My aim is to give the pupils something which is related to their own lives and the lives of others, and thus make them more useful men and women in after years.

Since I have changed my plan of teaching botany from that of knowledge for the sake of knowledge, to knowledge for the purpose of becoming better and more useful in the world, I find that the pupils have a new interest in the subject. It is a subject now with meaning and purpose, closely related to the lives of the pupils. Formerly, it was a subject to be memorized for the sole purpose of passing the examination.

I have not worked out my ideas fully in our course as yet, but have progressed far enough to satisfy myself that it is better than the old.

Assuring you that I appreciate your interest in our work, and hoping to hear from you again, I am, with kindest regards,

Very respectfully,

V. A. SUYDAM,

Principal Public Schools, Ripon, Wis.

I like this method of avoiding repetition, but to accomplish the object it is not necessary to avoid using the same subject. Some one has said in substance that truth is like an ocean, in which a child may play or an elephant easily get drowned. It is all in the manner of using it.

The director of the zoological department of one of our leading universities, once had a student who said of a requirement for the dissection of a grasshopper, "I don't want to do that. I had that in the kindergarten!" That is what one may call dilute science in the place of nature study.

And yet a grasshopper may be used in kindergarten or in university with profit and without repetition.

Said Linnæus to a pupil, as he laid his hand on a bit of moss: "Here lies sufficient material for the study of a lifetime." Perhaps some of us would regard that remark as a little hyperbolic, but if taken literally, without doubt we should all agree that the child's relation to the mosses is entirely different from that of the expert technical botanist. I suppose that it is the avoidance of repetition of relation that Principal Suydam has in mind. We may live for decades in the same home, but the point of view changes rapidly and opens up new vistas as years go by.

II

"The author knows by experience, both on the farm and in the schoolroom, that the possession of a better knowledge of nature by country youths is one of the crying needs of the hour. With such a knowledge generally diffused there would be less dissatisfaction with country life and fewer farmers' sons and daughters would flock to the cities, because, as a recent writer expresses it, "they wish to get rid of the prosy, stunting, isolated life on the farm." With a knowledge of some of nature's objects and a desire to ferret out for themselves some of her secrets, they would have something of which to talk and think besides crops, stock, work, neighborhood gossip and local politics, and the attractions of the city would seldom excel those to be found on the old homestead."-W. S. BLATCHLEY, in "Gleanings from Nature."

"It seems as if the day was not wholly profane in which we have given heed to some natural object . . . He who knows the most, he who knows what sweets and virtues are in the ground, the waters, the plants, the heavens, and how to come at these enchantments, is the rich and royal man."-EMERSON.

CHAPTER XXI

NATURE AND LIFE

Of all the subjects in this world, there is nothing so great to which we can give our attention as the world itself. Offspring of nature as we are, surrounded on every hand by her wonderful products and existences, it is no less than our duty to give her our earliest attention, as a powerful factor in the complete development of our own or of any other human life.

"Nature never did betray

The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this, our life, to leap
From joy to joy; for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,

Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings."

"It is of course evident that a scientific interest and an æsthetic interest in Nature Study are widely different things. The æsthetic interest is the result of the appeal Nature makes to our sense of beauty; the scientific, the result of the appeal she makes to our desire to know. If, in the case of the average man, we had to choose between them, it is at least doubtful whether it would not be wise to sacrifice the scientific to the æsthetic interest. The life of the average man is probably more enriched by the capacity to derive pleasure from listening to the knell of the parting day, from watching the lowing herd as it winds slowly over the meadow, than by a scientific interest in nature. But the two interests are in no wise antagonistic. And if the teacher of the nature subjects be herself a lover of nature, if she looks upon the changes that pass over the face of nature as spring blooms into summer, and summer fades into autumn, and autumn gives way to winter, with something of the same fondness with which the mother watches the changes in her child as she traverses the road to womanhood, there is no danger that the æsthetic interest of her pupils will suffer through a development of their scientific interest. Not only will the bugs and grasshoppers and butterflies, the trees and the leaves, the soil and minerals, claim her attention, but the broad valleys, the gently sloping hills, the sycamores bending over running streams and, as it were, gravely bowing to the trees on the other side; and her enthusiastic love of nature will be as contagious as her intense interest in science."-DR. J. P. GORDY, in "A Broader Elementary Education."