WOODS MEDICINE
The real watcher in the woods usually goes off by himself. He hates to
have anybody along; for Anybody wants to be moving all the time, and
Anybody wants to be talking all the time, and Anybody wants to be
finding a circus, or a zoo, or a natural history museum in the middle
of the woods, else Anybody wishes he had stayed at home or gone to the
ball-game.
Now I always say to Mr. Anybody when he asks me to take him into the
woods, “Yes, come along, if you can stand stock-still for an hour,
without budging; if you can keep stock-still for an hour, without
talking; if you can get as excited watching two tumble-bugs trying to
roll their ball up hill, as you do watching nine baseball men trying
to bat their ball about a field.”
The doctor pulled a small blankbook out of his vest pocket, scribbled
something in Latin and Chinese (at least it looked like Chinese), and
then at the bottom wrote in English, “Take one teaspoonful every
hour”; and, tearing off the leaf, handed it to the patient. It was a
prescription for some sort of medicine.
Now I am going to give you a prescription,--for some woods
medicine,--a magic dose that will cure you of blindness and deafness
and clumsy-footedness, that will cause you to see things and hear
things and think things in the woods that you have never thought or
heard or seen in the woods before. Here is the prescription:--
WOOD CHUCK, M. D.,
MULLEIN HILL.
Office Hours: 5.30 A.M. until Breakfast.
Rx: No moving for one hour.... No talking for one hour.... No
dreaming or thumb-twiddling the while....
_Sig_: The dose to be taken from the top of a stump with a bit
of sassafras bark or a nip of Indian turnip every time you go
into the woods.
WOOD CHUCK.
I know that this compound will cure if you begin taking it early
enough--along, I should say, from the Fifth to the Eighth Grades. It
is a very difficult dose to take at any age, but it is almost
impossible for grown-ups to swallow it; for they have so many things
to do, or think they have, that they can’t sit still a whole hour
anywhere--a terrible waste of time! And then they have been talking
for so many years that to stop for a whole hour might--kill them, who
knows! And they have been working nervously with their hands so long
that their thumbs will twiddle, and to sleep they will go the minute
they sit down, in spite of themselves. It is no use to give this
medicine to grown-ups. They are what Dr. Wood Chuck calls
“chronics”--hopeless hurriers who will never sit down upon a stump,
who, when the Golden Chariot comes for them, will stand up and drive
all the way to heaven.
However, I am not giving this medicine to grown-ups, but to you. Of
course you will make a bad face over it, too; for, young or old, it is
hard to sit still and even harder to keep still--I mean not to talk. I
have closely watched four small boys these several years now, and I
never knew one of them to sit still for a whole hour _at home_--not
once in his whole life! And as for his tongue! he might tuck that into
his cheek, hold it down between his teeth, crowd it back behind his
fist--no matter. The tongue is an unruly member. But let these four
boys get into the woods, and every small pale-face of them turns
Indian instinctively, tip-toeing up and down the ridges with lips as
close-sealed as if some finger of the forest were laid upon them. So
it must be with you when you enter the fields and woods.
The wood-born people are all light-footed and cautious in their
stirring. Only the box turtles scuff carelessly along; and that is
because they can shut themselves up--head, paws, tail--inside their
lidded shells, and defy their enemies.
The skunk, however, is sometimes careless in his going; for he knows
that he will neither be crowded nor jostled along the street, so he
naturally behaves as if all the woods were his. Yet, how often do you
come upon a skunk? Seldom--because, he is quite as unwilling to meet
you as you are to meet him; but as one of your little feet makes as
much noise in the leaves as all four of his, he hears you coming and
turns quietly down some alley or in at some burrow and allows you to
pass on.
Louder than your step in the woods is the sound of your voice. Perhaps
there is no other noise so far-reaching, so alarming, so silencing in
the woods as the human voice. When your tongue begins, all the other
tongues cease. Songs stop as by the snap of a violin string;
chatterings cease; whisperings end--mute are the woods and empty as a
tomb, except the wind be moving aloft in the trees.
Three things all the animals can do supremely well: they can hear
well; they can see motion well; they can wait well.
If you would know how well an animal can wait, scare Dr. Wood Chuck
into his office, then sit down outside and wait for him to come out.
It would be a rare and interesting thing for you to do. No one has
ever done it yet, I believe! Establish a world’s record for keeping
still! But you should scare him in at the beginning of your summer
vacation so as to be sure you have all the waiting-time the state
allows: for you may have to leave the hole in September and go back to
school.
When the doctor wrote the prescription for this medicine, “No moving
for an hour,” he was giving you a very small, a homeopathic dose of
patience, as you can see; for _an hour_ at a time, every wood-watcher
knows, will often be only a waste of time, unless followed
immediately by another hour of the same.
On the road to the village one day, I passed a fox-hunter sitting atop
an old stump. It was about seven o’clock in the morning.
“Hello, Will!” I called, “been out all night?”
“No, got here ’bout an hour ago,” he replied.
I drove on and, returning near noon, found Will still atop the stump.
“Had a shot yet?” I called.
“No, the dogs brought him down ’tother side the brook, and carried him
over to the Shanty field.”
About four o’clock that afternoon I was hurrying down to the station,
and there was Will atop that same stump.
“Got him yet?” I called.
“No, dogs are fetching him over the Quarries now”--and I was out of
hearing.
It was growing dark when I returned; but there was Will Hall atop the
stump. I drew up in the road.
“Grown fast to that stump, Will?” I called. “Want me to try to pull
you off?”
“No, not yet,” he replied, jacking himself painfully to his feet.
“Chillin’ up some, ain’t it?” he added shaking himself. “Might’s well
go home, I guess”--when from the direction of Young’s Meadows came the
eager voice of his dogs; and, waving me on, he got quickly back atop
the stump, his gun ready across his knees.
I was nearly home when, through the muffle of the darkening woods, I
heard the quick _bang! bang!_ of Will’s gun.
Yes, he got him, a fine red fox. And speaking to me about it one day,
he said,--
“There’s a lot more to sittin’ still than most folks thinks. The
trouble is, most folks in the woods can’t stand the monopoly of it.”
Will’s English needs touching up in spots; but he can show the
professors a great many things about the ways of the woods.
And now what does the doctor mean by “No dreaming or thumb-twiddling”
in the woods? Just this: that not only must you be silent and
motionless for hours at a time, but you must also be alert--watchful,
keen, ready to take a hint, to question, guess, and interpret. The
fields and woods are not full of life, but full only of the sounds,
shadows, and signs of life.
You are atop of your stump, when over the ridge you hear a slow, quiet
rustle in the dead leaves--a skunk; then a slow, _loud_ rustle--a
turtle; then a _quick_, loud--_one-two-three_--rustle--a chewink; then
a tiny, rapid rustle--a mouse; then a long, rasping rustle--a snake;
then a measured, galloping rustle--a squirrel; then a light-heavy,
hop-thump rustle--a rabbit; then--and not once have you seen the
rustlers in the leaves beyond the ridge; and not once have you stirred
from your stump.
Perhaps this understanding of the leaf-sounds might be called
“interpretation”; but before you can interpret them, you must hear
them; and no dozing, dreaming, fuddling sitter upon a stump has ears
to hear.
As you sit there, you notice a blue jay perched silent and unafraid
directly over you--not an ordinary, common way for a blue jay to act.
“Why?” you ask. Why, a nest, of course, somewhere near! Or, suddenly
round and round the trunk of a large oak tree whirls a hummingbird.
“Queer,” you say. Then up she goes--and throwing your eye ahead of her
through the tree-tops you chance to intercept her bee-line flight--a
hint! She is probably gathering lichens for a nest which she is
building somewhere near, in the direction of her flight. A whirl! a
flash!--as quick as light! You have a wonderful story!
Now do not get the impression that all one needs to do in order to
become acquainted with the life of the woods is to sit on a
stump a long time, say nothing, and listen hard. All that is
necessary--rather, the ability to do it is necessary; but in the woods
or out it is also necessary to exercise common sense. Guess, for
instance, when guessing is all that you can do. You will learn more,
however, and learn it faster, generally, by following it up, than by
sitting on a stump and guessing about it.
At twilight, in the late spring and early summer, we frequently hear
a gentle, tremulous call from the woods or from below in the orchard.
“What is it?” I had been asked a hundred times, and as many times had
guessed that it might be the hen partridge clucking to her brood; or
else I had replied that it made me think of the mate-call of a coon,
or that I half inclined to believe it the cry of the woodchucks, or
that possibly it might be made by the owls. In fact, I didn’t know the
peculiar call, and year after year I kept guessing at it.
We were seated one evening on the porch listening to the
whip-poor-wills, when some one said, “There’s your woodchuck
singing again.” Sure enough, there sounded the tremulous
woodchuck-partridge-owl-coon cry. I slipped down through the birches
determined at last to know that cry and stop guessing about it, if I
had to follow it all night.
The moon was high and full, the footing almost noiseless, and
everything so quiet that I quickly located the clucking sounds as
coming from the orchard. I came out of the birches into the wood-road,
and was crossing the open field to the orchard, when something dropped
with a swish and a vicious clacking close upon my head. I jumped from
under my hat, almost,--and saw the screech owl swoop softly up into
the nearest apple tree. Instantly she turned toward me and uttered the
gentle purring cluck that I had been guessing at so hard for at least
three years. And even while I looked at her, I saw in the tree
beyond, silhouetted against the moonlit sky, two round bunches,--young
owls evidently,--which were the explanation of the calls. These two,
and another young one, were found in the orchard the following day.
I rejoined the guessers on the porch and gave them the satisfying
fact, but only after two or three years of guessing about it. I had
laughed once at some of my friends over on the other road who had
bolted their front door and had gone out of the door at the side of
the house for precisely twenty-one years because the key in the
front-door lock wouldn’t work. They were intending to have it fixed,
but the children being little kept them busy; then the children grew
up, and of course kept them busier; got married at last and left
home--all but one daughter. Still the locksmith was not called to fix
that front door. One day this unmarried daughter, in a fit of
impatience, got at that door herself, and found that the key had been
inserted just twenty-one years before--_upside down_!
There I had sat on the porch--on a stump, let us say, and guessed
about it. Truly, my key to this mystery had been left long in the
lock, upside down, while I had been going in and out by the side door.
No, you must _go_ into the fields and woods, go deep and far and
frequently, with eyes and ears and all your souls alert!
NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS
CHAPTER I
TO THE TEACHER
Put the question to your scholars individually: Who is _your_
messenger of spring? Make the reading of this book not an end in
itself, but only a means toward getting the pupils out of doors.
Never let the reading stop with the end of the chapter, any more
than you would let your garden stop with the buying of the
seeds. And how eager and restless a healthy child is for the
fields and woods with the coming of spring! Do not let your
opportunity slip. Go with them after reading this chapter
(re-reading if you can the first chapter in “The Fall of the
Year”) out to some meadow stream where they can see the fallen
stalks and brown matted growths of the autumn through which the
new spring shoots are pushing, green with vigor and promise. The
seal of winter has been broken; the pledge of autumn has been
kept; the life of a new summer has started up from the grave of
the summer past. Here by the stream under your feet is the whole
cycle of the seasons--the dead stalks, the empty seed-vessels,
the starting life.
Let the children watch for the returning birds and report to
you; have them bring in the opening flowers, giving them credit
(on the blackboard) for each _new_ flower found; go with them
(so that they will not _bring_ the eggs to you) to see the new
nests discovered, teaching them by every possible means the
folly and cruelty of robbing birds’ nests, of taking life;
while at the same time you show them the beauty of life, its
sacredness, and manifold interests.
FOR THE PUPIL
PAGE 1
Have you ever _seen_ a “spring peeper” peeping? You will hear,
these spring nights, many distinct notes in the marshes, and
when you have seen all of the lowly musicians you will be a
fairly accomplished naturalist. Let the discovery of “Who’s Who
among the Frogs” this spring be one of your first outdoor
studies. The picture shows you Pickering’s hyla, blowing his
bagpipe. _Arbutus_: trailing arbutus (_Epigæa repens_),
sometimes called ground-laurel, and mayflower, fishflower (in
New Jersey).
_hepatica_: liver-leaf (_Hepatica triloba_).
_Spice-bush_: wild allspice, fever-bush, Benjamin-bush
(_Benzoin æstivale_).
_Wood-pussy_: the skunk, who comes out of his winter den very
early in spring, and whose scent is one of the characteristic
odors of a New England spring.
PAGE 2
_All white and still_: The whole poem will be found on the last
page of “Winter,” the second book in this series.
_trillium_: the wake-robin. Read Mr. Burroughs’s book
“Wake-Robin,”--the first of his outdoor books.
PAGE 4
_phœbe_: See the chapter called “The Palace in the Pig-Pen.”
_bloodroot_: _Sanguinaria canadensis_. See the picture on this
page. So named because of the red-orange juice in the
root-stalks, used by the Indians as a stain.
_marsh-marigolds_: The more common but _incorrect_ name is
“cowslip.” The marsh-marigold is _Caltha palustris_ and belongs
with the buttercup and wind-flower to the Crowfoot Family. The
cowslip, a species of primrose, is a European plant and belongs
to the Primrose Family.
PAGE 5
_woolly-bear_: caterpillar of the isabella tiger moth, the
common caterpillar, brown in the middle with black ends, whose
hairs look as if they had been clipped, so even are they.
_mourning-cloak_: See picture, page 77 of “Winter,” the second
book of this series. The antiopa butterfly.
_juncos_: the common slate-colored “snowbirds.”
_witch-hazel_: See picture, page 28 of “The Fall of the Year”;
read description of it on pages 31-33 of the same volume.
_bluets_: or “innocence” (_Houstonia cœrulea_).
PAGE 6
_the Delaware_: the Delaware River, up which they come in order
to lay their eggs. As they come up they are caught in nets and
their eggs or “roe” salted and made into caviar.
_Cohansey Creek_: a small river in New Jersey.
_Lupton’s Meadows_: local name of meadows along Cohansey Creek.
CHAPTER II
TO THE TEACHER
Read Kipling’s story in “The Second Jungle Book” called “The
Spring Running.” Both Jungle Books ought to be in your school
library. Spring is felt on the ocean as well as over the land;
life is all of one piece; the thrill we feel at the touch of
spring is felt after his manner and degree by bird and beast and
by the fish of the sea. Go back to the last paragraph of chapter
I for the _thought_. Here I have expanded that thought of the
tides of life rising. See the picture of the herring on their
deep sea run on page 345 of the author’s “Wild Life Near Home.”
Let the chapter suggest to the pupils the mysterious powers of
the minds of the lower animals.
FOR THE PUPIL
PAGE 7
_Mowgli_: Do you know Mowgli of “The Jungle Book”?
_Chaucer_: the “Father of English Poetry.” This is one of the
opening lines of the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales.
PAGE 8
_migrating birds_: See “The Great Tidal Waves of Bird Life” by
D. Lange, in the “Atlantic Monthly” for August, 1909.
PAGE 9
_The cold-blooded_: said of those animals lower than the mammals
and birds, that have not four-chambered hearts and the complete
double blood-circulation.
_Weymouth Back River_: of Weymouth, Massachusetts.
PAGE 10
_catfish_: or horn-pout or bull-pout, see picture, page 12.
PAGE 11
_stickleback_: The little male stickleback builds a nest, drives
the female into it to lay her eggs, then takes charge of the
eggs until the fry hatch out and go off for themselves.
CHAPTER III
TO THE TEACHER
You will try to get three suggestions out of this chapter for
your pupils: First, that an old tree with holes may prove to be
the most _fruitful_ and interesting tree in the neighborhood,
that is to say, nothing out of doors is so far fallen to pieces,
dead, and worthless as to be passed by in our nature study.
(Read to them “Second Crops” in the author’s “A Watcher in the
Woods.”) Secondly: the humble tree-toad is well worth the most
careful watching, for no one yet has told us all of his
life-story. Thirdly: one of the benefits of this simple, sincere
love of the out-of-doors will come to us as rest, both in mind
and body, as contentment, too, and clearer understanding of what
things are worth while.
FOR THE PUPIL
PAGE 14
_burlap petticoat_: a strip of burlap about six inches wide tied
with a string and folded over about the trunks of the trees
under which the night-feeding gypsy moth caterpillars hide by
day. The burlaps are lifted and the worms killed.
_a peddler’s stall_: In the days of the author’s boyhood
peddlers sold almost everything that the country people could
want.
PAGE 16
_grim-beaked baron_: the little owl of the tree.
_keep_: an older name for castle; sometimes for the dungeon.
PAGE 20
_for him to call the summer rain_: alluding to his evening and
his cloudy-day call as a sign of coming rain.
PAGE 22
_castings_: the disgorged lumps of hair and bones of the small
animals eaten by the owls.
PAGE 24
_Altair and Arcturus_: prominent stars in the northern
hemisphere.
CHAPTER IV
TO THE TEACHER
See the suggestions for the corresponding chapter in “The Fall
of the Year,” the first volume in this series. Lest you may not
have that book at hand, let me repeat here the gist of what I
said there: that you make this chapter the purpose of one or
more field excursions with the class--in order to see with your
own eyes the characteristic sights of spring as recorded here;
secondly, that you use this, and chapters VI and X, as school
tests of the pupil’s knowledge and observation of his own fields
and woods; and thirdly, let the items mentioned here be used as
possible subjects for the pupil’s further study as themes for
compositions, or independent investigations out of school hours.
The finest fruit the teacher can show is a school full of
children personally interested in things. And what better things
than live things out of doors?
CHAPTER V
TO THE TEACHER
I might have used a star, or the sun, or the sea to teach the
lesson involved here, instead of the crow and his three broken
feathers. But these three feathers will do for your pupils as
the falling apple did for Sir Isaac Newton. The point of the
chapter is: that the feathers like the stars must round out
their courses; that this universe is a universe of law, of
order, and of reason, even to the wing feathers of a crow. Try
to show your pupils the beauty and wonder of order and law (not
easy to do) as well as the beauty and wonder of shapes and
colors and sounds, etc.
FOR THE PUPIL
PAGE 34
_primaries, secondaries, tertials_: Turn to your dictionary
under “Bird” (or at the front of some good bird book) and study
out just which feathers of the wing these named here are.
PAGE 35
_half-moulted hen_: Pick her up and notice the regular and
systematic arrangement of the young feathers. Or take a plucked
hen and draw roughly the pin-feather scheme as you find it on
her body.
PAGE 37
_reed-birds_: The bobolink is also called “rice-bird” from its
habit of feeding in the rice-fields of the South on its fall
migration.
CHAPTER VI
FOR THE PUPIL
Do not stop doing or seeing or hearing when you have done, seen,
and heard the few things suggested in this chapter and in
chapters IV and X; for these are only suggestions, and merely
intended to give you a start, as if your friend had said to you
upon your visiting a new city, “Now, don’t fail to see the
Common and the old State House, etc.; and don’t fail to go down
to T Wharf, etc.,”--knowing that all the time you would be doing
and seeing and hearing a thousand interesting things.
CHAPTER VII
TO THE TEACHER
I called this chapter when I first wrote it “The Friendship of
Nature”--a much used title, but entirely suggestive of the
thought and the lesson in the story here. This was first written
about six years ago, and to-day, May 12, 1912, that pair of
phœbes, or another pair, have their nest out under the
pig-pen roof as they have had every year since I have known the
pen. Repeat and expand the thought as I have put it into the
mouth of Nature in the first paragraph--“We will share them [the
acres] together.” Instill into your pupils’ minds the large
meaning of obedience to Nature’s laws and love for her and all
her own. Show them also how ready Nature is (and all the birds
and animals and flowers) to be friendly; and how even a city
dooryard may hold enough live _wild_ things for a small zoo.
This chapter might well be made use of by the city teacher to
stir her pupils to see what interesting live things their city
or neighborhood has, although the woods and open fields are
miles away.
FOR THE PUPIL
PAGE 48
_a hornet’s nest_: the white-faced hornet, that builds the great
cone-shaped paper nests.
_swifts thunder in the chimney_: See chapter VII (and notes) in
“Winter.” For the “thunder” see section IX in chapter X of this
book.
PAGE 49
_cabbage butterfly_: a pest; a small whitish butterfly with a
few small black spots. Its grubs eat cabbage.
PAGE 54
_the crested flycatcher_: is the largest of the family; builds
in holes; distinguished by its use of cast-off snake-skins in
its nests.
_kingbird_: Everybody knows him, for it is usually he who
chases the marauding crows; he builds, out in the apple tree if
he can, a big, bulky nest with strings a-flying from it: also
called “bee-martin,” a most useful bird.
_wood pewee_: builds on the limbs of forest trees a most
beautiful nest, much like a hummingbird’s, only larger. Pewee’s
soft, pensive call of “pe-e-e-wee” in the deep, quiet,
dark-shrouded summer woods is one of the sweetest of bird
notes.
_chebec_: a little smaller than a sparrow; builds a beautiful
nest in orchard trees and says “chebec, chebec, chebec.”
PAGE 58
_One had died_: After phœbe brings off her first brood
sprinkle a little, tobacco-dust or lice-powder, such as you use
in the hen-yard, into the nest to kill the vermin. Otherwise the
second and third broods may be eaten alive by lice or mites.
CHAPTER VIII
TO THE TEACHER
In “Winter” I put a chapter called “The Missing Tooth,” showing
the dark and bitter side of the life of the wild things; here I
have taken that thought as most people think of it (see
Burroughs’s essay, “A Life of Fear” in “Riverby”) and in the
light of typical examples tried to show that wild life is not
fear, but peace and joy. The kernel of the chapter is found in
the words: “The level of wild life, the soul of all nature, is a
great serenity.” Let the pupils watch and report instances of
fear (easy to see) and in the same animals instances of peace
and joy.
FOR THE PUPIL
PAGE 60
_gray harrier_: so named because of his habit of flying low and
“harrying,” that is, hunting, catching small prey on or near the
ground. “Harry” comes from the Anglo-Saxon word for army.
PAGE 61
“_He looketh as it were a grym leoun_”: from Chaucer’s
description of the Cock in the story of the Cock and the Fox.
PAGE 62
_terrible pike_: closely related to the pickerel.
_kingfisher_: builds in holes in sand-banks near water. Its
peculiar rattle sounds like the small boys’ “clapper.”
PAGE 63
“_The present only toucheth thee!_”: Burns’s poem “To a Mouse.”
PAGE 64
“_The fair music that all creatures made_”: from Milton’s poem
“To a Solemn Music,” “solemn” meaning “orchestral” music.
PAGE 65
_then doubling once more_: This is all figurative language. I am
thinking of myself as the fox. The dogs have run themselves to
death on my trail, and I am turning back, “doubling,” to have a
look at them and to rejoice over their defeat.
PAGE 71
_pine marten_: The marten is so rare in this neighborhood that I
am inclined to think the creature was the large weasel.
PAGE 73
_the heavy bar across their foreheads_: a very unusual way of
yoking oxen in the United States. The only team I ever saw here
so yoked.
PAGE 74
_San Francisco_: alluding to the earthquake and fire which
nearly wiped out the city in 1906.
CHAPTER IX
FOR THE PUPIL
The picture of the young buzzard is as true as a photograph; the
bumped-up drawing of the old bird looks precisely as she did
atop her dead tree, watching my approach. This vulture rarely
soars into New England skies; down South, especially along the
coast, the smaller black vulture (_Catharista urubu_) is found
very tame and in great abundance; while in the far Southwest
lives the great condor.
PAGE 80
_tulip poplar_: tulip-tree (_Liriodendron tulipifera_).
“_For it had bene an auncient tree_”: from Edmund Spenser’s
“Shepherd’s Calendar.”
PAGE 85
_a dozen kinds of cramps_: Perhaps you will say I didn’t find
much in finding the buzzard’s nest, and got mostly cramps! Yes,
but I also got the buzzard’s nest--a thing that I had wanted to
see for many years. It was worth seeing, however, for its own
sake. Even a buzzard is interesting. See the account of him in
“Wild Life Near Home,” the chapter called “A Buzzard’s Banquet.”
CHAPTER XI
TO THE TEACHER
The point of the story is the enthusiasm of the naturalists for
their work--work that to the uncaring and unknowing seemed not
even worth while. But all who do great things do them with all
their might. No one can stop to count the cost whose soul is
bent on great things.
FOR THE PUPIL
PAGE 94
_Burlington_: in Vermont.
_Concord and Middleboro_: in Massachusetts.
_Zadoc Thompson_: a Vermont naturalist.
_D. Henry Thoreau_: better known as Henry D. Thoreau; author of
“Walden,” etc.
_J. W. P. Jenks_: for many years head of Pierce Academy,
Middleboro, and later Professor of Agricultural Zoölogy in
Brown University.
PAGE 96
_Contributions_: used in place of the whole name: Go yourself
into the public library and read this and look at the four large
volumes.
PAGE 101
_spatter-docks_: yellow pond-lily (_Nuphar advena_).
PAGE 102
_dinosaurian_: one of the fossil reptile monsters of the
Mesozoic, or “middle,” period of the earth’s history, before the
age of man.
CHAPTER XII
TO THE TEACHER
In this story I have tried to settle the difficult question of
debit and credit between me and the out-of-doors. Shall we
exterminate the red squirrels, the hawks, owls, etc., is a
question that is not so easily answered as one might think. The
fact is we do not want to exterminate _any_ of our native forms
of life--we need them all, and owe them more, each of them, for
the good they do us, than they owe us for the little harm they
may do us. Read this over with the children with its moral and
economic lesson in view. Send to the National Association of
Audubon Societies, New York City, for their free leaflets upon
this matter. The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture,
Harrisburg, Pa., has a bulletin upon this same subject which
will be sent free upon application.
FOR THE PUPIL
PAGE 115
_June-bug_: the very common brown beetle whose big white grubs
you dig up under the sod and in composts.
PAGE 118
_rose-breasted grosbeak_: one of the most beautiful of our
birds, and a lovely singer.
PAGE 120
_Chickaree_: the common name of the red squirrel. The red
squirrel does not need to be destroyed.
_tree swallows_: They build in holes in orchard trees, etc.; to
be distinguished on the wing from the barn swallows by their
white bellies and plain, only slightly forked tails.
_chippies_: the little chipping sparrow, or hair-bird.
_red-eyed vireos_: the most common of the vireos; see picture
of its nest on page 40 of “Winter.”
PAGE 121
_cowbird_: the miserable brown-headed blackbird that lays its
egg or eggs in smaller birds’ nests and leaves its young to be
fed by the unsuspecting foster-mother. As the young cowbird is
larger than the rightful young, it gets all the food and causes
them to starve.
PAGE 122
_Thorn Mountain_: one of the smaller of the White Mountains; it
overlooks the village of Jackson, N. H.
CHAPTER XIII
TO THE TEACHER
If you have read through “The Fall of the Year” and “Winter” and
to this chapter in “The Spring of the Year,” you will know that
the upshot of these thrice thirteen readings has been to take
you and your children into the woods; you will know that the
last paragraph of this last chapter is the aim and purpose and
key of all three books. You must _go_ into the woods, you must
lead your children to go, deep and far and frequently. The Three
R’s first--but after them, before dancing, or cooking, or
sewing, or manual training, or anything, send your children out
into the open, where they belong. The school can give them
nothing better than the Three R’s, and can only fail in trying
to give them more, except it give them the freedom of the
fields. Help Nature, the old nurse, to take your children on her
knee.
FOR THE PUPIL
PAGE 128
_Here is the prescription_: Think you can swallow it? Go out and
try.
PAGE 129
_Golden Chariot_: In what Bible story does the Golden Chariot
descend? and whom does it carry away?
_pale-face_: an Indian name for the white man.
PAGE 130
_box turtles_: They are sometimes found as far north as the
woods of Cape Cod, Massachusetts; but are very abundant farther
south.
PAGE 133
_Chewink_: towhee, or ground-robin; to be distinguished by his
loud call of “chewink” and his vigorous scratching among the
leaves.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Spring of the Year, by Dallas Lore Sharp