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 of natural science in individual life and in society are so manifold that we accept many of the finest products of skill and art as if they were natural products--as if gold coins, silk dresses, and fine pictures grew on the bushes and only waited to be picked. The thousand-fold applications of natural science to human industry and comfort deserve to be perceived as _the result of labor and inventive skill_. Our much-lauded steam engines, telegraph microscopes, sewing machines, reapers, iron ships, and printing presses, are not examples of a few, but of myriads of things that natural science has secured. But how many children on leaving the common school understand the principle involved in any one of the machines mentioned, subjects of common talk as they are? As children leave the schools at fourteen or fifteen they should know and appreciate many such things, wherein man, by his wit and ingenious use of natures forces, has triumphed over difficulties. How are glass and soap made? What has a knowledge of natural science to do with the construction of stoves, furnaces, and lamps? How are iron, silver, and copper ore mined and reduced? How is sugar obtained from maple trees, cane, and beet root? How does a suction pump work and why? Without a knowledge of such applications of natural science we should be thrown back into barbarism. These things also, since they form such an important part of every child's environment, should be understood, but not for direct utility.