MAL 
 
THE LIBRAE OF WE 
 
 DEC 9.-193 
 
 iWERSlTY OF iLLiNOlS 
 
 NORMAL SCHOOL QUARTERLY 
 
 Published by the Illinois State Normal University, Normal, Illinois 
 
 Series 3 October, 1904 Number 13 
 
 Nature Study in its Practical Bearings. 
 
 In the preface to his excellent book, Principles of Agriculture, 
 Bailey says, "A book like this should be used only by persons who 
 know how to observe. The starting point in the teaching of agricul- 
 ture is nature study." Again he says, "The purpose of [agricultural] 
 education is often misunderstood by both teachers and farmers. Its 
 purpose is to improve the farmer, not the farm. If the person is 
 
 aroused, the farm is likely to be awakened If the educated 
 
 farmer raises no more wheat or cotton than his uneducated neighbor, 
 his education is nevertheless worth the cost, for his mind is open to a 
 thousand influences of which the other knows nothing. One's happi- 
 ness depends less on bushels of corn than on entertaining thoughts." 
 It is evident that no amount of agricultural precept will reveal to an 
 unobservant man what is going on about him. Our first duty, there- 
 fore, plainly lies in teaching how to see, how to reason from what is 
 seen, and to love and appreciate natural things. This is nature study, 
 and the training it gives is good for living as well as for farming. It 
 is to set forth this relation of nature study to agriculture and life, 
 and to call attention to the desirability and practicability of ex- 
 tending its influence thruout our Illinois schools, that this paper is 
 written. 
 
The Normal School Quarterly. 
 
 The Bureau of Statistics shows that the value of the principal 
 agricultural crops in the United States during 1903 was $3,200- 
 000,000, while that of all manufactured articles was less than one 
 billion dollars. This indicates that over 75 per cent of our creative 
 livelihood still comes from the farm, from intimate contact with 
 plants and with the soil. Nowadays we hear much of an education 
 for the life that one is to live. Yet the cultivation of intelligence 
 directly necessary to maintain this tremendous industrial activity is 
 dependent upon a few agricultural colleges, experiment station bul- 
 letins, and institute instructors, plus the precarious transmission of 
 methods from father to son. That this is far from adequate is shown 
 on every hand. The farmer boy doesn't like to spend the money nec- 
 essary to take him to college. The bulletins are ineffective because 
 he doesn't understand experimental methods and because he is often 
 unfamiliar with the objects considered, altho they may be surround- 
 ing him daily. The consequence is that thousands of men go on, 
 daily and yearly repeating mistakes that might easily be corrected 
 if they only knew of the available literature and could really 
 read it. 
 
 The failures and losses due to this destructive ignorance are 
 enormous. In our own state, according to Professor Forbes, "The 
 insects alone probably derive as large a profit from the agriculture 
 as do the farmers themselves. They cost us at least half as much as 
 the whole system of public schools, and a very large percentage of 
 this great loss might certainly be prevented, if we could bring 
 the economic facts of this one department into the store of common 
 knowledge at the command of every pupil in town and country 
 school. That we fall far short of this requirement is evident. The 
 Hessian fly is not known at sight in the adult stage or in the main 
 features of its biography to one in hundreds of those who suffer 
 pitifully from its ravages/' He might have said the same thing 
 about the codlin-moth, the army worm, the May beetle, and sev- 
 
Nature Study in its Practical Bearings, 
 
 eral other ravenous insects. It is conservatively estimated that a 
 tenth of all our crops is lost to insects — a yearly loss that would 
 make millionaires of more than three hundred of us per year — not 
 to mention their influence in the conveyance of disease and of un- 
 happiness generally. 
 
 On the other hand if we look into the lives of another group of 
 our animal contemporaries and recall the record of Professor Tread- 
 weir's young robins, which daily required their own weight of insects 
 to prevent actual starvation ; and if we recall the calculations of the 
 Department of Agriculture to the effect that every toad in our 
 garden is worth $19.80 per season, because of the insects, cabbage 
 "worms" and slugs that it eats, we may begin to see the value of dis- 
 criminating between our friends and foes, of seeking out and encour- 
 aging the one, among birds and insects and every living thing, and 
 of discouraging the other. Who will care if the robin does take a few 
 cherries later in the season, when he knows what a powerful ally it 
 has been in protecting the crops against possibly pints of voracious 
 insect larvae ? And yet we still see the small boy out on all possible 
 occasions stoning the toads or practising with his new gun, and 
 improving his marksmanship at the expense of the downy or the 
 hairy woodpecker that never ate any of his fruit but was giving its 
 strength to ridding his apple tr£es of the codlin-moth and destruc- 
 tive borers. And his excuse, when he has one, is that it was only an 
 old sap-sucker. 
 
 But the industrial waste and mistaken effort, which thus di- 
 rectly affect more than half of our earning capacity as a nation, 
 are not our only failings. Few people get the pleasure out of life 
 that the all-wise Creator designed that they should. We go thru too 
 much of life with our ears and eyes closed. Why should Indiana be 
 now publicly urging its boys to remain in the country and shun the 
 city ? Why should men be sending off to mid- Africa for plants and 
 shrubs to decorate their homes, wasting their time and money in try- 
 
The Normal School Quarterly. 
 
 ing to keep them up in their unnatural surroundings, when nearly 
 every road-side and woodland contains many of our own plants that 
 are fully equal in beauty and vastly better fitted for life here, but are 
 passed by under the name of weeds ? Why should many of our inval- 
 uable bits of natural scenery be continually torn up and "improved" 
 for financial purposes ? Why should it practically require an armed 
 guard to prevent one of our stateliest and most venerable objects of 
 national pride, the giant sequoias in California, from being splin- 
 tered into pickets for grape arbors ? In most cases it is because the 
 actual value of the country and of its common familiar objects is 
 not known. Our education leads away from the woods and fields and 
 waters, the atmosphere of our main occupation, instead of toward 
 them. In Forbes's words again, "One's resources of enjoyment be- 
 come so narrowed that he is often an object of pity when seen away 
 from the city street. The ordinary tourist in our national park — one 
 of the loveliest spots on earth — rushes from hot springs to geyser 
 and from geyser to canon and away again behind six-horse teams, 
 often grumbling then that there is not a locomotive to whisk him 
 about; and if he lingers at all by that lovely wayside, it is only to 
 fish." To how many of us will these words apply ? How many of us 
 have uncles or cousins or at least neighbors who go touring in just 
 this way, who went thru the Chicago exposition thus, and repeated 
 the performance at St. Louis, all because they have lost the power of 
 intelligent enjoyment of things beyond their own little spheres? 
 
 With these industrial and esthetic conditions of our daily life 
 before us, the question narrows down to how they may best be met. 
 Very evidently this must be thru the rising generation. The first 
 course in our chimney must be laid at the bottom. We need a quick- 
 ening towards nature in the country and among the children, not 
 simply in a few colleges and universities, and among a few nature 
 lovers of the city. We need something that will keep us open-minded 
 and whole-souled; something that will enable us to become more 
 
Nature Study in its Practical Bearings. 
 
 effective citizens because more intelligent in our command of those 
 forces relating to the common things of life. These functions and 
 more, we claim for nature study. It gives the child the means of 
 health; it emancipates him from fear and superstition; it keeps 
 his mind pure by giving it a healthy and natural content; and, as 
 Professor Jackman puts it, "It should lead him to look things 
 squarely in the face, to get at genuine values — neither over nor un- 
 der — and to be moral from principle." 
 
 To accomplish these results we must keep our work balanced. 
 It is very true that there has been too much fad and unattached 
 emotion in what has been called nature study. But where the subject 
 has been entered into at all and has become anything more than 
 another cram and book study with little or no observation of any 
 sort, it has been beset with a new danger, that of undue emphasis on a 
 single phase, to the detriment of many other equally valuable things. 
 The aim of nature study is simple enough. Mrs. Comstock puts it, 
 "as primarily to cultivate the child's power of observation and to 
 put him in sympathy with outdoor life." Bailey's chapter in The 
 Nature Study Idea reduced to its lowest terms, defines it as an at- 
 tempt to relate education directly to the life that the pupil is to live. 
 It is to give him an intelligent sympathy with nature and his en- 
 vironment, to the end that his life may be stronger and more 
 resourceful. Hodge in Nature Study and Life defines it as "learning 
 those things in nature that are best worth knowing to the end of 
 
 doing those things that make life most worth living What 
 
 things are best worth knowing is [shown] by the relations toward 
 nature that the human race has found necessary and valuable to 
 develop." These relations at first are mainly biological, including 
 the mastery of animals and plants. 
 
 The keynotes to the first two views are power to see, and sym- 
 pathy; to the third, the keynote is industrial improvement; and at 
 Columbia University it is apparently the educational value that 
 
The Normal School Quarterly. 
 
 is uppermost. Each one no doubt recognizes the validity of the 
 claims of the others, and emphasizes the most important phase 
 from his point of view. But from our point of view, it seems that 
 we should be after all these values. They are mutually bene- 
 ficial — symbiotic, in technical terms — and there is danger of 
 losing the whole coalition if we emphasize one of the symbionts 
 to the exclusion of the others. The man who pins his faith to 
 any single phase will fail to get permanent results. Bringing this 
 to earth, it follows that a boy is not likely even to begin raising 
 chickens, much less to become proficient in it 3 unless he becomes 
 interested in the life of the chicken, knows something of its rela- 
 tions to comfort and disease, and sees the advantage of putting 
 his ideas into practice. 
 
 As to what we should study in nature work, we say the whole 
 natural environment within the reach of the child. Everything 
 the Creator has made is worthy of our serious and continued study. 
 That was the idea that controlled Agassiz and that has controlled 
 all his famous pupils to this day. And we have done a great thing 
 if we can impress the child with this fact. He will never be out of 
 something to do. Of course, in the limited time of the classroom, 
 selections must be made bringing out the best that is in the en- 
 vironment; but they should be clearly seen as only selections, and 
 by no means the only objects worthy of our attention. The work 
 should fit the season and locality, have definite trend, and run at 
 least thru one year, or thru all the grades. We would make the 
 emphasis largely biological in the fall, meteorological and physical 
 in the winter, and geological and agricultural in the spring; the 
 bearing upon the needs of actual life always being considered. The 
 character of the agricultural work has been well presented by Presi- 
 dent Felmley in the Normal School Quarterly for January, 1903. 
 This work should give scientific insight into the fundamental farm 
 processes. We believe with Bailey that it is the fundamentals and 
 
Nature Study in its Practical Bearings, 
 
 principles of farming instead of the incidentals that should get 
 first attention. We do not care to sew on the buttons before cutting 
 out the garment. We should show the why's and how's of soil tillage, 
 of plant propagation and growth, and of animal husbandry. The 
 school garden makes the proper laboratory for the first two phases, 
 and will be abundantly serviceable if properly used. But without a 
 little of the theory and of the understanding mind back of the rak- 
 ing and planting there is a question as to whether work in the 
 garden should not fall in the athletic department, instead of in 
 the academic. 
 
 In biological nature work, the fundamental principle is the 
 study of the whole life of the organism. Processes, activities, rela- 
 tions to environment and to man, ready recognition of friends 
 and foes with proper remedial measures, constitute some of the 
 minor objective points. But following out the main principle, we 
 find rich fields that are being neglected in the less complete plans 
 of work. 
 
 The whole life of plants means from seed to seed, their winter 
 aspects as well as their summer, and includes the wild as well as 
 the domesticated forms. We don't wish to study plants merely 
 when they are at their best, in the height of summer and of flower. 
 We can't sympathize with things until we know something of their 
 vicissitudes, something of the struggle by which they meet this or 
 that assailant. As Mrs. Comstock says, "To study plants only when 
 in blossom is like speaking to your friends only when they are 
 dressed up." We are likely to miss the most interesting phases 
 anyhow, unless we see the plant thru at least one year. The individ- 
 uality maintained in meeting the various conditions of the year 
 is remarkable. Take the one phase, the winter condition of our 
 woody plants. To many people, buds exist only in the spring, and 
 trees stand thru the winter all alike, merely leafless specters. But a 
 closer view shows such difference of buds and twigs, in color, shape, 
 
The Normal School Quarterly. 
 
 covering and arrangement, as to enable them easily to be separated 
 into genera and in nearly all cases into species. In my own work on 
 willows — one of the bugbears of botany — I was able to make out 
 clearer and surer distinctions to the twenty-three species growing 
 around Ithaca, N". Y., than I have yet found in their summer as- 
 pects. The same success is being achieved by Dr. Foxworthy and 
 Dr. Wiegand of Cornell, who are using winter characters in the 
 production of a complete key to our woody plants. 
 
 But our work on plants must not end with simple observation. 
 Observation is only the first step in knowing, and it demands sup- 
 plement by experiment, comparison, generalization and deductive 
 verification. Experiment should be used freely. The pupil must be 
 stimulated to develop skill and ability in growing and propagating 
 plants and in the art of making them comfortable. That is what it 
 all should lead to anyhow. We need more public benefactors in the 
 Horace Greeley sense, — those who can make two blades of grass 
 grow where only one grew before. 
 
 The same principle holds in the study of animals. To study 
 an animal in a single stage for a small part of a single day, is 
 nearly the limit of inadequacy. We know far too little of the wild 
 life around us. We hardly know what animals should, and what 
 should not be exterminated, much less how. We ought to know 
 the whole life stories of our animal contemporaries, wild and do- 
 mestic, their origin upon the earth when possible, the outlines of 
 their history in it, and especially what they are doing around us 
 now both in winter and summer. It is only the complete picture 
 that will satisfy or that will enable us to cope intelligently with our 
 enemies and we should rest with nothing short of it. 
 
 This plan makes us investigators. It organizes our work. It 
 puts the textbook where it belongs — a thing to be used whenever it 
 will further our inquiries, and emphasizes the necessity of getting 
 the living animals where they can be kept under observation. We 
 
Nature Study in its Practical Bearings, 9 
 
 must form collections. We must make aquaria and terraria, and 
 stock them with living forms, making the occupants as comfortable 
 and putting them as nearly into natural conditions as possible. We 
 should form permanent collections to show the life histories, samples 
 of work, and the relations to environment of our native forms. It is 
 no easy task to do this. Eternal vigilance is the price of a good col- 
 lection, as well as of other things. But if properly used its value 
 cannot be over-estimated. A child will read about the transforma- 
 tions of insects and even look at their pictures until he can recite 
 them backwards and forwards, all as a matter of course. But just 
 place a set of forms, from egg to adult, before him and tell him that 
 these things are all the same insect, and note the wonder that spreads 
 over his face, and the animated questions that spring up in the 
 presence of the actual things. Our samples of work, in these collec- 
 tions, should make clear our friends and foes. We can show insects 
 and their destroyed vegetation, injured wood, grain, fruit, meat, fur 
 and cloth; and on the other hand we can show them as friends, 
 scavengers, "cannibals," and slayers of injurious forms. This work 
 need not stop with insects. The earthworm with it cocoon and effect 
 on soil; reptiles and their eggs; birds with nests and eggs, to a 
 limited extent; and toads, frogs, and other Amphibia are full of 
 interest and their doings should be known. 
 
 The imitation of the natural conditions of animals is impor- 
 tant in several ways. One never knows what he is going to discover 
 when he starts out to imitate an animal's surroundings. I suppose 
 I had always known, e. g., that a toad had a warty, granular, and 
 dirty looking back. But of what use such a back could be to him 
 was never clear, until our specimen began to hibernate and to 
 gradually sink away into the sand of a terrarium. When he got 
 down on a level with the surface he stopped, and there was never 
 a better imitation of a sandy surface than that back presented. 
 Our toad could sit there and blink away, seeing without being 
 
10 The Normal School Quarterly. 
 
 seen, occasionally pouncing out to catch a last straying insect be- 
 fore taking his winter nap, and altogether presenting about as 
 comfortable and as unexpected an example of protective resem- 
 blance as I have ever seen. Many caterpillars, katydids and grass- 
 hoppers can also be made much more valuable for study if rnjounted 
 to show their protective colorations. 
 
 Much effective experimental work can be brought to the aid 
 of the observation here, as well as in plants. We can test the 
 strength and athletic powers of insects; the action of kerosene 
 upon young mosquitoes, the effect of poison in checking insect rav- 
 ages ; or we may try to settle the question as to why the earthworms 
 are so plentiful after a rain, by testing their reactions to light, tem- 
 perature, and moisture ; or the question whether the fish swims with 
 fins or tail, by the use of rubber bands . 
 
 Excellent individual investigations may be carried on and re- 
 ported in short essays on local topics, along the lines suggested in 
 Needham/s Outdoor Studies. Also bulletins showing the investiga- 
 tions of others may be reviewed and reported on from time to time, 
 including such topics as "The relation of mosquitoes to health," 
 "Kelation of birds to agriculture," "Structure of the corn kernels," 
 "Corn breeding," and "Maintenance of fertility in Illinois soils." 
 
 These investigations and reviews are generally eye-openers. 
 It is remarkable what can be learned at our very doorsteps. When 
 a bit of feverfew will reveal ants and aphids and ladybugs and 
 aphis-lions robbing, killing, fleeing, hiding, protecting, defending, 
 and rewarding each other with all the earnestness of a life and 
 death struggle, it is not necessary to go to the wilds of Africa, or 
 even to the World's Fair, to get something to see and wonder at. 
 Yet just these things and much more are what did take place sum- 
 mer before last at our doorstep, and probably at thousands of others 
 thruout the country. 
 
Nature Study in its Practical Bearings. 11 
 
 Meager as our knowledge of the common wild animals is, the 
 situation is not much improved when we turn to the domestic side. 
 In spite of the intimate daily contact with many of our domesti- 
 cated animals, how much do we really know about them? How 
 many of us have even a fairly complete and accurate picture of 
 them as they originated and lived in the past? as they live now upon 
 the earth? What native traits and capacities enabled them to suc- 
 ceed in the wild where so many others failed ? What attracted man 
 to their aid and use? What objectionable traits have been elimi- 
 nated? What are their present uses and breeds, over the earth; 
 and how have they been produced? How should they be fed and 
 cared for? How many of us know the majority of these things 
 concerning even one domestic animal? Yet this is only a part of 
 what Professor Forbes believes the study of our domestic animals 
 should bring out. If this plan is applied to the horse, ox, sheep, 
 cat, dog, pig, chicken, and turkey, it is evident that abundant work 
 of a kind very near home, will be provided. To illustrate its work- 
 ings we present a brief outlined study of our most important domes- 
 tic animal, the ox. This study is a modification of some work done 
 under Forbes and Davenport at the University of Illlinois, and the 
 sources used were the works of Schmeil, Darwin, Geikie, and Ly- 
 deker, together with stock records. This is an excellent, practical 
 field for investigation and essay work by some of the older pupils 
 for report to the class. 
 
 THE STORY OF THE OX. 
 
 Far back in the past before there were any people ; before the 
 ice-sheets had swept down from the North ; while mastodons, colos- 
 sal ruminants, fierce carnivora, and troops of rhinoceroses and ele- 
 phants held sway; when it would have been really dangerous to 
 try to live ; in those times which geologists call the Pliocene period, 
 there appeared in Europe a huge, massive, light-colored wild ox. It 
 
12 The Normal School Quarterly. 
 
 appears to have sprung from a race of large antelopes, and it was 
 apparent from the first that it was going to make no mean race in 
 the struggle for life. With its keen sense of sight, smell and hear- 
 ing, the dimmed traces of which remain today in the elongated, 
 horizontal pupils of eyes once bright and beady, in the large, moist 
 nostrils, and in the trumpet-shaped movable ears, it was not easily 
 surprised. When once at bay it plied its sharp horns often fifty 
 inches in span, with a powerful neck and massive strength not 
 soon to be forgotten. Its divided stomach and rough, muscular 
 tongue unimpeded by upper teeth in front, enabled it to sweep in 
 its food with great rapidity and then rush back from the open 
 places to chew it in hiding and at rest, thus saving exposure, 
 energy, and amount of food required to live. 
 
 But this met only its animal assailants. Those more in- 
 sistent dangers of the cold, the storm, the treacherous swamp and 
 miry salt lick and stream were upon it. It met the cold with a 
 heavy coat of hair, the storm with a leathery skin, and the mire 
 with a cloven hoof — a most ingenious device — the two toes spread- 
 ing apart when entering the mud and closing again when lifted, 
 avoided the suction so dangerous to the piston-like hoof of the 
 horse. 
 
 By the time man appeared upon the earth, our ox had grown 
 great in numbers as well as in individuals. Man found him roam- 
 ing the forests and plains from Britain to Greece in great wild 
 droves, and immediately gave chase. The flint hatchets and 
 pierced skulls of the peat bogs tell the story. These prehistoric 
 hunters were after meat. To them this Aurochs or Urus, as it was 
 called, was a manufacturer, a transformer of materials intrinsically 
 worthless — grass, weeds, twigs, and leaves — into most excellent 
 food and clothing for man. And this has been our attitude ever 
 since. This brought man to the ox, first as an enemy, then, to pre- 
 vent extermination, as a friend. This it is that makes the ox 
 
Nature Study in its Practical Bearings. 13 
 
 our most important domestic animjal, and the one probably last 
 to be given up, as the competition for the world's supply of plant 
 food increases. 
 
 How the ox has changed under man's hand, how it has broken up 
 into breeds so distinct as to appear of different origins, how its 
 uses have been increased and differentiated in the various parts of 
 the world, are matters of record. In answer to the first we will note 
 only the securing of quicker development, the reduction and even 
 removal of horns, as in the Polled Durhams and others, and the 
 extension and increase of the milk flow — 110 pounds per day be- 
 ing the record. 
 
 Its present uses upon the earth vary from the utter indiffer- 
 ence of the Chinese to the almost complete bondage of the many 
 Swiss and Dutch families who depend on their cow for nearly every- 
 thing. Between these extremes there are all intermediate grades. 
 It is still a game animal in parts of Asia and Africa; a pack 
 animal among the Filipinos; a traction animal with the Hunga- 
 rians ; a milk producer on a small scale among the Italians, where 
 a single cow and calf constitute a street dairy; an object of wor- 
 ship among the people of India; a milk and cheese producer 
 among the Dutch and Swiss, giving us our breeds of Holstein- 
 Friesian and Brown Swiss cattle; and finally a beef -animal to the 
 Anglo-Saxon (who also cares somewhat for milk), giving us our 
 Shorthorns, Herefords, Anguses, Galloways and others. But our 
 packing houses do not stop here. Even the hair, horns, bones, and 
 hoofs are put to service. The hair is made into felt boots and mat- 
 tresses, the horns into combs, buttons, knife handles and orna- 
 ments ; and the bones into knife handles and fertilizers. 
 
 The method of properly caring for cattle, the uses and mixing 
 of balanced rations, the bases for judging dairy and beef cattle, and 
 the status of "residual milking" carry us beyond the limits of this 
 paper, and can be better obtained from agricultural bulletins. But 
 
14 The Normal School Quarterly. 
 
 if enough has been given to show the availability of our domestic 
 animals merely as an animal study, and especially if this indicates 
 a way to get the country boy to take more pride in his work, to get 
 a better understanding of it and consequently to become a more 
 effective worker in the world, our efforts will have been abundantly 
 repaid. 
 
 We have now discussed why nature should be studied; we 
 have shown its relation to agricultural teaching, something of what 
 it should include, something of the principles that should guide us 
 in its organization and presentation ; and it remains for us to con- 
 sider where it should be taught. Industrially speaking this last 
 question is self-answering. The all-important place for nature 
 study is in the country school; and the farmers are beginning to 
 find it out. But why those schools are not yet doing their full duty is 
 due to two facts. The teachers are not yet awake to the importance of 
 the movement ; and when they do awake they are already so crowded 
 with recitations that they can't determine either what to do or how 
 to do it. The first part of our problem then is to reach the teacher, 
 and since he is so often the product of his own school this is not 
 easy to do. We have to reach the rising generation thru one that is 
 nearly always an imimediate offshoot of that generation. The open- 
 ing of the country schools to the elements of natural science has 
 been a problem in our state ever since the founding of this Normal 
 School. It was because of it that the science requirement was 
 added to teachers' certificates in 1872, but a year later was repealed 
 from the second grade, thus defeating its purpose. Its solution 
 demands continual pegging away at the doors of our country 
 schools; and the vast increase in nature literature, papers like 
 Country Life, paid lecturers on agricultural education, and the 
 national movement nature-ward, all point to the speedy opening of 
 those doors. 
 
Nature Study in its Practical Bearings. 15 
 
 The second part of the problem — what to do in these schools, 
 and how, is dependent upon knowledge. The teachers hesitate to 
 take up a new study, and we are ready to admit that to bring out 
 the real possibilities of the subject is no holiday task. Like other 
 things of value it is not going to come without some work. But if 
 the facts were really known, of how much can be done with jars 
 and aquaria, simple insect cages, tin cans, window boxes and a 
 garden strip; with the aid of a few good books like those of Corn- 
 stock, Hodge, Bailey, King, Hemenway, Keeler and Chapman; 
 and without a single set lesson in school hours, by merely turn- 
 ing loose the instinctive love of collecting and of doing, on the part 
 of the pupils ; if the teachers could see how the nature study spirit 
 is able to change the whole attitude of the school and teacher from 
 that of "impossible cram and mental pretense" to relations of 
 mutual helpfulness, where all are learners together, and it is no dis- 
 grace to say, "I don't know," where questions continually arise 
 that "all the wise men cannot answer ;" if these things, I say, were 
 widely known, the hesitation would vanish. There is no need of 
 adding a new recitation to the school. In my opinion nothing will 
 kill the movement so quickly as the cut and dried lesson ; and it's a 
 sin to try to crowd any more recitations into the country school pro- 
 gram,. But if the work is taken up in this informal way, at any rate 
 in the beginning, and the beneficent influences of nature and quick- 
 ened observation are permitted to spread out over the proverbial 
 three E's, over the geography, and composition and literature, we 
 believe that there will never be a return to the old conditions. 
 
16 The Normal School Quarterly. 
 
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