What is Nature Study?

"Nature-study, as a process, is seeing the things that one looks at, and the drawing of proper conclusions from what one sees.  Its purpose is to educate the child in terms of his environment, to the end that his life may be fuller and richer.  Nature-study is not the study of a science, as of botany, entomology, geology, and the like.  That is, it takes the things at hand and endeavors to understand them, without reference primarily to the systematic order or relationships of the objects.  It is informal, as are the objects which one sees.  It is entirely divorced from mere definitions, or from formal explanations in books.  It is therefore supremely natural.  It trains the eye and the mind to see and to comprehend the common things of life; and the result is not directly the acquiring of science but the establishing of a living sympathy with everything that is . . .The proper objects of nature-study are the things that one oftenest meets.  Stones, flowers, twigs, birds, insects, are good and common subjects."  --Liberty Hyde Bailey, 1897