52 
BY THE WAYSIDE 
have determination to overcome the mis¬ 
takes in their own training, good enough 
sense to know that what they themselves 
are most interested in and know most 
about will be the things that will appeal 
to the children with whom they spend 
their days; and a teacher's genuine love 
for God’s work from the stars above to 
the rocks embedded in the earth, is al¬ 
ways reflected in her pupils. 
There may be other books, a good 
many of them, that will help those who 
are ready for them, but a few good books 
will go a long way if we find those that 
are suited to every-day needs; and we 
m 
learn to turn to them as we would ask 
the advice of a human friend. 
This leads me to mention some things 
that we should consider in putting 
nature books into the hands of children. 
Some rather grave mistakes have been 
made in the choice of these books for 
juvenile readers. Sometimes the reading 
matter is of such weak, meaningless char¬ 
acter that we insult the intelligence of 
children when we offer it. All children 
love flowers, trees, squirrels, butterflies, 
but they are not benefitted in any way 
by reading about them the facts that 
they already know or can find out in a 
better way from the living things them¬ 
selves; nor are they instructed nor enter¬ 
tained by such statements as, “The big 
leaves are blankets for the baby ones. 
The babv buds are in the cradles. I am 
Mr. Woodpecker. See my red head and 
my black and white coat.” 
The reading matter about plants and 
animals may be too difficult for children 
as they are not ready to deal with parts 
of liowers and insects and the uses of the 
parts, at least-not through reading of 
them. Sometimes the mistake is made 
of having children read about natural ob¬ 
jects and phenomena which are remote 
from them in distance and foreign to their 
own experiences, while their immediate 
surroundings are left untouched. An in¬ 
land child can hardly profit much through 
reading lessons about the life found on 
the sea coast. 
Some more nature study literature that 
deserves our consideration for its up-to- 
date character is that found in a number 
of our magazines. One might have 
thought that last spring our standard 
magazines were most of them vying with 
each other to present the most attractive 
articles on nature, so many were the good 
things on trees, birds and flowers. Head¬ 
ing the list of nature study magazines is 
Nature Study Review , which came out the 
first of this year. It has a long list of 
able contributers and promises to grow 
constantly more practical and useful to 
the work done in elementary schools. A 
fifty-eent magazine for children, called 
Boys and Girls is published at Ithaca, N. 
Y. St. Nicholas magazine has a nature 
study department ably conducted by E. 
F. Bigelow. A monthly publication de¬ 
voted to plant study is Plant World. It 
is the official organ of the Wild Flower 
Preservation Societv of America. A good 
bird magaline is American' Ornithology , 
and another well known in this part of 
the country is Birds and Nature published 
in Chicago. Then we have our little 
Wisconsin publication, By The Wayside. 
Many helpful bulletins are issued by 
the Agricultural Department at Washing¬ 
ton, a number of which may be obtained 
without cost by applying to the Secretary 
of Agriculture. Some of these are “The 
Usefulness of the American Toad,” 
“Weeds Used in Medicine,” “The Care of 
School Grounds,” and “The Fruit Gar¬ 
den.” 
Nature study literature is not all for 
information, or at least there is a large 
