is valuable; that may be had by asking someone wiser than they, but the inquiring and sympathetic spirit is one's own.

The pupils will find their regular lessons easier to acquire for this respite of ten minutes with a leaf or an insect, and the school-going will come to be less perfunctory. If you must teach drawing, set the picture in a leaflet before the pupils for study, and then substitute the object. If you must teach composition, let the pupils write on what they have seen. After a time, give ten minutes now and then to asking the children what they saw on their way to school.

Now, why is the College of Agriculture at Cornell University interesting itself in this work? It is trying to help the farmer, and it begins with the most teachable point—the child. The district school cannot teach technical professional agriculture any more than it can teach law or engineering or any other profession or trade, but it can interest the child in nature and in rural problems, and thereby join his sympathies to the country at the same time that his mind is trained to efficient thinking. The child will teach the parent. The coming generation will see the result. In the interest of humanity and country, we ask for help.

How to make the rural school more efficient is one of the most difficult problems before our educators, but the problem is larger than mere courses of study. Social and economic questions are at the bottom of the difficulty, and these questions may be beyond the reach of the educator. A correspondent wrote us the other day that an old teacher in a rural school, who was receiving $20 a month, was underbid 50 cents by one of no experience, and the younger teacher was engaged for $19.50, thus saving the district for the three months' term the sum of $1.50. This is an extreme case, but it illustrates one of the rural school problems.

One of the difficulties with the rural district school is the fact that the teachers tend to move to the villages and cities, where there is opportunity to associate with other teachers, where there are libraries, and where the wages are sometimes better. This movement is likely to leave the district school in the hands of younger teachers, and changes are very frequent. To all this there are many exceptions. Many teachers appreciate the advantages of living in the country. There they find compensations for the lack of association. They may reside at home. Some of the best work in our nature-study movement has come from the rural schools. We shall make a special effort to reach the country schools. Yet it is a fact that new movements usually take root in the city schools and gradually spread to the smaller places. This is not the fault of the country teacher; it comes largely from the fact that his time is occupied by so many various duties and that the rural schools do not have the advantage of the personal supervision which the city schools have.

Retrospect and Prospect after five years' work.[2]

To create a larger public sentiment in favor of agriculture, to increase the farmer's respect for his own business,—these are the controlling purposes in the general movement that we are carrying forward under the title of nature-study. It is not by teaching agriculture directly that this movement can be started. The common schools in New York will not teach agriculture to any extent for the present, and the movement, if it is to arouse a public sentiment, must reach beyond the actual farmers themselves. The agricultural status is much more than an affair of mere farming. The first undertaking, as we conceive the problem, is to awaken an interest in the things with which the farmer lives and has to do, for a man is happy only when he is in sympathy with his environment. To teach observation of common things, therefore, has been the fundamental purpose. A name for the movement was necessary. We did not wish to invent a new name or phrase, as it would require too much effort in explanation. Therefore, we chose the current and significant phrase "nature-study," which, while it covers many methods and practices, stands everywhere for the opening of the mind directly to the common phenomena of nature.

We have not tried to develop a system of nature-study nor to make a contribution to the pedagogics of the subject. We have merely endeavored, as best we could, to reach a certain specific result,—the enlarging of the agricultural horizon. We have had no pedagogical theories, or, if we have, they have been modified or upset by the actual conditions that have presented themselves. Neither do we contend that our own methods and means have always been the best. We are learning. Yet we are sure that the general results justify all the effort.

Theoretical pedagogical ideals can be applied by the good teacher who comes into personal relations with the children, and they are almost certain to work out well. These ideals cannot always be applied, however, with persons who are to be reached by means of correspondence and in a great variety of conditions, and particularly when many of the subjects lie outside the customary work of the schools.

Likewise, the subjects selected for our nature-study work must be governed by conditions and not wholly by ideals. We are sometimes asked why we do not take up topics more distinctly agricultural or economic. The answer is that we take subjects that teachers will use. We would like, for example, to give more attention to insect subjects, but it is difficult to induce teachers to work with them. If distinctly agricultural topics alone were used, the movement would have very little following and influence. Moreover, it is not our purpose to teach technical agriculture in the common schools, but to inculcate the habit of observing, to suggest work that has distinct application to the conditions in which the child lives, to inspire enthusiasm for country life, to aid in home-making, and to encourage a general movement towards the soil. These matters cannot be forced. In every effort by every member of the extension staff, the betterment of agricultural conditions has been the guiding impulse, however remote from that purpose it may have seemed to the casual observer.

We have found by long experience that it is unwise to give too much condensed subject-matter. The individual teacher can give subject-matter in detail because personal knowledge and enthusiasm can be applied. But in general correspondence and propagandist work this cannot be done. With the Junior Naturalist, for example, the first impulse is to inspire enthusiasm for some bit of work which we hope to take up. This enthusiasm is inspired largely by the organization of clubs and by the personal correspondence that is conducted between the Bureau and these clubs and their members. It is the desire, however, to follow up this general movement with instruction in definite subject-matter with the teacher. Therefore, a course in Home Nature-study was formally established under the general direction of Mrs. Mary Rogers Miller. It was designed to carry on the experiment for one year, in order to determine whether such a course would be productive of good results and to discover the best means of prosecuting it. These experimental results were very gratifying. Nearly 2,000 New York teachers are now regularly enrolled in the Course, the larger part of whom are outside the metropolitan and distinctly urban conditions. Every effort is made to reach the rural teacher.

In order that the work may reach the children, it must be greatly popularized and the children must be met on their own ground. The complete or ideal leaflet may have little influence.