Chapter I: Preface

The Cornell University Nature-Study propaganda was essentially an agricultural movement in its inception and its aims; it was inaugurated as a direct aid to better methods of agriculture in New York State. During the years of agricultural depression 1891–1893, the Charities of New York City found it necessary to help many people who had come from the rural districts--a condition hitherto unknown. The philanthropists managing the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor asked, “What is the matter with the land of New York State that it cannot support its own population?” A conference was called to consider the situation to which many people from different parts of the State were invited; among them was the author of this book, who little realized that in attending that meeting the whole trend of her activities would be thereby changed. Mr. George T. Powell, who had been a most efficient Director of Farmers’ Institutes of New York State was invited to the conference as an expert to explain conditions and give advice as to remedies. The situation seemed so serious that a Committee for the Promotion of Agriculture in New York State was appointed. Of this committee the Honorable Abram S. Hewitt was Chairman, Mr. R. Fulton Cutting, Treasurer, Mr. Wm. H. Tolman, Secretary. The other members were Walter L. Suydam, Wm. E. Dodge, Jacob H. Schiff, George T. Powell, G. Howard Davidson, Howard Townsend, Professor I. P. Roberts, C. McNamee, Mrs. J. R. Lowell, and Mrs. A. B. Comstock. Mr. George T. Powell was made Director of the Department of Agricultural Education.

At the first meeting of this committee Mr. Powell made a strong plea for interesting the children of the country in farming as a remedial measure, and maintained that the first step toward agriculture was nature-study. It had been Mr. Powell’s custom to give simple agricultural and nature-study instruction to the school children of every town where he was conducting a farmers’ institute, and his opinion was, therefore, based upon experience. The committee desired to see for itself the value of this idea, and experimental work was suggested, using the schools of Westchester County as a laboratory. Mr. R. Fulton Cutting generously furnished the funds for this experiment, and work was done that year in the Westchester schools, which satisfied the committee of the soundness of the project.

The committee naturally concluded that such a fundamental movement must be a public rather than a private enterprise; and Mr. Frederick Nixon then Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee of the Assembly, was invited to meet with the committee at Mr. Hewitt’s home. Mr. Nixon had been from the beginning of his public career deeply interested in improving the farming conditions of the State. In 1894, it was through his influence and the support given him by the Chautauqua Horticultural Society under the leadership of Mr. John W. Spencer, that an appropriation had been given to Cornell University for promoting the horticultural interests of the western counties of the State. In addition to other work done through this appropriation, horticultural schools were conducted under the direction of Professor L. H. Bailey with the aid of other Cornell instructors and especially of Mr. E. G. Lodeman; these schools had proved to be most useful and were well attended. Therefore, Mr. Nixon was open-minded toward an educational movement. He listened to the plan of the committee and after due consideration declared that if this new measure would surely help the farmers of the State, the money would be forthcoming. The committee unanimously decided that if an appropriation were made for this purpose it should be given to the Cornell College of Agriculture; and that year eight thousand dollars was added to the Cornell University Fund, for Extension Teaching and inaugurating this work. The work was begun under Professor I. P. Roberts; after one year Professor Roberts placed it under the supervision of Professor L. H. Bailey, who for the fifteen years since has been the inspiring leader of the movement, as well as the official head.

In 1896, Mr. John W. Spencer, a fruit grower in Chautauqua County, became identified with the enterprise; he had lived in rural communities and he knew their needs. He it was who first saw clearly that the first step in the great work was to help the teacher through simply written leaflets; and later he originated the great plan of organizing the children in the schools of the State into Junior Naturalists Clubs, which developed a remarkable phase of the movement. The members of these clubs paid their dues by writing letters about their nature observations to Mr. Spencer, who speedily became their beloved “Uncle John;” a button and charter were given for continued and earnest work. Some years, 30,000 children were thus brought into direct communication with Cornell University through Mr. Spencer. A monthly leaflet for Junior Naturalists followed; and it was to help in this enterprise that Miss Alice G. McCloskey, the able Editor of the present _Rural School Leaflet_, was brought into the work. Later, Mr. Spencer organized the children’s garden movement by forming the children of the State into junior gardeners; at one time he had 25,000 school pupils working in gardens and reporting to him.

In 1899, Mrs. Mary Rogers Miller, who had proven a most efficient teacher when representing Cornell nature-study in the State Teachers’ Institutes, planned and started the Home Nature-Study Course Leaflets for the purpose of helping the teachers by correspondence, a work which fell to the author in 1903 when Mrs. Miller was called to other fields.

For the many years during which New York State has intrusted this important work to Cornell University, the teaching of nature-study has gone steadily on in the University, in teachers’ institutes, in State summer schools, through various publications and in correspondence courses. Many have assisted in this work, notably Dr. W. C. Thro, Dr. A. A. Allen, and Miss Ada Georgia. The New York Education Department with Charles R. Skinner as Commissioner of Education and Dr. Isaac Stout as the Director of Teachers’ Institutes co-operated heartily with the movement from the first. Later with the co-operation of Dr. Andrew Draper, as Commissioner of Education, many of the Cornell leaflets have been written with the special purpose of aiding in carrying out the New York State Syllabus in Nature-Study and Agriculture.

The leaflets upon which this volume is based were published in the Home Nature-Study Course during the years 1903–1911, in limited editions and were soon out of print. It is to make these lessons available to the general public that this volume has been compiled. While the subject matter of the lessons herein given is essentially the same as in the leaflets, the lessons have all been rewritten for the sake of consistency, and many new lessons have been added to bridge gaps and make a coherent whole.

Because the lessons were written during a period of so many years, each lesson has been prepared as if it were the only one, and without reference to others. If there is any uniformity of plan in the lessons, it is due to the inherent qualities of the subjects, and not to a type plan in the mind of the writer; for, in her opinion, each subject should be treated individually in nature-study; and in her long experience as a nature-study teacher she has never been able to give a lesson twice alike on a certain topic or secure exactly the same results twice in succession. It should also be stated that it is not because the author undervalues physics nature-study that it has been left out of these lessons, but because her own work has been always along biological lines.

The reason why nature-study has not yet accomplished its mission, as thought-core for much of the required work in our public schools, is that the teachers are as a whole untrained in the subject. The children are eager for it, unless it is spoiled in the teaching; and whenever we find a teacher with an understanding of out-of-door life and a love for it, there we find nature-study in the school is an inspiration and a joy to pupils and teacher. It is because of the author’s sympathy with the untrained teacher and her full comprehension of her difficulties and helplessness that this book has been written. These difficulties are chiefly three-fold: The teacher does not know what there is to see in studying a plant or animal; she knows little of the literature that might help her; and because she knows so little of the subject, she has no interest in giving a lesson about it. As a matter of fact, the literature concerning our common animals and plants is so scattered that a teacher would need a large library and almost unlimited time to prepare lessons for an extended nature-study course.

The writer’s special work for fifteen years in Extension teaching has been the helping of the untrained teacher through personal instruction and through leaflets. Many methods were tried and finally there was evolved the method followed in this volume: All the facts available and pertinent concerning each topic have been assembled in the “Teacher’s story” to make her acquainted with the subject; this is followed by an outline for observation on the part of the pupils while studying the object. It would seem that with the teacher’s story before the eyes of the teacher, and the subject of the lesson before the eyes of the pupils with a number of questions leading them to see the essential characteristics of the object, there should result a wider knowledge of nature than is given in this or any other book.

That the lessons are given in a very informal manner, and that the style of writing is often colloquial, result from the fact that the leaflets upon which the book is based were written for a correspondence course in which the communications were naturally informal and chatty. That the book is meant for those untrained in science accounts for the rather loose terminology employed; as, for instance, the use of the word _seed_ in the popular sense whether it be a drupe, an akene, or other form of fruit; or the use of the word _pod_ for almost any seed envelope, and many like instances. Also, it is very likely, that in teaching quite incidentally the rudiments of the principles of evolution, the results may often seem to be confused with an idea of purpose, which is quite unscientific. But let the critic labor for fifteen years to interest the untrained adult mind in nature’s ways, before he casts any stones! And it should be always borne in mind that if the author has not dipped deep in the wells of science, she has used only a child’s cup.

For many years requests have been frequent from parents who have wished to give their children nature interests during vacations in the country. They have been borne in mind in planning this volume; the lessons are especially fitted for field work, even though schoolroom methods are so often suggested.

The author feels apologetic that the book is so large. However, it does not contain more than any intelligent country child of twelve should know of his environment; things that he should know naturally and without effort, although it might take him half his life-time to learn so much if he should not begin before the age of twenty. That there are inconsistencies, inaccuracies, and even blunders in the volume is quite inevitable. The only excuse to be offered is that, if through its use, the children of our land learn early to read nature’s truths with their own eyes, it will matter little to them what is written in books.

The author wishes to make grateful acknowledgment to the following people: To Professor Wilford M. Wilson for his chapter on the weather; to Miss Mary E. Hill for the lessons on mould, bacteria, the minerals, and reading the weather maps; to Miss Catherine Straith for the lessons on the earthworm and the soil; to Miss Ada Georgia for much valuable assistance in preparing the original leaflets on which these lessons are based; to Dean L. H. Bailey and to Dr. David S. Jordan for permission to quote their writings; to Mr. John W. Spencer for the use of his story on the movements of the sun; to Dr. Grove Karl Gilbert, Dr. A. C. Gill, Dr. Benjamin Duggar, Professor S. H. Gage and Dr. J. G. Needham for reading and criticizing parts of the manuscript; to Miss Eliza Tonks for reading the proof; to the Director of the College of Agriculture for use of the engravings made for the original leaflets; to Miss Martha Van Rensselaer for the use of many pictures from _Boys and Girls_; to Professor Cyrus Crosby, and to Messrs. J. T. Lloyd, A. A. Allen and R. Matheson for the use of their personal photographs; to the U. S. Geological Survey and the U. S. Forest Service for the use of photographs; to Louis A. Fuertes for drawings of birds; to Houghton, Mifflin & Company for the use of the poems of Lowell, Harte and Larcom, and various extracts from Burroughs and Thoreau; to Small, Maynard & Company and to John Lane & Company for the use of poems of John T. Babb; to Doubleday, Page & Company for the use of pictures of birds and flowers; and to the American Book Company for the use of electrotypes of dragon-flies and astronomy. Especially thanks are extended to Miss Anna C. Stryke for numerous drawings, including most of the initials.

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