6 THE AUSTRALIAN NATURALIST. 
? 
the poor little gecko lizard is a “ wood adder” abounding in 
yenom, and should be killed at sight, that lots of people: 
have been killed by the bite of red-tailed spiders, and other 
queer ideas that are just as incorrect. 
Field naturalists are in the first place Nature students, and 
now that the educational authorities are moving in the matter 
and teaching Nature study in the schools, we may hope for a. 
better state of knowledge of common things among both our 
old and young folk, for as Professor Huxley says, ‘Science is. 
only common sense applied to common things.” We may hope 
that under trained teachers the powers of observations will be 
so enlarged that the school children will take an intelligent 
interest in the many wonderful and beautiful things they come 
in daily contact with, and a bird will not be simply a thing to 
throw a stone at, or every spider a “ triantilope.” . 
Here, again, our Society may do good work by bringing both 
metropolitan and country schoolmasters into our ranks. If we 
can only get them to understand that they can avail themselves 
of the services of a number of workers—specialists in the 
different branches of science who can tell them something of 
interest about the specimens they collect, name their sendings, 
and thus supply them with a fund of valuable information that 
they can in turn impart to the small folks under their charge, 
1 think we do not exist in vain. When we have interested the 
‘ teachers our work will travel over every inland town and 
township, to the far away schoolhouse, by creek and lonely 
homestead; and our work does not stop here, for the seed sown 
now will blossom out again on to the next generation. 
This is the true system of Nature study: learn one little fact 
about any common thing, and we invest it with a new interest, 
we open up new fields to thousands of bush children, and fill 
what might otherwise be dull hours with brightness. 
We shall in turn obtain many interesting, and often original, . 
or new facts from the schoolmasters, for they have great: 
opportunities in districts beyond our reach of obtaining’ speci- 
mens and working out the life histories of creatures we only 
know from dead forms. 
Recording the range of the fauna and flora of each district 
before the more delicate forms have succumbed to the advance of 
civilization, is another matter we should take up; the rediscovery 
and record of the exact locality of specimens that were origi- 
nally described with the vague locality, Australia or New 
~ Holland, would be useful work indeed. 
Taking the smaller creatures, such ag insects, while there are 
hundreds described every year, the bulk of them are simply 
bald descriptions of the form, shape and colour of dead speci- 
mens often from single examples. From a systematic point of 
view these may be excellent, but the general reader wants. 
more, and to him a single life history of an insect, tracing out 
