Thanks are due the editors for much kindness and

courtesy.

The writer gratefully acknowledges permission from the author and the publisher, to reprint, from the report of General Z. T. Sweeney, Fish and Game Commissioner of Indiana, the valuable paper, "How to Introduce Nature Study," by Professor H. A. Surface, Supervisor of Nature Study in Pennsylvania.

To Professor J. P. Gordy, Ph.D., LL.D., Professor of Pedagogy of the New York University, the writer thankfully acknowledges his obligation for the favor that Dr. Gordy shows him and the reader, by allowing the publication here of the suggestive, helpful and inspiring Introduction.

Where our Mother Nature lives, there is our Dulce Domum. The children of her home are the little brothers of ours. Among all the teachers she is the greatest, and she is ours. What she tells us, "children of a larger growth," shall we not tell ours, of fewer years and more impressionable minds, who cluster about us in the schoolroom, and in our own particular Dulce Domum ? To help the reader in this, is the purpose of this book.

INTRODUCTION.

BY PROFESSOR J. P. GORDY, PH.D., LL.D.

EVERY revolution in the history of thought is followed by a revolution in the history of education. It was so in the fifth century before Christ, when the Sophists discredited the idea that the individual exists solely for the State; it was so in Rome two hundred years later, when the old Roman ideal of citizenship gave place to the Greek ideal of individualism; it was so at the beginning of the Middle Ages, when the pagan ideal of culture and enjoyment was supplanted by the ideal of monasticism; it was so at the beginning of the Renaissance, when the ideal of asceticism and self-denial gave place to the ideal of enjoyment and self-culture; it was so in the nineteenth century, when the vast enlargement of our knowledge of the physical universe and its varied application to practical uses, transformed men's attitude towards nature, and made them realize that a servant of almost infinite power stood ready to obey

them, whenever they learned enough about the

world to be able to speak the right word of command.

Spencer's famous essay, on "What Knowledge is of most Worth?" may perhaps be said to mark the beginning of the corresponding revolution from the standpoint of theory. For though Bacon and Comenius had insisted on the importance of a knowledge of things, they were as voices crying in the wilderness. When so great a scholar as Erasmus could urge no reason for studying nature except that it would throw light on literature, it was out of the question for others to get a hearing, who insisted, not only that nature was worth investigating on its own account, but that it was the most important subject of study. It was not until the slow progress of discovery and invention had gradually changed men's attitude towards the physical universe, that the appearance of a brilliant and extravagant essay like Spencer's, which put forth the claim that science was the only subject worth studying, could form an epoch in the history of education.

It hardly needs to be pointed out that this revolution in the history of thought has found its practical expression in the history of education. The elaborate and expensive laboratories for the

study of physics, chemistry and biology; the organization and multiplication of scientific and technical schools; the great variety of courses for the study of science; the conferring of degrees upon the completion of curricula in which science is by far the largest element, are a few of the expressions of this revolution in the field of education, as is the insistence upon nature study and elementary science in our primary and grammar schools.

But the stress which is being laid upon the study of science is due, not only to the change in our attitude toward nature, but also to a change in our attitude toward education. Formerly, the question was, What does a man need to know? Now the question is being asked, What does he need to be? It is the emphasis upon this question, in the minds of the leaders of educational thought, which is making it clearer and clearer that we need a knowledge of nature, not only because we want to be able to talk with one another across the ocean; to be able to tunnel our mountains and to throw huge bridges across our rivers, and to navigate the air; not only because we want electricity and steam to do the mechanical work of the world, but because we want to be

men. We are beginning dimly to perceive that the change produced by the study of science upon the mind of man is hardly less great than the change which that knowledge produces in his power over nature.

There was a time when men crouched in abject terror of nature; they trembled at the sound of thunder; they fell on their knees in the presence of an eclipse; a hurricane was the breath of an evil spirit, and an epidemic the expression of the wrath of an offended deity. Nature was an enemy; her powers were wielded by demons, to make the brief and wretched lives of men briefer and more miserable still. Ignorance of nature and the wildest and most fantastic superstitions went hand in hand. The inability to use natural forces involved the inability to think clearly. The inability to command nature by obeying her, involved the inability to understand man's relation to her. He who should stand erect in her presence, and, through penetration of her secrets, command her to do his bidding, crouches in terror before her, and thinks of himself as her victim and toy, and plaything, whenever he fails to understand her. It is as though our beneficent teacher, nature, would beguile us into getting the training