Having these objects clearly in mind, the teacher will see that the spending of a certain amount of time each day giving lessons is not the most important part of the work. A great amount of nature-study may be done without spending a moment in a regular lesson. In the case of all the things kept in the schoolroom--_i. e._, growing plants, insects in cages and aquaria, tame birds and domestic animals--the children will study the problems for themselves. The privilege of watching these things should be made a reward of merit. The use of nature-study readers should be restricted. The stories in these should not be read until after the pupils have completed their own observations on the subjects of the stories. Stories about adventures of animals and adventures with animals may always be read with safety, as these do not, strictly speaking, belong to nature-study. They belong rather to literature and may be used most successfully to interest the child in nature. Blackboard drawings and charts should be used only to illustrate objects too small for the pupil to see with the naked eye. The pupil must also be made to understand that the object drawn on the board is a real enlargement of the object he has studied with his unaided eye. The use of a simple lens often contributes much interest to the work of observation. The compound microscope may be used to show some exceptionally interesting point, as the compound eyes of insects, the scales on the butterfly's wing, or the viscid thread of the spider. But this is by no means necessary. Nature-study work does not actually require the use of either microscope or lens, although the latter is a desirable adjunct. The great danger that besets the teacher just beginning nature-study is too much teaching, and too many subjects. In my own work I would rather a child spent one term finding out how one spider builds its orb web than that he should study a dozen different species of spiders. If the teacher at the end of the year has opened the child's mind and heart in two or three directions nature-ward, she has done enough. In teaching about animals, teach no more of the anatomy than is obviously connected with the distinctive habits of each one; _i. e._, the hind legs of a grasshopper are long so that it can jump, and the ears of a rabbit are long so that it can hear the approach of its foes. While it is desirable for the teacher to know more than she teaches, in nature-study she may well be a learner with her pupils since they are likely any day to read some page of nature's book never before read by human eyes. This attitude of companionship in studying with her pupils will have a great value in enabling her to maintain happy and pleasant relations with them. It has also great disciplinary value. _Reasons for and against graded courses in nature-study._ The question whether there should be a graded course in nature-study is decidedly a query with two answers.