Excerpt from Practical Nature Study and Elementary Agriculture: A Manual for the Use of Teachers and Normal Students Books about nature study have become numerous, perhaps more numerous than good teachers of it. These books deal with principles and methods and somewhat with material, so that the student or the teacher need be at no loss for suggestions. But the subject is so new and nature so extensive and the suggestions as to use of material often so general that the books seem to differ confusingly, and the honest seeker for help often becomes more mystified the more he reads. In fact, nature study is still in the period of suggestion, a period which may be trying to the experienced teacher, but which is a necessary antecedent to the period of experiment. The time has come for extensive experiment by trained teachers, putting to rigorous test the suggestions that seem hopeful. Teachers will always have the last word. It is not with the hope that this confusion of suggestions will be cleared up that these pages are written. Their purpose is simply to state the situation in such a way that the teacher may become more independent in his work and thought and thereby better able to eliminate confusion from his own particular problem. We shall never reach general agreement in this matter until many good teachers have conducted careful experiments and their results have been sifted. Even when this is done, teachers themselves are such variable factors that no hard-and-fast schemes of nature study can be or ought to be constructed, but rather an approved body of principles, the details of whose application must be left to the individual teacher. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.