Select such subjects that your pupils cannot walk without seeing them.
Train your pupils to be observers, and have them provided with the
specimens about which you speak. If you can find nothing better, take a
house-fly or a cricket, and let each hold a specimen and examine it as
you talk.

In 1847 I gave an address at Newton, Massachusetts, before a Teachers'
Institute conducted by Horace Mann. My subject was grasshoppers. I
passed around a large jar of these insects, and made every teacher take
one and hold it while I was speaking. If any one dropped the insect, I
stopped till he picked it up. This was at that time a great innovation,
and excited much laughter and derision. There can be no true progress
in the teaching of natural science until such methods become general.

There is no part of the country where, in the summer, you cannot get a
sufficient supply of the best specimens. Teach your children to bring
them in themselves. Take your text from the brooks, not from the book
-sellers. It is better to have a few forms well known than to teach a
little about many hundred species. Better a dozen specimens thoroughly
studied as the result of the first year's work, than to have two
thousand dollars' worth of shells and corals bought from a curiosity
-shop. The dozen animals would be your own.

The study of nature is an intercourse with the highest mind. You
should never trifle with nature. At the lowest her works are the works
of the highest powers--the highest something, in whatever way we may
look at it.

It is much more important for a naturalist to understand the structure
of a few animals than to command the whole field of scientific