tell the absolute truth.  Every leaf on the tree is an original document in botany.  When a thousand are used or used up, the archives of Nature are just as full as ever.  By the study of realities wisdom is built up.  In the relations of objects he can touch and move, the child finds the limitations of his powers, the laws that govern phenomena, which his own actions must obey.  So long as he deals with realities, these laws stand in their proper relation.  “So simple, so natural, so true,” says Agassiz.  “This is the charm of dealing with nature herself.  She brings us back to absolute truth so often as we wander.”

So long as a child is led from one reality to another, never lost in words or abstractions,—­so long this natural relation remains.  “What can I do with it?” is the beginning of wisdom.  “What is it to me?” is the beginning of personal virtue.

By adding near things to near, the child grows in Knowledge.  Knowledge, tested and set in order, is Science.  Nature-study is the beginning of science.  It is the science of the child.  The “world as it is” is the province of science.  In proportion as our actions conform to the conditions of the world as it is, do we find the world beautiful, glorious, divine.  The truth of the world as it is must be the final inspiration of art, poetry, and religion.  The world, as men have agreed to say that it is, is quite another matter.  The less our children hear of this, the less they may have to unlearn.  Nature studies have long been valued as “a means of grace,” because they arouse the enthusiasm, the love of work, which belongs to open-eyed youth.  The child blase with moral precepts and irregular conjugations turns with fresh delight to the unrolling of ferns or the song of birds.

Nature must be questioned in earnest, or she will not reply.  But to every serious question she will return a serious answer.  “Simple, natural, and true,” she tends to create simplicity and truth.  Truth and virtue are but opposite sides of the same shield.  As leaves pass over into flowers, and flowers into fruit, so are wisdom, virtue, and happiness inseparably related.

This little volume is a contribution to the subject matter of Nature Study.  It is the work of students of nature, and their work is “simple, natural, and true,” in so far as it is represented here.

[Illustration:  (Signature) David Starr Jordan]

LELAND STANFORD JR.  UNIVERSITY,
CALIFORNIA, April 22, 1902.

A BOOK OF NATURAL HISTORY

THE WONDER OF LIFE

(FROM HIS SCIENCE PRIMER, INTRODUCTION.)

BY PROFESSOR, T. H. HUXLEY.

[Illustration]