74 WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY . 
grace and glory of our lives, and we turn from them and go into 
raptures over pigment and pigmy daubs ! 
Back to nature, gentlemen, we must go; back to that nature 
with which you have to do; back to nature, not only for senti¬ 
ment, but for truth and life. Back to her trees, her shrubs, her 
flowers; back to her rocks, her hills, her vales; back from the 
seen to the unseen—from phenomena to processes and laws; 
back from these to the mind and heart of Nature’s God. 
I make then, an appeal to you, gentlemen of the horticultural 
and agricultural societies, to help introduce the study of these sci¬ 
ences, in their elements , in the common schools of the state. Taught 
as they can be taught, they need not and will not crowd out the 
studies now pursued; nor will more studies be introduced than 
our children can successfully master. If instruction is given each 
day orally in the objects of nature (and it may be given in con¬ 
nection with other studies, such as geography), it will rest, as well 
as please and instruct the mind. To teach these elements we 
must have teachers ; that is the first necessity. To have such teach¬ 
ers, the studies must be required by law. Once required, the 
facilities for gaining ihe information desired will be furnished in 
abundance. Already the board of regents of normal schools have 
laid down these studies in the first year of the course in the differ¬ 
ent normal schools of the staie. Teachers’ institutes will supple¬ 
ment the work of the normal schools. Suggestive text-books 
will be issued in respouse to the demand; and the result of the 
experiment, it tried, will be, that teachers will not know less of 
arithmetic and grammar because they are required to know some¬ 
thing of the elements of natural science. 
Wisconsin should fall into line with Ontario, and Illinois, and 
St. Louis, and lead the column of the primary schools of the states 
and the world, as they shall keep step to the music of science in 
her glorious march through the world, and to the stars. 
In this capitol, last December, the county superintendents, 
teachers and friends of education in our state, unanimously ex¬ 
pressed their opinion that the natural sciences, as soon as practi¬ 
cable, should be taught in all our schools. 
A bill has been introduced into the legislature to make these 
studies obligatory upon teachers after January 1, 1874. Let it 
