfully to develop the perceptive faculties, that 
it has a solid, practical, even a money value, if one must 
have it so, in fitting children for their life work, is now, to 
some extent, admitted. There are parents, uncles, aunts, 
teachers, everywhere who would gladly help the work 
along, but the question with them is how to begin. In 
the schools the answer is being gradually worked out; the 
text-books are being improved, and more schools are re¬ 
quiring that something shall be done in this direction. 
But with the curriculum already crowded, this work must 
be limited, and the problem still remains as to how it may 
be helped forward in the home. 
. The first step is to learn to make simple and easy use of 
objects near at hand. It was once generally assumed that 
objects of natural history, to be of interest, must be rare or 
from far away ; but nature study teaches otherwise. It 
opens our eyes and awakens interest in countless objects 
at our very door. A good illustration is offered by the 
snails and their cousins, the slugs. They are almost every¬ 
where. The slugs abound under boards and leaves in old 
city gardens as well as on mushrooms and other plants in 
the fields; land snails may be found in any grove of maple, 
beech or oak, beneath the leaves and rotten wood; fresh 
water snails of many kinds may be gathered in any quantity 
desired by dragging a dipper or net among the weeds and 
grasses in brooks and pools, or by dredging the mud at the 
margins of ponds. The land snails and slugs may be kept 
for a long time in a box filled with damp, decaying wood 
and leaves, the water snails in glass jars, 
