Birds and All Nature, Vol. 6, No. 1, June 1899: Illustrated by Color PhotographyVarious
History
Birds and All Nature, Vol. 6, No. 1, June 1899: Illustrated by Color Photography
Various
Birds -- Periodicals; Natural history -- Periodicals
Another object of field work is to develop habits of correct
observation. Pupils ordinarily take too much for granted. They will
swallow anything that is printed in a book, or that the teacher may
choose to tell, always providing the pupil is sufficiently awake to
perform the function. It is hardly an exaggeration that they would
believe the moon was made of green cheese, providing the statement came
with august solemnity from the teacher's chair. There is too hasty
generalization and a prevailing unwillingness to careful examination.
Careful field work opens the eye and corrects much of this slovenly
mode of thinking, creates honest doubt, and questions an unsupported
statement. The pupil wants to see the pollen on the bee before he
believes in cross-fertilization; he wants to see rocks actually in
layers before he will believe they could have been deposited in water,
and he pounds up a fragment of sandstone to get at the original sand;
he wants to see the actual castings before he will believe all that
Darwin says about his wonderful earthworms; and few things escape the
eye of the pupils who go out with the understanding that it is business
and their duty to observe and take notes.
Another object of field study is to see life in its environment.
Stuffed birds and animals in cases are all very good; shells look
pretty behind nice glass doors, and herbaria play a very important
part; yet, after all, how much better to see a thrush's flight; to hear
the pewee's song; how much more satisfactory to watch a snail creep and
feed; how much more delightful to study the blossoming hepatica; to
note its various leaves, its soil, its surroundings, and discover why
it blooms at the very opening of springtime.
More can be learned from a handful of pebbles on the beach than a whole
book written upon the same subject.
Yet another object is to acquire specific information not contained
in books. The feel of a leaf, the odor of the honeysuckle, or the
pine, the cry of the kingfisher, the locomotion of a horse, and the
locomotion of a cow, the formation of miniature gorges in a rain
storm, and the wearing of a shore under the action of the waves, these
and countless other manifestations can never be described in mere
words.--_The School Journal._
[Illustration: GOLDEN-WINGED WARBLER.
Life-size.
FROM COL. CHI. ACAD. SCIENCES.
6-99
COPYRIGHT 1899,
NATURE STUDY PUB. CO., CHICAGO.]
THE GOLDEN-WINGED WARBLER.
(_Helminthophila chrysoptera._)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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