"From Books to Nature" Anna Botsford Comstock

Anna Botsford Comstock is best known as a leading figure in the Nature Study movement of the 1890s and as the writer of the Handbook of Nature Study, first published in 1911. Educated in the first group of women to be admitted to the Ivy League, she went on to serve as the first woman faculty member at Cornell University . She co-authored and illustrated numerous books with her husband, the entomologist John Henry Comstock, serving as his assistant and partner throughout their marriage. She was named by the League of Women Voters as one 's twelve most influential women in a 1923 survey. She was instrumental in developing a progressive education based curriculum for the study of the natural world that is still in use today. According to the National Wildlife Federation, Comstock is "widely recognized as the mother of nature education." (Conservation Hall of Fame - National Wildlife Federation, n.d.)

An excellent resource for teachers to introduce students to Comstock's life and work is Jeannine Atkins Girls Who Looked Under Rocks, a picture book account of the lives of six women naturalists. Atkins portrays Comstock as a woman who learned about nature as most children learn their native language, learning the names of insects and birds from a mother who loved nature as much as Anna did. Atkins mentions Anna's pursuit of a higher education, her marriage to John Comstock, her involvement with her husband's scientific work, and her own authoring of The Handbook of Nature Study. Atkins slim book is an excellent introduction to Anna Botsford Comstock, suitable for upper elementary or middle school readers.

Comstock first became involved in formal scientific work through her husband, Henry. Henry and Anna had first met at Cornell, where Henry had been the professor of one of Anna's natural science classes. During their courtship and marriage, Henry encouraged Anna's education and growth, both as a scientist and as an artist. Several sources mentioned Henry's gifts of India ink, brushes, and other art supplies to Anna. After their marriage, Henry was appointed as the chief entomologist at the USDA. Anna had been helping him as an unpaid assistant but was soon made an official employee. Anna would also accompany him to lectures he was giving to farmers and was soon drafted into giving presentations for the farmer's wives. When Henry's position, a political one, ended, they returned to Cornell. Back at Cornell, Anna completed her education and continued illustrating and assisting with the writing of her husband's entomology books.

In 1895, Anna was asked to assist with the development of a curriculum to promote knowledge and understanding of nature in an effort by the Committee for the Promotion of Agriculture in New York to encourage youth to remain in the New York
countryside, rather than migrating to the crowded urban areas. As a result of this involvement, Anna was quickly swept up in the Nature Study movement, helped in great part by Cornell University's Liberty Hyde Bailey. Anna worked in the field, established a Nature Study course for Cornell, taught, and wrote for teachers, children, and laypeople during this time. The program Anna helped to develop eventually became a national teacher education program.

The Handbook of Nature Study was Anna Botsford Comstock's life's work and her most lasting contribution to environmental education. It was a work that allowed her to combine her love of literature, art, education, and the natural sciences into one volume. Anna's sense of humor, understanding of the teaching profession, and love of the natural world is obvious in nearly every page of the almost one thousand page volume. Whole sections of the chapter, "The Teaching of Nature-Study" in The Handbook of Nature Study, read as true to a teacher in the early twenty first century as they must have to early twentieth century teachers.

The old teacher is too likely to become didactic, dogmatic, and "bossy" if she does not constantly strive with herself. Why? She has to be thus five days in the week and, therefore, she is likely to be so seven. She knows arithmetic, grammar, and geography to their utmost, she is never allowed to forget that she knows them, and finally her interests become limited to what she knows….

It is rejuvenation for the teacher, thus growing old, to stand ignorant as a child in the presence of one of the simplest of nature's miracles - the formation of a crystal, the evolution of the butterfly from the caterpillar, the exquisite adjustment of the silken lines in the spider's orb web….Let her go out…and say: "Dear Nature, I know naught of the wondrous life of these, your smallest creatures. Teach me!" (Comstock, 1911, p.4)

The Handbook of Nature Study was originally published by Anna and Henry themselves, by the Comstock Publishing Company, as no outside published could be interested in the lengthy work. However, the Handbook quickly became know as the bible of the Nature Study movement. "Before her death, [it] had been translated into eight languages and sold in North and South America, Asia, and Europe." (Bonta, 1991, p. 164) Today, the Handbook is in its twenty-fouth edition.

In 1923, Anna Botsford Comstock was named by the League of Women voters as one of the twelve greatest women in the for her contributions to natural history. The National Wildlife Federation lists her in their Conservation Hall of Fame. Comstock has influenced generations of environmental educators and is deserving of the title "mother of nature education."

References

A Dozen Firsts. (1923, May 12). Time Magazine, National Affairs [Electronic version].

Comstock, Anna Botsford. (2006). Encyclopaedia Brittanica. Retrieved February 28, 2006, from Encyclopaedia Britannica Online School Edition. http://school.eb.com/eb/article-9025059

Conservation Hall of Fame - National Wildlife Federation. (n.d.) Anna Botsford Comstock. Retrieved February 28, 2006 from http://www.nwf.org/halloffame/inductees_comstock.html

Atkins, J. (2000). Girls Who Looked Under Rocks: The Lives of Six Pioneering Naturalists.
Nevada City, CA : DAWN Publications.

Bonta, M. M. (1991). Anna Botsford Comstock: Dean of American Nature Study. In Women in the Field: America's Pioneering Women Naturalists (pp. 154-166). College Station: texas A & M University Press.

Bonta, M. M. (1995). Anna Botsford Comstock (1864 - 1930). In American Women Afield: Writings by Pioneering Women Naturalists (pp. 106-113). College Station: Texas A & M University Press.

Comstock, A. B. (1911). Handbook of Nature Study (24th ed.). Binghampton, NY : Vail-Ballou Press, Inc.

Henson, P. M. (1997). "Through Books to Nature" Anna Botsford Comstock and the Nature Study Movement. In B. T. Gates & A. B. Shteir (Eds.), Natural Eloquence: Women Reinscribe Science (pp. 116-143). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Kohlstedt, S. G. (2005). Nature, Not Books: Scientists and the Origins of the Nature-Study Movement in the 1890s.
Isis , 96, 324-352.

What Was Home Economics? (n.d.) Anna Botsfod Comstock. Retrieved February 28, 2006 from http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/homeEc/intro/comstock.html