HONK, HONK, HONK!
_Honk_, _honk_, _honk!_ Out of the silence of the November night, down
through the depths of the darkened sky, rang the thrilling call of the
passing geese.
_Honk_, _honk_, _honk!_ I was out of bed in an instant; but before I
had touched the floor, there was a patter of feet in the boys’ room,
the creak of windows going up, and--silence.
_Honk_, _honk_, _honk!_ A mighty flock was coming. The stars shone
clear in the far blue; the trees stood dark on the rim of the North;
and somewhere between the trees and the stars, somewhere along a
pathway running north and south, close up against the distant sky, the
wild geese were winging.
_Honk_, _honk_, _honk!_ They were overhead. Clear as bugles, round and
mellow as falling flute notes, ordered as the tramp of soldiers, fell
the _honk_, _honk_, _honk_, as the flock in single line, or double
like the letter V, swept over and was gone.
We had not seen them. Out of a sound sleep they had summoned us, out
of beds with four wooden legs and no wings; and we had heard the wild
sky-call, had heard and followed through our open windows, through the
dark of the night, up into the blue vault under the light of the
stars.
Round and dim swung the earth below us, hushed and asleep in the soft
arms of the night. Hill and valley lay close together, farm-land and
wood-land, all wrapped in the coverlet of the dark. City and town,
like watch fires along the edge of a sleeping camp, burned bright on
the rivers and brighter still on the ragged line of shore and sea, for
we were far away near the stars. The mountains rose up, but they could
not reach us; the white lakes beckoned, but they could not call us
down. For the stars were bright, the sky-coast was clear, the wind in
our wings was the keen, wild wind of the North, and the call that we
heard--ah! who knows the call? Yet, who does not know it--that distant
haunting call to fly, fly, fly?
I found myself in my bed the next morning. I found the small boys in
their beds. I found the big round sun in the sky that morning and not
a star in sight! There was nothing unusual to be seen up there,
nothing mysterious at all. But there was something unusual, something
mysterious to be seen in the four small faces at the breakfast-table
that morning--eyes all full of stars and deep with the far, dark
depths of the midnight sky into which they had gazed--into which those
four small boys had flown!
We had often heard the geese go over before, but never such a flock as
this, never such wild waking clangor, so clear, so far away, so
measured, swift, and--gone!
I love the sound of the ocean surf, the roar of a winter gale in the
leafless woods, the sough of the moss-hung cypress in the dark
southern swamps. But no other voice of Nature is so strangely, deeply
thrilling to me as the _honk_, _honk_, _honk_ of the passing geese.
For what other voice, heard nowadays, of beast or bird is so wild and
free and far-resounding? Heard in the solemn silence of the night, the
notes fall as from the stars, a faint and far-off salutation, like the
call of sentinels down the picket line--“All’s well! All’s well!”
Heard in the open day, when you can see the winged wedge splitting
through the dull gray sky, the notes seem to cleave the dun clouds,
driven down by the powerful wing-beats where the travelers are passing
high and far beyond the reach of our guns.
The sight of the geese going over in the day, and the sound of their
trumpetings, turn the whole world of cloud and sky into a wilderness,
as wild and primeval a wilderness as that distant forest of the far
Northwest where the howl of wolves is still heard by the trappers.
Even that wilderness, however, is passing; and perhaps no one of us
will ever hear the howl of wolves in the hollow snow-filled forests,
as many of our parents have heard. But the _honk_ of the wild geese
going over we should all hear, and our children should hear; for this
flock of wild creatures we have in our hands to preserve.
The wild geese breed in the low, wet marshes of the half-frozen North,
where, for a thousand years to come they will not interfere with the
needs of man. They pass over our northern and middle states and spend
the winter in the rivers, marshes, and lagoons of the South, where,
for another thousand years to come, they can do little, if any, harm
to man, but rather good.
But North and South, and all along their journey back and forth, they
are shot for sport and food. For the wild geese cannot make this
thousand-mile flight without coming down to rest and eat; and wherever
that descent is made, there is pretty sure to be a man with a gun on
the watch.
Here, close to my home, are four ponds; and around the sides of each
of them are “goose blinds”--screens made of cedar and pine boughs
fixed into the shore, behind which the gunners lie in wait. More than
that, out upon the surface of the pond are geese swimming, but tied so
that they cannot escape--geese that have been raised in captivity and
placed there to lure the flying wild flocks down. Others, known as
“flyers,” are kept within the blind to be let loose when a big flock
is seen approaching--to fly out and mingle with them and decoy them
to the pond. These “flyers” are usually young birds and, when thrown
out upon their wings, naturally come back, bringing the wild flock
with them, to their fellows fastened in the pond.
A weary flock comes winging over, hungry, and looking for a place to
rest. Instantly the captive geese out on the pond see them and set up
a loud honking. The flying flock hear them and begin to descend. Then
they see one (tossed from the blind) coming on to meet them, and they
circle lower to the pond, only to fall before a fury of shots that
pour from behind the blind.
Those of the flock that are not killed rise frightened and bewildered
to fly to the opposite shore, where other guns riddle them, the whole
flock sometimes perishing within the ring of fire!
Such shooting is a crime because it is unfair, giving the creature no
chance to exercise his native wit and caution. The fun of hunting, as
of any sport, is in playing the game--the danger, the exercise, the
pitting of limb against limb, wit against wit, patience against
patience; not in a heap of carcasses, the dead and bloody weight of
mere meat!
If the hunter would only play fair with the wild goose, shoot him (the
wild Canada goose) only along the North Carolina coast, where he
passes the winter, then there would be no danger of the noble bird’s
becoming extinct. And the hunter then would know what real sport is,
and what a long-headed, far-sighted goose the wild goose really
is--for there are few birds with his cunning and alertness.
Along the Carolina shore the geese congregate in vast numbers; and
when the day is calm, they ride out into the ocean after feeding, so
far off shore that no hunter could approach them. At night they come
in for shelter across the bars, sailing into the safety of the inlets
and bays for a place to sleep. If the wind rises, and a storm blows
up, then they must remain in the pools and water-holes, where the
hunter has a chance to take them. Only here, where the odds, never
even, are not all against the birds, should the wild geese be hunted.
With the coming of March there is a new note in the clamor of the
flocks, a new restlessness in their movements; and, before the month
is gone, many mated pairs of the birds have flocked together and are
off on their far northern journey to the icy lakes of Newfoundland and
the wild, bleak marshes of Labrador.
_Honk_, _honk_, _honk!_ Shall I hear them going over,--going
northward,--as I have heard them going southward this fall? Winter
comes down in their wake. There is the clang of the cold in their
trumpeting, the closing of iron gates, the bolting of iron doors for
the long boreal night. They pass and leave the forests empty, the
meadows brown and sodden, the rivers silent, the bays and lakes close
sealed. Spring will come up with them on their return; and their
_honk_, _honk_, _honk_ will waken the frogs from their oozy slumbers
and stir every winter sleeper to the very circle of the Pole.
_Honk_, _honk_, _honk!_ Oh, may I be awake to hear you, ye
strong-winged travelers on the sky, when ye go over northward, calling
the sleeping earth to waken, calling all the South to follow you
through the broken ice-gates of the North!
_Honk_, _honk_, _honk!_ The wild geese are passing--southward!
NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS
CHAPTER I
TO THE TEACHER
Go yourself frequently into the fields and woods, or into the
city parks, or along the water front--anywhere so that you can
touch nature directly, and look and listen for yourselves. Don’t
try to teach what you do not know, and there is nothing in this
book that you cannot know, for the _lesson_ to be taught in each
chapter is a spiritual lesson, not a number of bare facts. This
spiritual lesson you must first learn before you can teach
it--must _feel_, I should say; and a single thoughtful excursion
alone into the autumn fields will give you possession of it. And
what is the lesson in this chapter? Just this: that the strong
growths of summer, the ripening of seeds and fruits, the languid
lazy spirit, and the pensive signs of coming autumn are all the
manifold preparations of nature for a fresh outburst of life
with the coming of spring.
FOR THE PUPIL
PAGE 1
_The clock of the year strikes one_: When, in the daytime, the
clock strikes one, the hour of noon is past; the afternoon
begins. On the 21st of June the clock of the year strikes
twelve--noon! By late July the clock strikes one--the noon hour
is past! Summer is gone; autumn--the afternoon of the
year--begins.
_going “creepy-creep”_: In the quiet of some July day in fields
or woods, listen to the stirring of the insects and other small
wood creatures. All summer long they are going about their
business, but in the midst of stronger noises we are almost
deaf to their world of little sounds.
PAGE 3
_begins to shift_: Why is the oak’s shadow likely to be “round”
at noon? What causes the shadow to “shift”; or move? In which
direction would it move?
_falls a yellow leaf from a slender birch near by ... small
flock of robins from a pine ... swallows were gathering upon
the telegraph wires_: Next summer, note the exact date on which
you first see signs of autumn--the first falling of the leaves,
the first gathering of birds for their southern trip. Most of
the migrating birds go in flocks for the sake of companionship
and protection.
_chewink_ (named from his call, ch[=e]-wink´; accent on
second, not on first, syllable, as in some dictionaries) or
ground robin, or towhee or joree; one of the finch family. You
will know him by his saying “chewink” and by his vigorous
scratching among the dead leaves, and by his red-brown body and
black head and neck.
_vireo_ (v[vi]r´-[=e]-[=o]]): the red-eyed vireo, the commonest
of the vireo family; often called “Preacher”; builds the little
hanging nest from a small fork on a bush or tree so low often
that you can look into it.
_fiery notes of the scarlet tanager_ (t[)a]n´-a-j[~e]r): His
notes are loud and strong, and he is dressed in fiery red
clothes and sings on the fieriest of July days.
PAGE 4
_resonant song of the indigo bunting_: or indigo-bird, one of
the finch family. He sings from the very tip of a tree as if to
get up close under the dome of the sky. Indeed, his notes seem
to strike against it and ring down to us; for there is a
peculiar ringing quality to them, as if he were singing to you
from inside a great copper kettle.
_scarlet tanager by some accident_: The tanager arrives among
the last of the birds in the spring, and builds late; but, if
you find a nest in July or August, it is pretty certain to be a
second nest, the first having been destroyed somehow--a too
frequent occurrence with all birds.
_half-fledged cuckoos_: The cuckoo also is a very late builder.
I have more than once found its eggs in July.
_red wood-lily_: Do you know the wood-lily, or the “wild
orange-red lily” as some call it (_Lilium philadelphicum_)? It
is found from New England to North Carolina and west to
Missouri, but only on hot, dry, sandy ground, whereas the
turk’s-cap and the wild yellow lily are found only where the
ground is rich and moist.
_low mouldy moss_: Bring to school a flake, as large as your
hand, of the kind of lichen you think this may be. Some call it
“reindeer moss.”
_sweet-fern_: Put a handful of sweet-fern (_Myrica
asplenifolia_) in your pocket, a leaf or two in your book; and
whenever you pass it in the fields, pull it through your
fingers for the odor. Sweet gale and bayberry are its two sweet
relatives.
PAGE 5
_milkweed, boneset, peppermint, turtle-head, joe-pye-weed,
jewel-weed, smartweed, and budding goldenrod_: Go down to the
nearest meadow stream and gather for school as many of these
flowers as you can find. Examine their seeds.
_wind is a sower going forth to sow_: Besides the winds what
other seed-scatterers do you know? They are many and very
interesting.
PAGE 6
“_Over the fields where the daisies grow...._”
From “Thistledown” in a volume of poems called “Summer-Fallow,”
by Charles Buxton Going.
_seed-souls of thistles and daisies and fall dandelions seeking
new bodies for themselves in the warm soil of Mother Earth_: On
your country walks, watch to see where such seeds have been
caught, or have fallen. They will be washed down into the earth
by rain and snow. If you can mark the place, go again next
spring to see for yourself if they have risen in “new bodies”
from the earth.
_sweet pepper-bush_: The sweet pepper-bush is also called white
alder and clethra.
_chickadees_: Stand stock-still upon meeting a flock of
chickadees and see how curious they become to know you. You may
know the chickadee by its tiny size, its gray coat, black cap
and throat, its saying “chick-a-dee,” and its plaintive call of
“ph[oe]be” in three distinct syllables.
PAGE 7
_clock strikes twelve_: As we have thought of midsummer as the
hour from twelve to one in the day, so the dead of winter seems
by comparison the twelve o’clock of midnight.
_shimmering of the spiders’ silky balloons_: It is the curious
habit of many of the spiders to travel, especially in the fall,
by throwing skeins of silky web into the air, which the breezes
catch and carry up, while the spiders, like balloonists, hang
in their web ropes below and sail away.
CHAPTER II
TO THE TEACHER
I have chosen the fox in this chapter to illustrate this very
interesting and striking fact that wild animals, birds and
beasts, thrive in the neighborhood of man if given the least
protection; for if the fox holds his own (as surely he does) in
the very gates of one of the largest cities in the United
States, how easy it should be for us to preserve for generations
yet the birds and smaller animals! I might have written a very
earnest chapter on the need for every pupil’s joining the
Audubon Society and the Animal Rescue League; but young pupils,
no less than their elders, hate to be preached to. So I have
recounted a series of short narratives, trusting to the
suggestions of the chapter, and to the quiet comment of the
teacher to do the good work. _Every pupil a protector of wild
life is the moral._
FOR THE PUPIL
There are two species of foxes in the eastern states--the gray
fox, common from New Jersey southward, and the larger red fox,
so frequent here in New England and northward, popularly known
at Reynard. Far up under the Arctic circle lives the little
white or Arctic fox, so valuable for its fur; and in California
still another species known as the coast fox. The so-called
silver or blue, or black, or cross fox, is only the red fox with
a blackish or bluish coat.
PAGE 9
_Mullein Hill_: the name of the author’s country home in
Hingham, Massachusetts. The house is built on the top of a
wooded ridge looking down upon the tops of the orchard trees and
away over miles of meadow and woodland to the Blue Hills, and at
night to the lights that flash in Boston Harbor. Years before
the house was built the ridge was known as Mullein Hill because
of the number and size of the mulleins (_Verbascum Thapsus_)
that grew upon its sides and top.
PAGE 10
_mowing-field_: a New England term for a field kept permanently
in grass for hay.
PAGE 11
_grubby acres_: referring to the grubs of various beetles found
in the soil and under the leaves of its woodland.
_BB_: the name of shot about the size of sweet pea seed.
PAGE 12
_Pigeon Henny’s coop_: a pet name for one of the hens that
looked very much like a pigeon.
_shells_: loaded cartridges used in a breech-loading gun.
_bead drew dead_: when the little metal ball on the end of the
gun-barrel, used to aim by, showed that the gun was pointing
directly at the fox.
PAGE 16
_the mind in the wild animal world_: how the animals may really
feel when being chased, namely, not frightened to death, as we
commonly think, but perhaps cool and collected, taking the chase
as a matter of course, even enjoying it.
PAGE 17
_The Chase_: The sound of the hunting is likened to a chorus of
singing voices; the changing sounds, as when the pack emerges
from thick woods into open meadow, being likened to the various
measures of the musical score; the whole musical composition or
chorus being called _The Chase_.
PAGE 18
_dead heat_: a race between two or more horses or boats where
two of the racers come out even, neither winning.
PAGE 19
_Flood_: Why spelled with a capital? What flood is meant?
PAGE 20
_hard-pressed fox had narrowly won his way_: In spite of the
author’s attempt to shoot the fox that was stealing his chickens
do you think the author would be glad if there were no foxes in
his woods? How do they add interest to his out of doors? What
other things besides chickens do they eat? Might it not be that
their destruction of woodchucks (for they eat woodchucks) and
mice and muskrats quite balances their killing of poultry? (The
author thinks so.)
CHAPTER III
TO THE TEACHER
The thought in this chapter is evident, namely, that love for
the out of doors is dependent upon knowledge of the out of
doors. The more we _know_ and the better we _understand_, the
more perfect and marvelous nature seems and the more lovely. The
toadfish _looks_ loathly, but upon closer study he becomes very
interesting, even admirable--one of the very foundations of real
love. So, as a teacher and as a lover of nature, be careful
never to use the words “ugly” or “nasty” or “loathly”; never
shrink from a toad; never make a wry face at a worm; never show
that you are having a nervous fit at a snake; for it all argues
a lack of knowledge and understanding. All life, from Man to the
Am[oe]ba, is one long series of links in a golden chain, one
succession of wonderful life-histories, each vastly important,
all making up the divinely beautiful world of life which our
lives crown, but of which we are only a part, and, perhaps, no
more important a part than the toadfish.
FOR THE PUPIL
The toadfish of this story is _Batrachus tau_, sometimes called
oyster-fish or sapo. The fishing-frog or angler is by some
called toadfish, as is also the swell-fish or common puffer of
the Atlantic Coast.
PAGE 21
_Buzzards Bay_: Where is Buzzards Bay? Do you know Whittier’s
beautiful poem, _The Prayer of Agassiz_, which begins:--
“On the isle of Penikese
Ringed about by sapphire seas.”
Where is Penikese? What waters are those “sapphire seas,” and
what was Agassiz doing there?
PAGE 23
_Davy Jones_: Who is Davy Jones? Look him up under _Jones,
Davy_, in your dictionary of _Proper Names_. Get into the
“looking up” habit. Never let anything in your reading, that you
do not understand, go unlooked up.
_Old Man of the Sea_: Look him up too. Are he and Davy Jones
any relation?
_It was really a fish_: What names do you think of that might
fit this fish?
PAGE 24
_coarsely marbled with a darker hue_: What is the meaning of
_marbled_?
PAGE 25
_covered with water_: The author means that the _rock_ is not
always covered with water, not the _hole_ under the rock. Of
course the hole is always built so that it is full of water,
else the fish would perish at low tide.
PAGE 27
_love the out of doors with all your mind_: Do you know what is
meant by loving the out of doors with your mind? Just this: that
while you feel (with your heart) the beauty of a star, at the
same time you know (with your mind) that that particular star,
let us say, is the Pole Star, the guide to the sailors on the
seas; that it is also only one of a vast multitude of stars each
one of which has its place in the heavens, its circuit or path
through the skies, its part in the whole orderly universe--a
_thought_ so vast and wonderful that we cannot comprehend it.
All this it means to love with our minds. Without minds a star
to us is only a point of light, as to Peter Bell
“A primrose by the river’s brim
A yellow primrose was to him
And it was nothing more.”
Does the toadfish become anything more than a mere toadfish in
a shoe before the end of the chapter?
PAGE 28
_in the toadfish’s shoe_: What does the author mean by asking
you to put yourself in the toadfish’s shoe? Only this: to try,
even with the humblest of creatures, to share sympathetically
their lives with them. The best way to do this with man as well
as with toadfish is to learn about their lives.
CHAPTER IV
TO THE TEACHER
There are several practical uses to which you can put this
chapter, and the similar chapters, VII and XII: they can be made
the purpose for field excursions with the class. Such excursions
might be quite impossible for many a teacher in school hours;
and we know how the exacting duties overcrowd the after-school
hours; but one field excursion each season of the year, no
matter how precious your time, would do more for you and your
class than many books about nature read inside your four
plastered walls. Better the books than nothing; but take the
book and go with your pupils into the real out of doors.
Again, you can make these chapters a kind of nature test,
asking each pupil to try to see each of the things suggested
here; or, if these do not chance to be the sights
characteristic of the autumn in your region, then such sights
as are characteristic. So the chapter can serve as a kind of
field guide to the pupil, and a kind of test of his knowledge
of nature.
Again, you can make each item mentioned here the subject for a
short composition direct from the pupil’s experience--the only
kind of subject for him to write upon. Or make each item (say,
No. IV, the Ballooning Spiders) the beginning for a short
course of study or collateral reading for the individual pupil
particularly interested in spiders!
CHAPTER V
TO THE TEACHER
The real point of this story (but first of all it is a story and
should not be spoiled with any moral) is the thought in the
lines:--
“There were thousands of persons who could have gold eggs if
they cared. But eagles’ eggs! Money could not buy such a sight
as this.” Which means, that the simple joys of the out of
doors, and the possession of youth and health, are better than
any joys that money can create, and more precious possessions
than all the money in the world can buy. One can get all the
thrilling sensations of height by standing up in a quaking
eagle’s nest sixty feet from the ground, that one can possibly
get from the top of the Eiffel Tower or on the peak of Mount
Washington, or from a flying-machine among the clouds. And then
who among the rich of the world ever saw eagles’ eggs in a
nest, or had eagles dig him with their talons? To be alive to
all the wonder of the life, to all the beauty of the world
about us, is the very secret of living. An eagle’s nest to
climb into is as good as a flying-machine.
Take occasion, too, at the end of the story to say how much
better, how much more interesting, an act it was to leave the
eggs to hatch than to rob the nest and thus destroy two young
eagles. Some years later, for instance, two young eagles were
taken from a neighboring nest and were sent to the Zoölogical
Gardens at Philadelphia, where they may still be living for
thousands of visitors each year to see. Who knows but that one
of the parents of these two captive birds may have been in the
eggs laid back by the boy in that nest?
FOR THE PUPIL
PAGE 36
_Maurice River Cove_: Where is Maurice River Cove? What is the
Cove famous for?
_great eagle’s nest_: Look up the habits of the bald eagle in
some natural history. Is he a very great enemy to man? If a
pair of the noble birds lived in your neighborhood would you
want their nest destroyed and the birds shot? Do you know the
story of “Old Abe”? Look that up also.
PAGE 37
_scream of a wild cat_: The wild cat is still to be found
throughout the United States wherever the country is very wild
and wooded. Its cry or scream is an indescribable thrill that
shoots cold all over you, freezing fast in the roots of your
hair.
_mud-hens_: The mud-hen or American coot, a dark bluish
slate-colored bird of the marshes about the size of a large
bantam, with an ivory-white bill and peculiar lobed toes,
instead of webbed like a duck’s.
_eyrie_: What does the word mean? Are there any other ways of
spelling it?
PAGE 38
_size of a small haystack_: This is no exaggeration. From one
nest of a fish hawk (and this nest was probably built first by a
fish hawk) that blew down from the top of an old house chimney
in the Maurice River Marshes, the author knew six one-horse
cartloads of loose sticks to be taken.
PAGE 40
_such a sight as this_: Have you ever seen a sunset more
gorgeous than any artist could paint and any rich man could buy?
Ever had a smell of trailing arbutus that no perfumer could
equal, that all the money in the world could not create? Old
Midas had a golden touch and turned his daughter into gold. Was
he not more than willing to be the poorest man in his kingdom if
only he might be rid of the fatal touch, be a natural man again
and have his loving little daughter a natural child again? To be
your natural selves, and to enjoy your beautiful natural world
is better than to be anything else, or to have anything else, in
the world.
CHAPTER VI
TO THE TEACHER
We hear so much of the drudgery of farm life, of its dreariness,
and meagre living that this chapter, aside from its picture of
cheer and plenty, should be made the text for a good deal of
comment upon the many other phases of farm life that make for
the fullest kind of existence; namely, the independence of the
farmer; the vast and interesting variety of his work; his
personal contact with domestic animals, his fruit-trees, garden,
and fields of grain; his intimate acquaintance with the weather;
his great resourcefulness in meeting insect plagues, blights,
and droughts; his out-of-door life that makes him strong and
long-lived, etc., etc.
If you are a country teacher it is one of your great missions
to show the boys that they should stay upon the farm, or rather
that the farm is a good place to stay on for life; if you are a
city teacher it should be your mission to head many a boy
countryward for life with the understanding that it requires
more sound sense and resourcefulness to make a successful
farmer than it does to make a bank president.
FOR THE PUPIL
PAGE 46
_end of the outdoors_: The fall plowing, even the digging of the
ditches--all the work in the soil is about over by Thanksgiving
when the ground begins to freeze.
PAGE 47
_crib-house_: Where the writer lived as a boy the corn was
husked and left in the ear and stored in long, narrow houses
built of beveled slats spaced about half an inch apart to allow
the wind free play, but like the thin slats of a shutter so
arranged that the rain ran down and, except in a driving wind,
did not wet the grain.
“_spring-house_”: Spring-houses took the place of modern
ice-chests, being little cupboard-like houses well ventilated
and screened, built near the farmhouse and usually over a
spring of water that kept the milk and other contents cool.
_battened_: Is this a “land” term or a “sea” term? What does it
mean? Look it up and report.
_the swallows_: These were the barn swallows--the beautiful
swallows with the long, finely-forked tail. You will always
know them on the wing by the brown breast and _fine_ forked
tail.
_worm-fence_: A worm-fence is built of rails laid one on top of
the other, running zigzag, each corner held together by two
upright stakes, set in the ground and crossed just above the
next-to-the-top rail. The top rail is laid in the crotch of the
two stakes.
_turn-o’-lane_: name of a very excellent old-fashioned apple
that got its name from the fact that the original tree of the
kind grew at a turn of the lane--the writer does not know whose
lane.
PAGE 48
_double-hived_: It is customary to cover beehives with
newspapers, then slip an outside box down over papers and all to
keep the swarm from the cutting cold winds of winter. Bees are
frequently brought into the cellar for the winter in northern
latitudes.
_put on an extra coat, and turned their collars up about their
ears_: What does the writer mean?
_changed their roost from the ridge-pole_: Turkeys roost high;
but the ridge-pole of the crib-house used to be too cold in the
dead of winter, so they would change to the more protected
apple-tree, still roosting high, however.
_pearmain_: name of a “summer” apple in New Jersey; of a winter
apple in this section of Massachusetts.
_garden of box_: the box bush.
_bleeding-hearts_: an old-fashioned flower; a low shrub with
pendent blossoms shaped like a heart.
_creeper_: the Virginia creeper, or woodbine.
PAGE 49
_”template” stove_: from template or templet, a strip of sheet
iron used in boiler-making. A simple long stove made of a single
piece of sheet iron, bent like an inverted U, and riveted to a
cast iron bottom. It had a single door in the front; and burnt
pieces of wood about two feet long. Often called “tenplate”
stove.
PAGE 50
_seven of us alone_: seven brothers and sisters in the writer’s
family.
_flats_: Describe the outside appearance of a city “flat,” and
also the inside if you have ever been in a flat. Is it like a
farmhouse?
_kitchenette_: What kind of a kitchen is a kitchen_ette_?
_neither a farm nor a city home_: By which the writer means a
farm in the ordinary sense of land cultivated for a living. His
is a home only, with several acres around it, largely in woods
and grass.
PAGE 51
“_Bucksy_”: the invented name of a little Indian hero about whom
the writer tells stories to his little boys.
CHAPTER VII
TO THE TEACHER
Suggestions as to the practical uses to which this chapter can
be put may be gathered from the notes to chapter IV and chapter
XII, each of which is similar to this one.
CHAPTER VIII
TO THE TEACHER
This chapter and the next (chapter IX) should be taken together
as a single study of the provision of nature against the
severity of winter’s cold, chapter VIII being a detailed account
of one creature’s preparations, while chapter IX follows,
showing how the foresight and care obtain even among the plants
and trees. The two chapters together should give the pupils a
glad thought for winter, should utterly change their
conventional language and feeling for it as a time of _death_.
And instead of lamenting the season as a necessary evil, you
must show them that it is to be welcomed as a period of sleep
for nature from which she will waken in all the freshness of a
springtime such as is nowhere to be had outside of the temperate
zone. “It is not always May,” wails the poet; but ask them: Who
wants it always May? We want the variety, the contrasts of our
four seasons, and as to winter, let the North Wind blow at will,
redden our cheeks, quicken our step, put purpose into our wills
and--it won’t starve us; for we, too, like the muskrat, are
provided for.
FOR THE PUPIL
If there is a muskrat house or village of houses in your
neighborhood, report to the class, or better, take teacher and
class, as soon as freezing weather comes, to see it. Go out
yourselves and try to see the muskrats plastering their walls on
one of the bright October nights.
PAGE 63
_muskrats combine_: The author has frequently found as many as
six rats in a single house; but whether all of these helped in
the building or not, he is unable to say.
_winter house_: If the house is undisturbed (as when situated
out in a stumpy pond) it will stand for years, the rats
dwelling in it the year around.
PAGE 64
_pick and shovel_: What is meant by a fox’s “pick and shovel”?
_Lupton’s Pond_: the name of a little wood-walled pond that the
author haunted as a boy.
“The best-laid schemes o’ mice and men
Gang aft agley.”
Learn this poem (“To A Mouse”) by heart. Burns is the author.
PAGE 65
_very much alike_: Name some other respects in which animals and
men are alike in their lives. What famous line in the poem just
quoted is it that makes men and mice very closely related?
_bottom of the house_: Down in the very foundation walls of the
muskrat’s house are two runways or “doors” that open under
water and so far under that they rarely if ever freeze. See
picture of such a house with its door in the author’s “Wild
Life Near Home,” page 174.
PAGE 66
_tepee_: What is a tepee?
_juicy and pink and tender_: The muskrats eat grass stems and
roots, so that under the water near the lodge you will often
find in winter little stacks of these tender pink stems and
roots ready for eating--much as the beaver stores up sticks of
tender bark under the water near his lodge for food when the
ice forms overhead.
_Winter is coming_: Are you glad or sorry? Are you ready?
CHAPTER IX
TO THE TEACHER
Let the pupils continue this list of examples of winter
preparations by watching and observing for themselves. Every
field, every tree, every roadside, will reveal the work done or
going on under their eyes. Without preaching you may draw many
an interesting and telling parallel with their own
preparation--in school for instance.
FOR THE PUPIL
PAGE 67
“The north wind doth blow, And we shall have snow, And what
will the Robin do then, Poor thing?”
Where does the verse come from? Mother Goose? Yes, but who was
she?
_Chipmunk_: Our little striped ground squirrel, interesting
because he has cheek-pouches and thus forms a link between the
arboreal squirrels (gray squirrels, etc.) and the ground
squirrels or spermophiles, of which the beautiful little
thirteen-lined squirrel of the prairies is an example.
_Whitefoot, the wood mouse_: The white-footed or wood mouse or
deer mouse.
PAGE 68
_Not so much as a bug or a single beetle’s egg has he stored_:
Why not, seeing that these are his food?
_a piece of suet for him on a certain lilac bush_: Whose bush
might it be? Is there a piece on yours?
_upon the telegraph-wires were the swallows--the first sign
that the getting ready for winter has begun_: What kind or
kinds of swallows? Have you any earlier sign?
PAGE 69
_the few creatures that find food and shelter in the snow_: Name
four of the _animals_ that so find their food and shelter. Are
there any others? Look them up.
PAGE 70
_there will be suffering and death_: In your tramps afield this
winter look out for signs of suffering. There are many little
things that you can do to lessen it--a little seed scattered, a
piece of suet nailed up on a tree, a place cleared in the snow
where gravel stones can be picked up.
_or even three hundred pounds of honey_: By not allowing the
bees to swarm, and thus divide their strength, bee-keepers
often get more than three hundred pounds of comb-honey (in the
little pound boxes or sections) from a single hive. The bees
themselves require only about twenty to twenty-five pounds to
carry them through the winter.
PAGE 71
_the witch-hazels_: The witch-hazels do not yield honey so far
as the author has observed. Suppose you watch this autumn to see
if the honey-bees (do you know a honey-bee when you see _her_?)
visit it. Whence comes this quotation? From which poem of
Bryant’s:--
“when come the calm, mild days.”
_put on their storm-doors_: In modern bee-hives there is a
movable board in front upon which the bees alight when entering
the hive; this can be so turned as to make a large doorway for
the summer, and a small entrance for the cold winter.
_whole drove of forty-six woodchucks_: The author at one time
had forty-six inhabited woodchuck holes on his farm.
PAGE 72
_as Bobolink among the reeds of the distant Orinoco_: The
bobolink winters even farther south--beyond the banks of the
Amazon.
_to sleep until dawn of spring_: What is the name for this
strange sleeping? What other American animals do it? Name
three.
PAGE 73
_frogs frozen into the middle of solid lumps of ice_: Of course,
this was never done intentionally: each time the frogs were
forgotten and left in the laboratory, where they froze.
PAGE 74
_they seem to have given up the struggle at once ..._: This may
not be the explanation. One of the author’s friends suggests
that it may have been caused by exposure, due to their having
been frightened in the night from their usual bed and thus
forced to roost where they could until morning.
PAGE 75
_timothy_: “Herd’s-grass” or “English hay”--as it is sometimes
called in New England.
_plenty for the birds_: What are the “weeds” made for? You
growl when you are set to pulling them in the garden. What are
they made for? Can you answer?
CHAPTER X
TO THE TEACHER
Perhaps you are in a crowded school-room in the heart of a great
city. What can you do for your pupils there? But what _can’t_
you do? You have a bit of sky, a window surely, an old tin can
for earth, a sprig of something to plant--and surely you have
English sparrows behind the rain pipe or shutter! You may have
the harbor too, and water-front with its gulls and fish, and the
fish stores with their windows full of the sea. You have the
gardens and parks, burial-grounds and housetops, bird stores,
museums--why, bless you, you have the hand-organ man and his
monkey; you have--but I have mentioned enough. It is a hungry
little flock that you have to feed, too, and no teacher can ask
more.
FOR THE PUPIL
PAGE 76
_An English sparrow_: Make a long and careful study of the
sparrows that nest about you. If you live in the country try to
drive them away from the bluebird house and the martin-boxes.
The author does not advise boys and girls to do any killing, but
carefully pulling down a sparrow’s nest with eggs in it--if you
are _sure_ it is a sparrow’s nest--is kindness, he believes, to
the other, more useful birds. Yet only yesterday, August 17th,
he saw a male sparrow bring moth after moth to its young in a
hole in one of the timbers of a bridge from which the author was
fishing. It is not easy to say just what our duty is in this
matter.
PAGE 77
_clack of a guinea going to roost_: The guinea-fowl as it goes
to roost frequently sets up a clacking that can be heard half a
mile away.
_an ancient cemetery in the very heart of Boston_: The cemetery
was the historic King’s Chapel on Tremont Street, Boston. Some
of the elm trees have since been cut down.
PAGE 78
_Cubby Hollow_: a small pond near the author’s boyhood home,
running, after a half-mile course through the woods, into
Lupton’s Pond, which falls over a dam into the meadows of
Cohansey Creek.
_on the water_: What water is it that surrounds so large a part
of the City of Boston?
PAGE 79
_the shuttered buildings_: Along some of the streets, especially
in the wholesale district, the heavy iron shutters, closed
against the high walls of the buildings, give the deserted
streets a solemn, almost a forbidding aspect.
_facing the wind_: like an anchored boat, offering the least
possible resistance to the storm.
_out of doors lies very close about you, as you hurry down a
crowded city street_: Opportunities for watching the wild
things, for seeing and hearing the things of nature, cannot be
denied you even in the heart of the city, if you have an eye
for such things. Read Bradford Torrey’s “Birds on Boston
Common,” or the author’s “Birds from a City Roof” in the
volume called “Roof and Meadow.”
CHAPTER XI
TO THE TEACHER
This is a chapter on the large wholesomeness of contact with
nature; that even the simple, humble tasks out of doors are
attended with a freedom and a naturalness that restore one to
his real self by putting him into his original primitive
environment and by giving him an original primitive task to do.
Then, too, how good a thing it is to have something alive and
responsive to work for--if only a goat or a pig! Take occasion
to read to the class Lamb’s essay on Roast Pig--even fifth
grade pupils will get a lasting picture from it.
Again--and this is the apparent purpose of the chapter--how
impossible it is to go into the woods with anything--a
hay-rake--and not find the woods interesting!
FOR THE PUPIL
PAGE 80
_the unabridged dictionary_: What does “unabridged” mean?
_hay-rig_: a simple farm wagon with a “rigging” put on for
carting hay.
PAGE 81
_cord wood_: wood cut into four-foot lengths to be cut up
smaller for burning in the stove. What are the dimensions of a
cord of wood?
PAGE 82
_through the cold gray of the maple swamp below you, peers the
face of Winter_: What does one see in a maple swamp at this time
of year that looks like the “face of winter.” Think.
_he that gathers leaves for his pig spreads a blanket of down
over his own winter bed_: How is this meant to be taken?
_round at the barn_: It is a common custom with farmers to make
this nightly round in order to see that the stock is safe for
the night. Were you ever in a barn at night where the horses
were still munching hay, and the cattle rattling their
stanchions and horns? Recall the picture in Whittier’s
“Snow-Bound.”
PAGE 83
_diameters_: the unit of measure in the “field” or the lens of
the microscope, equivalent to “times.”
_white-footed wood mouse_: Text should read _or_ wood mouse.
There are other wood mice, but Whitefoot is known as the wood
mouse.
_gives at the touch_: an idiom, meaning _moves_ back, gives
way.
_red-backed salamander_: very common under stones; his
scientific name is _Plethodon erythronolus_.
_His “red” salamander_: Read chapter V in “Pepacton,” by
Burroughs. His salamander is the red triton, _Spelerpes ruber_.
PAGE 84
_dull ears_: Our ears are dulled by the loud and ceaseless
noises of our city life, so that we cannot hear the small voices
of nature that doubtless many of the wild creatures are capable
of hearing.
_tiny tree-frog, Pickering’s hyla_: the one who peeps so shrill
from the meadows in spring.
“_skirl_”: a Scotch term; see “Tam O’Shanter,” by Burns: “He
screwed the pipes and gart them skirl.”
_bunches of Christmas fern_: Gathered all through the winter
here in the ledges about Mullein Hill by the florists for
floral pieces.
PAGE 85
_yellow-jacket’s nest_: one of the Vespa Wasps, _Vespa
Germanica_. Read the first chapter of “Wasps Social and
Solitary,” by G. W. and E. G. Peckham.
PAGE 86
_long-tusked boar of the forest_: The wild boar, the ancestor of
our domestic pigs is still to be found in the great game
preserves in European forests; in this country only in
zoölogical gardens.
_live in a pen_: How might one, though living in a big modern
house, well furnished and ordered, still make a “pen” of it
only.
CHAPTER XII
TO THE TEACHER
Notice again that in the three chapters on things to see and do
and hear a few of the _characteristic_ sights and sounds and
doings have been mentioned. Let the whole teaching of these
three chapters be to quicken the pupil to look for and listen
for the dominant, characteristic sights and sounds of the
season, as he must be trained to look for and listen for the
characteristic notes and actions of individual things--birds,
animals, flowers. If, for instance, his eye catches the
galloping, waving motion of the woodpecker’s flight, if his ear
is trained to distinguish the rappings of the same bird on a
hollow limb or resonant rail, then the pupil _knows_ that bird
and has clues to what is strange in his plumage, his anatomy,
his habits, his family traits.
The world outdoors is all a confusion until we know how to
separate and distinguish things; and there is no better
training for this than to get in the way of looking and
listening for what is characteristic.
Each locality differs, however, to some extent in its wild
life; so that some of the _sounds_ in this chapter may need to
have others substituted to meet those differences. Remember
that _you_ are the teacher, not the book. The book is but a
suggestion. You begin where it leaves off; you fill out where
it is lacking. A good book is a very good thing; but a good
teacher is a very much better thing.
FOR THE PUPIL
Now do not stuff cotton in your ears as soon as you have heard
these ten sounds; or, what amounts to the same thing, do not
stop listening. If you do only what the book says and nothing
else, learn just the day’s lesson and nothing more, your teacher
may think you a very “good scholar,” but I will tell you that
you are a poor student of nature. The woods are full of
sounds--voices, songs, whisperings--that are to be heard when
none of these ten are speaking.
PAGES 88 AND 90
_hear their piercing whistle: the husky yap, yap, yap of the
fox_: It is usually the young hawks in the fall that whistle, as
it is usually the young foxes in the summer and fall that bark.
PAGE 91
“Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie
dead; They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit’s
tread.”
“The robin and the wren are flown, but from the shrub the jay,
And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy
day.”
Study this whole poem (“The Death of the Flowers,” by Bryant)
for its excellent natural history. Could the poet have written
it had he been ignorant of nature? Can you appreciate it all
unless you, too, have heard these sounds, so that the poem can
sound them again to you as you read? Nature is not only
interesting for herself; but also absolutely necessary for you
to know if you would know and love poetry.
_the one with a kind of warning in its shrill, half-plaintive
cry; the other with a message slow and solemn_: What is the
warning, would you say, in the scream of the jay? the solemn
message in the caw of the crow?
PAGE 94
_cave days_: Cave days mean those prehistoric times in the
history of man, when he lived in caves and subsisted almost
wholly upon the flesh of wild animals killed with his rude stone
weapons.
PAGE 95
_to the deep tangled jungles of the Amazon_: Some of the birds
go even farther south--away into Patagonia at the end of the
southern hemisphere. There is no more interesting problem, no
more thrilling sight in all nature, than this of the migrating
birds--the little warblers flying from Brazil to Labrador for
the few weeks of summer, there to rear their young and start
back again on the long, perilous journey!
CHAPTER XIII
TO THE TEACHER
Let the chapter be read aloud by one pupil, with as much feeling
as possible to the paragraph beginning, “I love the sound of the
surf,” etc.; for this part is story, action, movement. Do not
try to _teach_ anything in this half. Let some other thoughtful
pupil read the next section as far as, “_Honk, honk, honk_,”
beginning the third paragraph from the end. This contains the
lesson, the moral, and if you stop anywhere to talk about
bird-protection, do it here. Let a third pupil read the rest of
the chapter. Better than a moral lesson directly taught (and
such lessons are much like doses of castor oil) will be the
touching of the child’s imagination by the picture of the long
night-flight high up in the clouds. Read them “To a Water Fowl,”
by Bryant; and also some good account of migration like that by
D. Lange (“The Great Tidal Waves of Bird-Life”) in the
_Atlantic_ _Monthly_ for August, 1909. Read to them Audubon’s
account of the wild goose, in his “Birds.”
FOR THE PUPIL
PAGE 97
_followed through our open windows_: “followed” how? Must one
have wings or a flying-machine in order to “follow” the wild
geese?
_Round and dim swung the earth below us...._: What is the
picture? It is seen from what point of view?
_the call to fly, fly, fly_: Did you ever feel the call to fly?
Ever wish you had wings? Ever start and run as Mowgli did, or
long to get up and go somewhere as the pilgrims did in the
Canterbury Tales?
PAGE 99
_in our hands to preserve_: Do you belong to the Audubon
Society, to the “Grange,” or to any of the organizations that
are trying to protect and preserve the birds? And are you doing
all you can in your neighborhood to protect them?
PAGE 100
_not in a heap of carcasses, the dead and bloody weight of mere
meat_: We may be hunters by instinct; we may love the chase, and
we may like to kill things. But do you think that means we ought
to, or that we any longer may, kill things? No; bird life has
become so scarce that even if we do want to, it is now our duty
to give over such sport in the larger interests of the whole
country, and try to find a higher, finer kind of pleasure,--as
we can in trying to photograph, or “shoot” with the camera, a
bird, getting an interesting picture in place of a dead body.
PAGE 101
_the mated pairs of the birds have flocked together_: In
domestic geese the mated pairs often live together for life; and
among the wild geese this, doubtless, is often true.
PAGE 102
_may I be awake to hear you_: In what sense “awake”?
_The wild geese are passing--southward_: the end of the autumn,
the sign that winter is here.
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U . S . A
End of Project Gutenberg's The Fall of the Year, by Dallas Lore Sharp