The nature study movement was a popular education movement in America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Nature study—closely related to natural history—emphasized first-hand appreciation of nature and its beauty, rather than an analytical understanding of the natural world. The movement was led by Anna Botsford Comstock and Liberty Hyde Bailey, and often associated with girl's education as a replacement for more formal science training. Cornell University, where Anna Comstock and her husband John Henry Comstock taught , was the center of the nature study movement. Table of natural history, 1728 Cyclopaedia Natural history is an umbrella term for what are now usually viewed as several distinct scientific disciplines. ... Anna Botsford Comstock ( September 1, 1854 – August 24, 1930 ), was a US artist, educator, and conservationist born in Otto, New York, to Marvin and Phebe Irish Botsford. ... Liberty Hyde Bailey (1858-1954) was an American botanist and cofounder of the American Society for Horticultural Science. ... Cornell redirects here. ... John Henry Comstock (1849-1931)was an eminent researcher in Entomology and a leading educator. ...

In "Leaflet I: What Is Nature-Study?" from a 1904 collection nature study lessons, Bailey presented the following description of 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 objects. It is infomral, 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.