tion and preparation for the market; the characteristic qualities of the dif

8 in.

FIG. 14.

4 in. 7

ratus in question. These should then be inspected by the workshop instructor, so that he may eliminate any constructing difficulties or suggest improved forms, and also that he might see that its construction is not beyond the ability of the pupils.

There is no doubt that, if properly conducted, such a correlation of the nature and science work with the shopwork would add to the interest and value of both subjects.

This correlation of nature work with the shop is developed still further. In the regular work of the shop the different kinds of trees are studied in detail their manner of growth, and the climatic conditions affecting the same; their cutting, transporta

FIG IS.

The study of animals and plants, which in the primary grades of our public schools is termed "Nature Study," appears among the subjects placed under the head of "Elementary Science" in the grammar grades. There is a good reason for this, but it is not given in the present course and cannot be plainly inferred from the syllabus of that course. We may, therefore, appropriately undertake here to supply the deficiency, so that the extent to which the verbal change above noted requires a corresponding change of matter and method may be fully comprehended. The further end may thus be served at the same time, of bringing out more clearly the real object and precise scope of "Nature Study" as distinguished from "Natural Science." A perfect understanding in this respect seems, indeed, the more desirable as

Nature Study, on account of its somewhat recent introduction in the public schools, is still suffering from that indefiniteness of aim and imperfection of practice which unavoidably hamper for a time the boldest and most valuable innovations.

In the primary grades Nature Study is simply a method; a key, as it were, to the child's senses and consequent mental perceptions. Its immediate aim is not to impart a knowledge, ever so elementary, of the natural objects under observation, although such a knowledge may thus incidentally be gained; its actual purpose is to stimulate the observing faculty by means of that object. Of the special knowledge thus incidentally gained the larger yet less essential part (consisting chiefly of a class of facts which the scientist must note in order to reach a generalization, but

which the primary teacher brings out for the sole purpose of awakening the perceptions of her pupils) will, no doubt, be lost. Small pity, to be sure; for the primary school is not especially intended to form encyclopedists. But what will remain finally acquired is a mental power capable of further expansion and practical application.

How it came to pass that this method finally prevailed-to the extent at least of being now in a fair way of supplanting the others—and why the revolution it implies in the previous modes of teaching was so long delayed, might be the subject of an instructive chapter of history, for which there is no space here. We may state, however, that when in the course of educational evolution the supreme value of objective teaching came to be generally recognized, a direct way was opened to the additional recognition, sooner or later, of the still more important fact that the living thing, animal or plant, visibly possessed of the power of motion, is vastly more effective than any other object in the fundamental work of sense training and in the consequent task, which immediately follows, of setting in action and gradually quickening the nascent faculties. In plain language, "Nature appeals to nature and life to life."

For a more perfect understanding than we now possess of the process through which this phenomenon is produced we must look hopefully to the physiologist, where science has made wonderful progress in recent times, but has not yet reached the point where no link is missing in the chain of facts upon which a scientific theory must rest. As to the task of speculating on the nature of the

forces at work in the production of mental phenomena it may be left to metaphysicians of the nebulous school, whose chief achievement, so far, has been to obscure in clouds of words, borrowed from the dictionary of science, the most obvious psychological properties of the human mind and their mutual relations. Fortunately, it is enough for the practical purposes of the teacher that the phenomenon itself is an indisputable fact and that its various forms or aspects are within the range of her observation. If upon this wellestablished and unshakable foundation she will attend to her own important work of systematically and judiciously using for the benefit of her pupils the forces and materials supplied by Nature in inexhaustible abundance and infinite variety; observing, classifying and grading the various effects of each such instrumentality as she may select, upon the youthful, plastic, cunning brains in her care according to their age and environment; availing herself of all she knows concerning Nature's ways and things, learning more of the same positive sort in her spare moments, if she have any, and devising means of closely connecting it with language, manual training and even arithmetic; it is safe to say that she will become a far more efficient and truly scientific instructor of children than by burdening her mind with the disputations and logomachy of transcendentalists.

Upon entering the first grammar grade after passing through the hands of primary teachers thus fitted and equipped, by the very nature of this method of education, for the performance of their special work, most children will unquestionably be found

well prepared and even eager for instruction, not only in "Elementary Science" and in that part of it which, relating to animals and plants, may now be termed Zoology and Botany, but in the other branches of study; provided, however, that there is no radical change, no abrupt solution of continuity in the method of teaching. The facts taught must simply be of a higher order in each grade than in the preceding one; but the manner of reaching them must remain the same.

In other words, it is the Nature Study method that should underlie and pervade Elementary Education in its entire course from the lowest to the highest grade. We cannot too much impress the importance of this basic principle, even if in so doing we must resort in a higher degree than we desire to the process of iteration and reiteration. In order to make our view of this matter as plain as possible we may therefore be allowed to repeat here, in substance, if not exactly in the same language, what we said on another occasion:

From natural objects we derive certain primary conceptions, such as those of form, color and size; from their apparent motion or lack of motion our sense of force and direction; from their multitude, variety and relations our ideas of number, difference, cause and effect; the most abstract gradually issuing from the concrete and the most artistical concrete from the absolutely natural.

Nature, then, is not only our first but our constant teacher, and in order to be effective her lessons must be learned concretely, as she gives them, but in a graduated series or progression, corresponding at every step

with the other knowledge of any sort which it is their practical object to render easy of acquirement.

This further knowledge may be drawing or modeling, or any other branches that constitute manual training; it may be literature or arithmetic, geography or geometry, physics or history, the basis of it is Nature Study, whether we do or do not recognize that it is so. In that study lies the common root of all the sciences and arts; through it they are closely connected, and this great fact of their interdependence must be kept in view at every step of the educational process.

"If instruction is not reduced to a unity from which springs a conception of the great laws of the world and of human society, it ipso facto neglects the ends of life and ceases to make science useful for conduct." To be brief, then, Elementary Science consists in a general but well-connected knowledge of these fundamental laws and of the most readily observable phenomena among those which have led to their discovery.

The necessity of this learning is not less obvious than are its moral, intellectual and social consequences. Deprived of it in this age of scientific progress, an immense majority of the growing generation, unable to enter high school, college or university, would be cast at the end of its elementary school education upon a world rendered far more foreign to it by discovery and invention than is one nation to another by mere difference of language. It would find. itself a mere Caliban, puzzled at every step by the witchery of modern science.