guests
with the seasons. A forest is a _life society_, consisting of mutually
dependent parts. How nature disregards our conventional distinctions
between the natural sciences! We need no better proof than this that
they should not be taught chiefly from books. A child might learn a
myriad of things in the woods and gain much insight into nature's ways
without making any clear distinction between botany, zoology, and
geology. Herein is also the proof that text-books are needed as a
guide in nature's labyrinth. If the frequency and intimacy of mutual
relations are any proof of unity, the natural sciences are a unit and
have a right to be called by one name, _nature study_.

In the study of laws, life histories, and life groups, the _causal
relations_ in nature are found to be wonderfully stimulating to those
who have begun to trace them out. The child as well as the mature
scientist finds in these causal connections materials of absorbing
interest.

It is plain, therefore, that the lines tending toward unity in nature
study are numerous and strong; such as the scientific classifications
of our text-books, the working out of general laws whether in biology
or physics, the study of life histories in vegetable and animal, and
the observation of life societies in the close mutual relations of the
different parts or individuals.

If a course of nature studies is begun in the first grade and carried
systematically through all the years up to the eighth grade, is it not
reasonable to suppose that real insight into nature, based on
observation taken at first hand, may be reached? It will involve a
study of living plants and animals, minerals, physical apparatus and
devices, chemical experiments, the making of collections, regular
excursions for the observation of the neighboring fields, forests, and
streams, and the working over of these and other concrete experiences
from all sources through skillful class teaching.

The first great result to a child of such a series of studies is an
intelligent and rational understanding of his home, the world, his
natural environment. He will have a seeing eye and an appreciative
mind for the thousand things surrounding his daily life where the
ignorant toiler sees and understands nothing.

A second advantage which we can only hint at, while incidental is
almost equally important. We have been considering nature chiefly as a
realm by itself, apart from man. But the utilities