Nature Study and Rural Education
When the depression of 1893 drove large numbers of families off the farms to look for factory work, the Association for Improving the Conditions of the Poor in New York City organized a Committee for the Promotion of Agriculture. The Committee believed that nature study, intended to heighten appreciation of the countryside and to increase knowledge of the natural processes on which successful farming depended, would strengthen the interest of rural children in farming. Cornell received state funds to teach nature study in New York’s rural schools. Liberty Hyde Bailey, who believed that children should grow up appreciating nature, assumed responsibility for the new program and immediately appointed Anna Botsford Comstock, a member of the committee, to run it. They began publishing the Home Nature Study Course and Bailey wrote the first leaflet: “How a Squash Plant Gets Out of the Seed. ” Cornell offered a summer Nature Study School in 1897. John W. Spencer joined Bailey and Comstock to organize thousands of children into Junior Naturalist Clubs and to help publish the Junior Naturalist Monthly, beginning in 1899.
Bailey also wrote a series of graded texts dealing with plants and nature, books that would interest people of any age. He followed his Lessons with Plants (1898) with an elementary school book in 1890, a beginner’s book in 1908, and a secondary school text in 1913. In 1903, Bailey published The Nature-Study Idea.
Veitch Memorial Silver Medal
Bailey first taught landscape gardening at the Michigan College of Agriculture, and then he introduced the subject at Cornell. He saw landscape from the viewpoint of creating a picture, and for him that meant natural form, not heavily pruned, formal shapes. He advocated a return to the land and nature in moments of leisure for everyone. “If it were possible for every person to own a tree and to care for it,” he wrote, “the good results would be beyond estimation.” His efforts along these lines resulted in the award of the Royal Horticultural Society of London’s Veitch Memorial Silver Medal in 1897.
American Nature Study Society
Liberty Hyde Bailey founded the American Nature Study Society, America’s oldest environmental organization, in 1908, and served as its first president. The Society’s journal The Nature Study Review, published by the Comstock Publishing Company from 1908 to 1923, included articles by Bailey, Comstock, and others. Over the years it has served the professional needs of educators with workshops, publications, field trips and conferences. Past presidents include such notable naturalists as Anna Botsford Comstock, E. Laurence Palmer, Edwin Way Teale, and Roger Tory Peterson.
Nature Society Gavel and Scroll
To celebrate its fiftieth Anniversary, the American Nature Study Society decided to create a symbol to honor Bailey. Ethel Bailey offered her father’s walking stick, given to him while visiting Ireland in the same year that the Society was founded. The Gavel and Scroll were created from that walking stick.
Anna Botsford Comstock
Comstock Wood Engraving
Anna Botsford Comstock learned wood engraving in order to illustrate the textbook, An Introduction to Entomology written by her husband, John Henry Comstock, and published in 1888. Initially self-taught, Anna also attended classes at Cooper Union. Her work was exhibited nationally, and she was elected to the American Society of Wood Engravers.
Syllabus of lectures on nature study
Anna Botsford Comstock. Syllabus of lectures on nature study
Liberty Hyde Bailey and Anna Botsford Comstock created the Summer Nature Study School in 1897. Anna was appointed as an assistant professor in the 1899 summer session, the first woman to attain professorial rank at Cornell.
Handbook of Nature-Study
Anna Botsford Comstock. Handbook of Nature-Study for Teachers and Parents, based on the Cornell Nature-Study Leaflets, with much additional material and many new illustrations. Ithaca: Comstock Publishing Company, 1911.
In 1903 Anna Botsford Comstock took over the home nature-study correspondence course originated by Bailey, preparing monthly teachers’ leaflets—over 880 pages during the next seven years. These materials formed the basis for her most famous work, the 930-page Handbook of Nature Study, first published in 1911. The Handbook of Nature Study has gone through 25 editions, been translated into 8 languages, and is still in print.