_. To examine and trace a
plant, mineral, or insect, to its true classification and name, has
occupied much of the time of students. It requires nice
discrimination, a comprehensive grasp of relations, and a power to
seize and hold common characteristics. Many of our text-books and
courses of study are based chiefly upon this idea.

5. _System-making_, or the reduction of all things in nature to a
systematic whole, with a place for everything. Some of the greatest
scientists, Linnaeus, for example, looked upon scientific
classification as the chief aim of nature study. It has had a great
influence upon schools and teachers. The attempt to compress
everything into a system has led to many text-books which are but brief
summaries of sciences like zoology, botany, and physics. Scientific
classification is very important, but the attempt to make it a leading
aim in teaching children is a mistake.

We may add that nature study is felt by all to offer abundant scope to
the exercise of the esthetic faculty. There is great variety of beauty
and gracefulness in natural forms in plant and animal; the rich or
delicate coloring of the clouds, of birds, of insects, and of plants,
gives constant pleasure. Then there are grand and impressive scenery
and phenomena in nature, and melody and harmony in nature's voices.

These various aims of science study are valuable to the teacher as
showing him the scope of his work. But a higher and more comprehensive
standpoint has been reached. We now realize that the great purpose of
this study is _insight into nature_, into this whole physical
environment, with a view to a better appreciation of her objects,
forces, and laws, and of their bearing on human life and progress.

All these purposes thus far developed in schools are to be considered
as valuable subsidiary aims, leading up to the central purpose of the
study of natural sciences, which is, "An understanding of life and of
the powers and of the unity which express themselves in nature;" or, as
Kraepelin says: "Nature should not appear to man as an inextricable
chaos, but as a well-ordered mechanism, the parts fitting exactly to
each other, controlled by unchanging laws, and in perpetual action and
production." Humboldt is further quoted: "Nature to the mature mind is
unity in variety, unity of the manifold in form and combination, the
content or sum total of natural things and natural forces as a living
whole. The weighti