X. The Nature Study Movement at Cornell University; A Journey South to Study Spiders

This chapter details Anna Botsford Comstock's early days in the nature study education movement. She joined several key figures—Alice McCloskey, Julia Rogers, and Mary Rogers Miller—who were already involved in nature education initiatives at Cornell University with Liberty Hyde Bailey. During the years 1891 to 1893 there was general agricultural depression in the East, and New York City found itself called upon, for the first time in history, to help people who flocked in from the rural districts in search of work. Mr. George T. Powell, who was director of Farmers' Institutes, was called in as an expert in a conference to consider the situation. He maintained that poor farming was one of the reasons for agricultural depression, and that the only permanent remedy would be to interest the children of the rural districts in farming. He also declared that nature study was the means to use to interest the child in the farm.