Show THE NATURE Luther Burbank Comments upon the of Nature Study By Dr J. H. Professor in the University of Utah I help but like As I think I always must The gold of my own doctrines In a fellow heap of WILL CARLE Following is the doctrine of a real man one of the most noted of the living benefactors of the human Burbank on child should have mud wild trees to brooks to wade various animals to rocks to huckleberries and and any child who has been deprived of these has been deprived of the best part of his benig well acquainted with all these they come into most intimate harmony with whose lessons of natural and fragrant beehive or a healthy hornet's nest in good running often become object lessons of much The inhabitants can give a boy pointed lessons in punctuation as well as and some of the limitations as well as the grand possibilities of life and be it even a brief experience with a good patch of healthy the same lesson will be still further impressed upon And thus by each new experience with homely natural objects the child learns self-respect and also to respect the objects and forces which must be met LUTHER When Genius When a great man speaks the world should and the people would do well to take One of the few eminent men in whose title to the fairly in the service of is above is Luther the creator of new and better kinds of flowers and farm A man whose experience and education have meant so much his fellow who has opened to this country and to the nations of the world new possibilities of raiment and whose in proves him to be a benefactor of is clearly entitled to give advice to One of Burbank's most earnest declarations is that quoted We Try to In a humble the writer of this note has been seeking to impress somewhat the same truth upon his fellow teachers and upon the schools throughout this Though no alarming degree of success seems yet to have come to these yet there are indications' among both the patrons and the teachers of our schools that something almost in the nature of a revolution is now pending before the judgment of a gradually awakening public For the past three seasons the writer has had the honor of standing almost as it on this just as his predecessor in the Horace for many years stood upon What Has Been He has' now published a book with others to which should prove of great helpfulness to this cause by introducing natural reality into the public In my way I have sought to endorse and to second the results of Cummings 's by the publication of articles and bulletins laying before the teachers and the public what in our present state of knowledge about wo consider to be the the richest and the most available nature material for use in our Western Such an for appeared in last week's and a few weeks to cite another the State Normal issued a nature study bulletin which with other similar an article setting forth a hundred or more rather re Fn facts i about Z that furnishes one of farm crops the 1 What Is Desired J These facts often or are mostly lo day that made at the very doors of 4 every school room in And the sum of the which this new movement in cation stands can be stated J We propose to substitute of things for the nj of the reality for the listless the learning of principle j the puttering hand enjoyment of nature's W ty for the second-hand about some one else's tion of the knowledge of y and nature's fixed order for shallow gossip about laws and the changing follies j to a tion of the truths of IS laws of the in a the laws of talk sk the the the cm of But it may be necessary to more Consider the a fa studies just referred to ni except for commercial should pupils make a study of common plant found in every field What is about the study of such men that is truly that is better than studying how they raise rice in 0 tea in For this ii crucial point of the whole oris Reasons for Nature In noticing that the a the m has learned not merely a M j in other but a statement-a tion of a thousand similar M he will he able to sight thereafter of tie sands of W-that he may encounter He will knoff their relationship to will inevitably and make and differenced some conclusions as to the J the ne f of or devices ers to attract the bee J 1 them or to ward j sects' that prey up brief the who the gs A least A attitude of perhaps of a I i Pa to stable and nobly f since all thinking the pupil in here received the strongest H L jet the most pleasant To say what a Hi tm is simply to decide what 1 it what class it belongs ana thus the pupil who has the alfalfa now knows to thousands of species which Hi lie may not yet have For k be has not the varying opinions or the idle gossip of oth- tut a law of the rule of similarity of the sW to type forms and the min-It if or deviations that give rise to species in the great family He las learned something of the J I the the reason-Id of and the reign if law in plant lit The Better It would he both difficult and to attempt any ison between the mental the educative the moral the universal beauty J ad ideality of such nature and the ignoble worthless-ea of the Wordy the exit the scandalous and immoral back-biting t m somehow get into tales and world and even into the a commonly given to the fl for purposes of Well might Rousseau de- it were better to know 7 than to learn so JJ tend to degrade rather n to ennoble the youthful m nd lh that Preserve I contamination he Vices and e s h t chil- j hi teacher only idea tte u and the C course this uth pushed to an but what answer has ever been made to this central idea in Rousseau's Results of Such In like it may be shown that by becoming aware of the nitrogen-gathering function of the bacteria in the roots of the the pupil has learned not merely a but a principle something that reveals to him the laws of dependence between the microscopic and the visible world of living This significant fact opens the door to the science of and puts the pupil upon notice as to danger that lurk in the dust accumulations of living and of the diseases that may be carried by the flies that visit people's And in like manner each other real nature-fact may be shown to be full of meaning and of practical In the article referred perhaps one hundred facts or reasons were given why our pupils should make a rehl study of such home plants as the alfalfa and I now in all for any teacher to give a single valid reason why they should not study the vegetation of their own The Sphere of It is further by the same methods of that the animals the and the storms and local climate the mountain and the stream and the the landscape and forest in a all of our own deserve first place instead as the last in These objects of utility and these scenes of beauty and these forms of the which people must mount if they are to succeed in life or to enjoy life all of if studied for their their their scientific their educational will serve to make the teacher's vocation worth while in his own and will enable the schools to do what thus far they have failed to to in the eyes of the |