THE LAST DAY OF WINTER
According to the almanac March 21st is the last day of winter. The
almanac is not always to be trusted--not for hay weather, or picnic
weather, or sailing weather; but you can always trust it for March
21st weather. Whatever the weather man at Washington predicts about
it, whatever comes,--snow, sleet, slush, rain, wind, or frogs and
sunshine,--March 21st _is_ the last day of winter.
The sun “crosses the line” that day; spring crosses with him; and I
cross over with the spring.
Let it snow! I have had winter enough. Let the wind rage! It cannot
turn back the sun; it cannot blow away the “equinoctial line”; it
cannot snow under my determination to have done, here and now, with
winter!
The sun crosses to my side of the Equator on the 21st of March; there
is nothing in the universe that can stop him. I cross over the line
with him; and there is nothing under the sun that can stop me. When
you want it to be spring, if you have the sun on your side of the line
you can have spring. Hitching your wagon to a star is a very great
help in getting along; but having the big sun behind you--
“When descends on the Atlantic
The gigantic
Storm-wind of the equinox”
is a tremendous help in ridding you of a slow and, by this time,
wearisome winter, storm-wind and all.
Almanacs are not much to trust in; but if ever you prize one, it is on
the 21st of March,--that is, if you chance to live in New England. Yet
you can get along without the almanac--even in New England. Hang it up
under the corner of the kitchen mantelpiece and come out with me into
the March mud. We are going to find the signs of spring, the proofs
that this is the last day of winter, that the sun is somewhere in the
heavens and on _this_ side of the equatorial line.
Almanac or no, and with all other signs snowed under, there are still
our bones! Spring is in our bones. I cannot tell you how it gets into
them, nor describe precisely how it feels. But, then, I do not need
to. For you feel it in _your_ bones too--a light, hollow feeling, as
if your bones were birds’ bones, and as if you could flap your arms
and fly!
Only that you feel it more in your feet; and you will start and run,
like the Jungle-folk, like Mowgli--run, run, run! Oh, it is good to
have bones in your body, young bones with the “spring-running,” in
their joints, instead of the grit of rheumatism to stiffen and cripple
you!
The roads are barely thawed. The raw wind is penetrating, and we need
our greatcoats to keep out the cold. But look! A flock of
robins--twenty of them, dashing into the cedars, their brown breasts
glowing warm and red against the dull sky and the dark green of the
trees! And wait--before we go down the hill--here behind the barn--no,
there he dives from the telephone wire--Phœbe! He has just gotten
back, and is simply killing time now (and insects too), waiting for
Mrs. Phœbe to arrive, and housekeeping to begin.
Don’t move! There in the gray clouds--two soaring, circling hen-hawks!
_Kee-ee-you!_ _Kee-ee-you!_ Round and round they go, their shrill,
wild whistle piercing the four quarters of the sky and tingling down
the cold spine of every forest tree and sapling, stirring their life
blood until it seems to run red into their tops.
For see the maple swamp off yonder--the ashy gray of the boles, a
cold steel-color two thirds of the way toward the top, but there
changing into a faint garnet, a flush of warmth and life that seems
almost to have come since morning!
Let us go on now, for I want to get some watercress from the
brook--the first green growing thing for the table thus far!--and some
pussy-willows for the same table, only not to eat. (There are many
good things in this world that are not good to eat.) If the sun were
shining I should take you by way of the beehives to show you, dropping
down before their open doors, a few eager bees bringing home baskets
of pollen from the catkins of the hazelnut bushes. The hazelnut bushes
are in bloom! Yes, in bloom! No, the skunk-cabbages are not out yet,
nor the hepaticas, nor the arbutus; but the hazelnut bushes are in
bloom, and--see here, under the rye straw that covers the
strawberry-bed--a small spreading weed, green, and cheerily starred
with tiny white flowers!
It is the 21st of March; the sun has crossed the line; the phœbes
have returned; and here under the straw in the garden the
chickweed,--_starwort_,--first of the flowers, is in blossom!
But come on; I am not going back yet. This is the last day of winter.
Cold? Yes, it is cold, raw, wretched, gloomy, with snow still in the
woods, with frost still in the ground, and with not a frog or hyla
anywhere to be heard. But come along. This is the last day of
winter--of winter? No, no, it is the first day of spring. Robins back,
phœbes back, watercress for the table, chickweed in blossom, and a
bird’s nest with eggs in it! Winter? Spring? Birds’ eggs, did I say?
The almanac is mixed again. It always is. Who’s Who in the Seasons
when all of this is happening on the 21st of March? For here is the
bird’s nest with eggs in it, just as I said.
Watch the hole up under that stub of a limb while I tap on the trunk.
How sound asleep! But I will wake them. _Rap-rap-rap!_ There he
comes--the big barred owl!
Climb up and take a peek at the eggs, but don’t you dare to touch
them! Of course you will not. I need not have been so quick and severe
in my command; for, if we of this generation do not know as much about
some things as our fathers knew, we do at least know better than they
that the owls are among our best friends and are to be most jealously
protected.
Climb up, I say, and take a peek at those round white eggs, and
tell me, Is it spring or winter? Is it the last day, or the first
day, or the first and last in one? What a high mix-up is the
weather--especially this New England sort!
But look at that! A snowflake! Yes, it is beginning to snow--with the
sun crossing the line! It is beginning to snow, and down with the
first flakes, like a bit of summer sky drops a bluebird, calling
softly, sweetly, with notes that melt warm as sunshine into our
hearts.
“For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.” But see how
it snows! Yes, but see--
The willows gleam with silver light;
The maples crimson glow--
The first faint streaks on winter’s east,
Far-off and low.
The northward geese, with winged wedge,
Have split the frozen skies,
And called the way for weaker wings,
Where midnight lies.
To-day a warm wind wakes the marsh;
I hear the hylas peep
And o’er the pebbly ford, unbound,
The waters leap.
The lambs bleat from the sheltered folds;
Low whispers spread the hills:
The rustle of the spring’s soft robes
The forest fills.
The night, ah me! fierce flies the storm
Across the dark dead wold;
The swift snow swirls; and silence falls
On stream and fold.
All white and still lie stream and hill--
The winter dread and drear!
Then from the skies a bluebird flies
And--spring is here!
NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS
CHAPTER I
TO THE TEACHER
“It must be a lovely place _in the summer_!” the dull and
irritating often say to me, referring to my home in the country.
What they mean is, of course, “How wretched a place the country
is in winter!” But that attitude toward winter grows less and
less common. We are learning how to enjoy the winter; and it is
my hope that this volume may distinctly contribute to the
knowledge that makes for that joy. Behind such joy is love, and
behind the love is understanding, and behind the understanding
is knowledge.
The trouble with those who say they hate winter is a lack of
knowledge. They do not know the winter; they never tramp the
woods and fields in winter; they have no calendar of the rare,
the high-festival days of winter.
Such a day is the one of this opening chapter--“Hunting the
Snow.” And the winter is full of them; as full as the summer, I
had almost said! The possibilities of winter for nature-study,
for tramps afield, for outdoor sport--for joy and health and
knowledge and poetry are quite as good as those of summer. Try
it this winter. Indeed, let the coldest, dullest, deadest day
this winter challenge you to discover to yourself and to your
pupils some sight, some sound, some happening, or some thought
of the world outside that shall add to their small
understanding, or touch their ready imaginations, or awaken
their eager love for Nature.
And do not let the rarer winter days pass (such as the day that
follows the first snow-fall) without your taking them or sending
them a-hunting the snow, else you will fail in duty as
grievously as you would if you allowed a child to finish his
public-school education without hearing of Bunker Hill.
In reading this first chapter lay emphasis upon: (1) the real
excitement possible without a gun in such a hunt; (2) the
keener, higher kind of joy in watching a live animal than in
killing it; (3) the unfairness of hunting to kill; (4) the rapid
extinction of our wild animals, largely caused by guns; (5) the
necessity now for protection--for every pupil’s doing all he can
to protect wild life everywhere.
FOR THE PUPIL
Study the drawings of the tracks in this chapter, then go into
the woods and try to identify the tracks you find in the snow.
Every track you discover and identify will be quarry in your
bag--just as truly as though you had killed a deer or a moose or
a bear. You can all turn snow-hunters without leaving blood and
pain and death and emptiness and silence behind you. And it is
just as good and exciting sport.
PAGE 4
_cushion-marked holes:_ Examine a cat’s feet. Make a study of
cat tracks: how they are placed; how wide apart; how they look
when she walks, when she runs, when she jumps, when she gathers
herself together for a spring. You can learn the art of
snow-hunting by studying the tracks of the cat in your own
dooryards.
_wood pussy_: a polite name in New England for the skunk.
PAGE 5
_the great northern hare:_ The northern hare is not often seen
here, and I am not sure but that this may be the common brown
rabbit.
PAGE 8
_slashings:_ The name for the waste limbs and tops left after
cutting forest trees. Tree wardens should compel the
woodchoppers to pile this brush up as they cut and burn it while
the snow is on the ground to prevent forest fires in summer.
_hazelnuts_: small brown nuts like the filberts of the stores.
They grow on a bush two to six feet high. There are two
kinds,--common hazelnut and beaked hazelnut. The green husk
looks like a cap, hence its Saxon name _haesle_, a cap, and the
scientific name _Corylus_ from the Greek _corys_, a helmet.
PAGE 9
_Burns:_ Robert Burns, the Scotch poet.
PAGE 10
_root and all, and all in all_: from a poem by Lord Tennyson
called “Flower in the Crannied Wall.”
PAGE 11
_Atalanta’s race:_ Look up the story of the beautiful girl
runner who lost her race with her lover because of her desire to
pick up a golden apple.
PAGE 14
_Two mighty wings_: an owl’s wing marks, perhaps the barred owl
or the great horned owl, or the snowy owl, which sometimes comes
down from the north in the winter.
CHAPTER II
TO THE TEACHER
This herding and driving of turkeys to market is common in other
sections of the country, particularly in Kentucky. I have told
the story (as told to me by one who saw the flock) in order to
bring out the force of instinct and habit, and the unreasoning
nature of the animal mind as compared with man’s.
FOR THE PUPIL
PAGE 15
_Shepherd-dog:_ Only a well-trained dog would do, for turkeys
are very timid and greatly afraid of a strange dog.
PAGE 18
_Black Creek_: a local name; not in the Geography.
PAGE 26
_a chorus of answering gobbles:_ Turkeys will follow their
leader. It was this habit or trait that the boys now made use
of.
CHAPTER III
TO THE TEACHER
There is a three-pronged point to this chapter: (1) the empty
birds’ nests are not things to mourn over. The birds are safe
and warm down south; and they will build fresh, clean nests when
they get back. Teach your children to see things as they
are--the wholesomeness, naturalness, wisdom, and poetry of
Nature’s arrangement. The poets are often sentimental; and most
sentimentality is entirely misplaced. (2) The nest abandoned by
the bird may be taken up by the mouse. The deadest, commonest of
things may prove full of life and interest upon close
observation. Summer may go; but winter comes and brings its own
interests and rewards. So does youth go and old age come. There
is nothing really abandoned in nature--nothing utterly lacking
interest. (3) A mouse is not a Bengal tiger; but he is a whole
mouse and in the _completeness_ of his life just as large and
interesting as the tiger. If the small, the common, the things
right at hand, are not interesting, it is not their fault--not
the mouse’s fault--but _ours_.
FOR THE PUPIL
PAGE 30
_white-foot_: the deer, or wood mouse (_Peromyscus leucopus_).
PAGE 32
“_There are no birds in last year’s nest_”: a line from a poem
by Longfellow called “It is not always May.”
PAGE 33
_Darwin’s book on earthworms:_ Read in this book how the worms
make garden soil.
CHAPTER IV
TO THE TEACHER
If you have at hand “The Fall of the Year,” read again the
suggestions on page 112 for the chapter on “Things to See this
Fall,” making use of this chapter as you did of that (1) as the
object of a field excursion--or of several excursions until all
the things suggested here have been seen; (2) as a test of the
pupil’s actual study of nature; for there is scarcely a city
child who cannot get far enough into nature (though he get no
farther than the city park), and often enough to see most of the
things pointed out in this chapter; (3) as suggestions for
further study and observation by the pupils--things that they
have seen which might be added to these ten here, and written
about for composition work in English.
FOR THE PUPIL
Here are ten different things for you to see this winter, and
most of them, whether you live in the city or country, you can
see, provided you live where the snow falls. But you will have
some kind of a winter no matter where you live. Don’t miss
it--its storms, its birds, its animals, its coasting, skating,
snowshoeing, its invitations to tramp the frozen marshes and
deep swamps where you cannot go in the summer, and where, on the
snow you will catch many a glimpse of wild life that the rank
summer sedges will never reveal. Don’t stop with these ten
suggestions; there are a hundred other interesting things to
see. And as you see them, write about them.
CHAPTER V
TO THE TEACHER
Let this chapter be read very close to the Christmas recess,
when your children’s minds are full of Christmas thoughts. This
unconventional turn to the woods, this thought of Christmas
among the animals and birds, might easily be the means of
awakening many to an understanding of the deeper, spiritual side
of nature-study--that we find in Nature only what we take to
her; that we get back only what we give. It will be easy for
them to take the spirit of Christmas into the woods because they
are so full of it; and so it will be easy for them to feel the
woods giving it back to them--the very last and best reward of
nature-study. No, don’t be afraid that they are incapable of
such lessons, of such thoughts and emotions. Some few may be;
but no teacher ever yet erred by too much faith in the capacity
of her pupils for the higher, deeper things.
FOR THE PUPIL
PAGE 46
These lines of poetry you all know. But who can tell who wrote
them? Where did he live and when?
_gum swamp:_ See description of such a swamp on pages 262-263 of
the author’s “Wild Life Near Home.” This is the tree known as
sour gum, more properly tupelo (_Nyssa sylvatica_ or
_uniflora_).
_cardinal grosbeak:_ Commonly called “cardinal,” or “redbird.”
PAGE 47
_Holy Day:_ What was the oldest form of our word “holiday”?
_ilex:_ _Ilex verticillata_, the black alder, or winterberry,
one of the holly family. A low swamp bush covered with red
berries all winter.
PAGE 48
_Lupton’s Pond:_ A little pond along Cohansey Creek near
Bridgeton, N. J.
_Persimmon trees_: found from New Haven, Conn., to Florida.
PAGE 50
_Bob Cratchit’s goose:_ There never was such a goose, as you all
know who have read Dickens’s “Christmas Carol.”
PAGE 52
_liquid amber:_ The balsamic juice of the sweet gum tree,
sometimes called “bilsted” (_Liquidambar styraciflua_), a large,
beautiful swamp tree found from Connecticut to Florida and west
to Texas.
PAGE 53
_half-human tracks:_ Because the coon is a relative of the bears
and has a long hind foot that leaves a track much like that of a
small baby.
PAGE 54
_tupelo:_ See note on _gum swamp_, page 141.
_sour gums_: same as tupelo.
PAGE 55
_chicken or frost grapes_: _Vitis cordifolia_: the smallest,
sourest, best (boy standards) of all our wild grapes. They ripen
_after_ the frost and feed the boys and birds when all other
such fruits have gone from the woods.
_Smooth winterberry_: is really another ilex, _Ilex lævigata_, a
larger bush than _Ilex verticillata_, the black alder or
winterberry.
PAGE 56
_Fox sparrows:_ See the frontispiece. The largest, most
beautiful of our sparrows. Nests in the Far North. A migrant to
New England and the Southern States.
PAGE 59
_The crows were winging over toward their great roost:_ Don’t
fail this winter to spend, if not Christmas Day, then one of
your Christmas vacation days, in the woods, from morning until
the crows go over to their roost. You will never forget that
day.
CHAPTER VI
TO THE TEACHER
Read to the pupils Emerson’s poem “The Titmouse,” dwelling on
the lines,--
“Here was this atom in full breath,
Hurling defiance at vast death,” etc.
and the part beginning,--
“’Tis good will makes intelligence,”
letting the students learn by heart the chickadee’s little
song,--
“Live out of doors
In the great woods, on prairie floors,” etc.
Poem and chapter ought mutually to help each other. Read the
chapter slowly, explaining clearly as you go on, making it
finally plain that this mere “atom” of life is greater than all
the winter death, no matter how “vast.”
FOR THE PUPIL
PAGE 64
“_The Lilac_”: My lilac bush with its suet has become a kind of
hotel, or inn, or boarding-house, for the chickadees.
PAGE 66
_Phœ-ee-bee!_: more often the spring call than the winter
call of Chickadee. It is to be distinguished from the
“phœ’be” call of the phœbe, the flycatcher, by its greater
softness and purity, and by its very distinct _middle syllable_,
as if Chickadee said “Phœ’--ee--bee.” Phœbe’s note is
two-syllabled.
PAGE 67
_protective coloration_: a favorite term with Darwin and many
later naturalists to describe the wonderful harmony in the
colors of animals, insects, etc., and their natural
surroundings, the animal’s color blending so perfectly into the
color of its surroundings as to be a protection to the creature.
PAGE 69
_card house_: as if made of cards, easily pushed, even blown
down.
PAGE 70
_the workman’s chips:_ Look on the ground under a newly
excavated woodpecker’s hole, and you will find his “chips.”
PAGE 73
_a tiny window:_ The tough birch-bark would bend readily. I
would shut the window in leaving by means of a long, sharp
thorn.
CHAPTER VII
TO THE TEACHER
Make a point of going into the winter woods and fields, taking
the pupils as often as possible with you. It may be impossible
for your city children to get the rare chance of glare ice; but
don’t miss it if it comes.
This is the time to start your bird-study; to awaken sympathy
and responsibility in your pupils by teaching them to feed the
birds; to cultivate cheerfulness and the love of “hardness” in
them by breasting with them a bitter winter gale for the pure
joy of it. Use the suggestions here for whatever of
resourcefulness and hardiness you can cultivate in the girls as
well as in the boys.
FOR THE PUPIL
PAGE 79
_the good things to read:_ To name only a few of them, we might
mention John Burroughs’s “Winter Sunshine” and “Squirrels and
Other Fur-Bearers,” Bradford Torrey’s “Footing it in Franconia,”
Frank Bolles’s “At the North of Bearcamp Water,” William
Hamilton Gibson’s “Eye Spy,” William L. Finley’s “American
Birds,” and Edward Breck’s “Wilderness Pets.”
CHAPTER VIII
TO THE TEACHER
I believe this to be one of the most important chapters in the
volume, dark and terrible as its lesson may appear. But grim,
dark death itself is not so dark as fear of the truth. If you
teach nothing else, by precept and example, teach love for the
truth--for the whole truth in nature as everywhere else. Winter
is a fact; let us face it. Death is a fact; let us face it; and
by facing it half of its terror will disappear; nay more, for
something of its deep reasonableness and meaning will begin to
appear, and we shall be no more afraid. The _all_ of this is
beyond a child, as it is beyond us; but the habit of looking
honestly and fearlessly at things must be part of a child’s
education, as later on it must be the very sum of it.
Great tact and fine feeling must be exercised if you happen to
have among the scholars one of the handicapped--one lacking any
part, as the muskrat lacked--lest the application be taken
personally. But let the lesson be driven home: the need every
boy and girl has for a strong, full-membered body,--even for
every one of his teeth,--if he is to live at his physical best.
FOR THE PUPIL
PAGE 83
_incisor teeth_: the four long front teeth of the
rodents,--rats, mice, beavers, etc. These incisor teeth, are
heavily enameled with a sharp cutting edge and keep growing
continuously.
PAGE 85
_voles_: meadow mice.
PAGE 86
_chimney swallows_: more properly _swifts_; as these birds do
not belong to the swallow family at all.
_vermin_: The swifts are generally infested with vermin.
PAGE 91
_clapper rails_: or marsh-hens (_Rallus crepitans_).
PAGE 92
“_List’ning the doors an’ winnocks rattle_”: lines from Burns’s
“A Winter Night.”
CHAPTER IX
TO THE TEACHER
Make this chapter, as far as you can, the one in the volume for
most intensive study. Show the pupils how the study of animal
life is connected with geology, tell them of the record of life
in the fossils of the rocks, the kinds of strange beasts that
once inhabited the earth. Show them again how the study of
animals in their anatomy is not the study of one--say of man,
but how man and all the mammals, the reptiles, the birds, the
fishes, the insects, on and on back to the single-celled
amœba, are all related to each other, all links in one long
wonder chain of life.
FOR THE PUPIL
PAGE 94
_Charles Lamb:_ Look up his life in the Encyclopedia. Read for
yourselves his essay on Roast Pig.
_modus edibilis_: the Latin for “manner of eating.”
PAGE 95
_the ’possum’s relations:_ They are the marsupials, the pouched
animals, like the kangaroo.
PAGE 98
_reptilian age_: one of the great geological ages or eras, known
to the geologists as the great mesozoic or “middle” epoch, when
reptiles ruled the land and sea.
PAGE 103
_smiles at you--grins:_ Read the account of this habit in the
opening chapter of the author’s “Wild Life Near Home.”
CHAPTER X
TO THE TEACHER
This chapter and the next go together--this for the lover of
wild life, the next for the lover of adventure. The spring
freshet is one of the most interesting of the year of days for
animal study--better even than the day after the first snowfall.
But more than this, let both chapters suggest to you how
primitive and elemental the real world is after all; with what
cataclysmal forces the seasons are changed. As summer often
passes into autumn with a silencing frost that rests like a hush
of awe over the land; so winter often gives way to spring with a
rush of wind and tidal powers that seem to shake the foundations
of the world. To feel these forces, to be a part of all these
moods, to share in all these feelings--this, too, is one of the
ends of nature-study.
CHAPTER XII
TO THE TEACHER
I should like to repeat here the suggestions in “The Fall of the
Year” for this corresponding chapter. I will repeat only: “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.” For these are not all the sounds of winter; indeed
they may not be the characteristic sounds in your neighborhood.
No matter: the lesson is not this or that sound, but that your
pupils _learn to listen_ for sounds, for the voices of the
season, whatever those voices may be in their own particular
region. The trouble is that we have ears, and literally hear
not, eyes and see not, souls and feel not. Teach your pupils to
use their eyes, ears, yes and _hearts_, and all things else will
be added unto them in the way of education.
FOR THE PUPIL
I
It is the stilling of the insects that makes for the first of
these silences; the hushing of the winds the second; the magic
touch of the cold the third.
II
The voice of the great spring storm should be added to these,
and the shriek of the wind about the house.
III
You should not only _hear_, but you should also _feel_ this
split--passing with a thrilling shock beneath your feet.
V
How many other of the _small_ voices do you know? The chirp of
the kinglets; the scratching of mice in a shock of corn; the----
but you write a story about them. So listen for yourself.
VI
Do all you can to preserve the quail. Don’t shoot.
VIII
Along toward spring you should hear him “drumming” for a mate--a
rapid motion of his wings much like the hollow sound of a
distant drum.
CHAPTER XIII
TO THE TEACHER
Do all that you can to teach the signs of the zodiac, the days
of the seasons, and all the doings of the astronomical year. All
that old lore of the skies is in danger of being lost. Some
readers will say: “The author is not consistent! He loves the
winter and here he is impatient to be done with it!” Some
explanation on your part may be necessary: that the call of the
spring is the call of life, a call so loud and strong that all
life--human and wild, animal and vegetable,--hears it and is
impatient to obey. If possible take your scholars upon a walk at
this raw edge of the season when they will feel the chill but
also the stirring of life all about them.
FOR THE PUPIL
Get an almanac and study the old weather signs.
PAGE 130
“_When descends on the Atlantic_”: from Longfellow’s “Seaweed.”
PAGE 133
_frog or hyla_: The hylas belong to the family _Hylidæ_ and
include our tree-toad, and our little tree-frog.
“_For, lo, the winter is past_,”: from The Song of Songs, or The
Song of Solomon, in the Bible.
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U . S . A