1593	----	[Illustration: Nature Series No. 23. How To Tell The Birds From The Flowers.] How To Tell The Birds From The Flowers. A Manual of Flornithology for Beginners. [Illustration] Verses and Illustrations By Robert Williams Wood. Published by Paul Elder and Company San Francisco and New York. Copyright 1907 By Paul Elder and Company [Illustration] Contents. Page. The Bird. The Burdock. 1. The Clover. The Plover. 2. The Crow. The Crocus. 3. The Rue. The Rooster. 4. The Parrot. The Carrot. 5. The Pea. The Pewee. 6. The Pelican. The Panicle. 7. The Hen. The Lichen. 8. The Hawk. The Hollyhock. 9. The Cow Bird. The Cowslip. 10. A Sparrer. Asparagus. 11. The Tern. The Turnip. 12. The Ole Gander. The Oleander. 14. The Blue Mountain Lory. The Blue Morning Glory. 15. The Quail. The Kale. 16. The Pecan. The Toucan. 17. The Auk. The Orchid. 18. The Cat-bird. The Catnip. 20. The Ibis. The 'Ibiscus. 21. The Butter-ball. The Buttercup. 22. The Bay. The Jay. 23. The Pipe. The Snipe. 24. The Roc. The Shamrock. 25. The Lark. The Larkspur. 26. The Puffin. Nuffin. 27. Author's Apology. 28. Burr. Bird. [Illustration: Burr. Bird.] The Bird and the Burdock. Who _is_ there who has never heard, About the Burdock and the Bird? And yet how _very very_ few, Discriminate between the two, While even Mr. Burbank can't Transform a Bird into a Plant! [Illustration: Burbank.] The Clover. The Plover. [Illustration: The Clover. The Plover.] The Plover and the Clover can be told apart with ease, By paying close attention to the habits of the Bees, For en-to-molo-gists aver, the Bee can be in Clover, While ety-molo-gists concur, there is no B in Plover. The Crow. The Crocus. [Illustration: The Crow. The Crocus.] Some are unable, as you know, To tell the Crocus from the Crow; The reason why is just because They are not versed in Nature's laws. The noisy, cawing Crows all come, Obedient to the Cro'custom, A large Crow Caw-cus to convoke. You _never_ hear the Crocus croak! The Rue. The Rooster. [Illustration: The Rue. The Rooster.] Of Rooster the rudiment clearly is "_Roo_", And the bird from the plant very probably grew. You can easily tell them apart without fail, By merely observing the Rue lacks de-tail. The Parrot. The Carrot. [Illustration: The Parrot. The Carrot.] The Parrot and the Carrot we may easily confound, They're very much alike in looks and similar in sound, We recognize the Parrot by his clear articulation, For Carrots are unable to engage in conversation. The Pea. The Pewee. [Illustration: The Pea. The Pewee.] To tell the Pewee from the Pea, Requires great per-spi-ca-city. Here in the pod we see the Pea, While perched close by is the Pewee; The Pea he hears the Pewee peep, While Pewee sees the wee Pea weep, There'll be but little time to see, How Pewee differs from the Pea. The Pelican. The Panicle. [Illustration: The Pelican. The Panicle.] The Panicle and Pelican Have often been confused; The letters which spell Pelican In Panicle are used. You never need confound the two, There are many ways of telling: The simplest thing that one can do, Is to observe the spelling. The Hen. The Lichen. [Illustration: The Hen. The Lichen.] The Lichens lie on rocks and bark, They look somewhat like Hens: Hens _lay_, they _lie_, we may remark, A difference of tense. The Hawk. The Hollyhock. [Illustration: The Hawk. The Hollyhock.] To recognize this Bird-of-Prey, The broody Hen you should survey: She takes her Chicks on daily walks, Among the neighboring Hollyhocks, While with the Hawk association, Is quite beyond her toleration. The Cow Bird. The Cowslip. [Illustration: The Cow Bird. The Cowslip.] Growing in mires, in gold attired, The Cowslip has been much admired, Altho' its proper name, we're told, Is really the Marsh Marigold: The Cow Bird picture, I suspect, Is absolutely incorrect, We make such errors now and then, A sort of cow slip of the pen. A Sparrer. Asparagus. [Illustration: A Sparrer. Asparagus.] The Sparrow, from flying, is quite out of breath, In fact he has worked himself almost to death, While the lazy Asparagus,--so it is said,-- Spends all of his time in the 'sparagus bed. The Tern. The Turnip. [Illustration: The Tern. The Turnip.] To tell the Turnip from the Tern, A thing which everyone should learn, Observe the Tern up in the air, See how he turns,--and now compare Him with this inert vegetable, Who thus to turn is quite unable, For he is rooted to the spot, While as we see the Tern is not: He is not always doomed to be Thus bound to earth e-_tern_-ally, For "Cooked to a turn" may be inferred, To change the Turnip to the Bird. [Illustration] Observe the Turnip in the pot. The Tern is glad that he is not! The Ole Gander. The Oleander. [Illustration: The Ole Gander. The Oleander.] The Gander loves to promenade, Around the farmer's poultry-yard, While, as we see, the Oleander Is quite unable to meander. The Blue Mountain Lory. The Blue Morning Glory. [Illustration: The Blue Mountain Lory. The Blue Morning Glory.] The Blue Mountain Lory spends most of his time In climbing about in a tropical clime; We therefore our efforts need only confine, To minutely observing the climb of the Vine. The Quail. The Kale. [Illustration: The Quail. The Kale.] The California Quail is said To have a tail upon his head, While contrary-wise we style the Kale, A cabbage head upon a tail. It is not hard to tell the two, The Quail commences with a queue. The Pecan. The Toucan. [Illustration: The Pecan. The Toucan.] Very few can Tell the Toucan From the Pecan-- Here's a new plan: To take the Toucan from the tree, Requires im-mense a-gil-i-tee, While _any one_ can pick with ease The Pecans from the Pecan trees: It's such an easy thing to do, That even the Toucan he can too. The Auk. The Orchid. [Illustration: The Auk. The Orchid.] We seldom meet, when out to walk, Either the Orchid or the Auk; The Auk indeed is only known To dwellers in the Auktic zone, While Orchids can be found in legions, Within the equatorial regions. The graceful Orchid on its stalk, Resembles so the auk-ward Auk; 'T is plain we must some means discover, To tell the two from one another: The obvious difference, to be sure, Is merely one of temperature. * * * * * [Illustration] For Eskimos, perhaps, the Auk Performs the duties of the Stork. The Cat-bird. The Cat-nip. [Illustration: The Cat-bird. The Cat-nip.] The Cat-bird's call resembles that, Emitted by the Pussy Cat, While Cat-nip, growing by the wall, Is never known to caterwaul: Its odor though attracts the Kits, And throws them in Catniption fits. [Illustration] The Ibis. The 'Ibiscus. [Illustration: The Ibis. The 'Ibiscus.] The sacred Ibis tells his beads, And gravely from his prayer-book reads; The Ibis therfore we may say, Is classified a bird-of-prey. 'Ibiscus we have heard related, The "Crimson-Eye" is designated; Their difference is plain indeed, The flower is red, the bird can read. The Butter-ball. The Butter-cup. [Illustration: The Butter-ball. The Butter-cup.] The little Butter-cup can sing, From morn 'till night like anything: The quacking of the Butter-ball, Cannot be called a song at all. We thus the flower may learn to know, Its song is reproduced below. [Illustration] The Bay. The Jay. [Illustration: The Bay. The Jay.] The Blue-Jay, as we plainly see, Resembles much the green Bay tree: The difference between the two, Is ob-vi-ous-ly one of hue. Though this is not the only way, To tell the Blue-Jay from the Bay. The Pipe. The Snipe. [Illustration: The Pipe. The Snipe.] Observe the common Indian Pipe, Likewise the high-bred English Snipe, Who is distinguished, as we see, By his superior pedigree. [Illustration: Two crosses botonny bend sinister.] [Illustration: Fess argent mantlets sable.] The Roc. The Shamrock. [Illustration: The Roc. The Shamrock.] Observe how peacefully the Cows Among the little Shamrocks browse, In contrast with their actions frantic When they perceive the Roc gigantic; We need but watch thei_r oc_upation, And seek no other explanation. The Lark. The Larkspur. [Illustration: The Lark. The Larkspur.] The Larkspur's likeness to the Lark Is surely worthy of remark, Although to see it we require The aid of a small magnifier, Which circumstance of course implies, Their difference is one of size. Puffin. Nuffin. [Illustration: Puffin. Nuffin.] Upon this cake of ice is perched, The paddle-footed Puffin: To find his double we have searched, But have discovered--Nuffin! Author's Apology. Not every one is always able To recognize a vegetable, For some are guided by tradition, While others use their intuition, And even I make no pretense Of having more than common sense; Indeed these strange homologies Are in most flornithologies, And I have freely drawn upon The works of Gray and Audubon, Avoiding though the frequent blunders Of those who study Nature's wonders. [Illustration: (Back Cover)] 
23941	----	None 
33346	----	How To Tell The Birds From The Flowers And Other Wood-cuts. A Revised Manual of Flornithology for Beginners. [Illustration] Verses and Illustrations By Robert Williams Wood. Published By Duffield and Co. New York. Copyright 1917. By Duffield and Co. [Illustration] Contents. The Burr. The Bird. 1. The Crow. The Crocus. 2. The Plover. The Clover. 3. Ole Gander. Oleander. 4. The Hen. The Lichen. 5. The Pelican. The Panicle. 6. The Pea. The Pewee. 7. The Parrot. The Carrot. 8. The Rue. The Rooster. 9. The Hawk. The Hollyhock. 10. The Pecan. The Toucan. 11. The Cat-bird. The Cat-nip. 12. The Quail. The Kale. 13. The Auk. The Orchid. 14. The Cow-bird. The Cowslip. 15. The Butter-ball. The Buttercup. 16. The Roc. The Shamrock. 17. A Sparrer. Asparagus. 18. The Blue Mountain Lory. 19. The Blue Morning Glory. 19. The Tern. The Turnip. 20. The Larks. The Larkspur. 22. Cross Bill. Sweet William. 23. The Ibis. The 'Ibiscus. 24. The Pipe. The Snipe. 25. The Bay. The Jay. 26. The Gent-ian. The Lady-bird. 27. Puffin. Nuffin. 28. Bee. Beet. Beetle. 29. The Bunny. The Tunny. 30. The Puss. The Octopus. 31. The Eel. The Eelephant. 32. The Ant. The Pheasant. 33. The Hare. The Harrier. 34. The Pen-guin. The Sword-fish. 35. The Gnu. The Newt. 36. The Ray. The Raven. 38. The Ape. The Grape. 40. The Doe. The Dodo. 41. The Pipe-fish. The Sea-gar. 42. The Elk. The Whelk. 43. The P-cock. The Q-cumber. 44. The Sloe. The Sloth. 45. The Cow. The Cowry. 46. The Antelope. The Cantelope. 47. The Pansy. The Chim-pansy. 48. Naught. Nautilus. 49. Intro-duc-tion. [Illustration] By other Nature books I'm sure, You've often been misled, You've tried a wall-flower to secure. And "picked a hen" instead: You've wondered what the egg-plants lay, And why the chestnut's burred, And if the hop-vine hops away, It's perfectly absurd. I hence submit for your inspection, This very new and choice collection, Of flowers on Storks, and Phlox of birds, With some explanatory words. Not every one is always able To recognize a vegetable, For some are guided by tradition, While others use their intuition, And even I make no pretense Of having more than common sense. Indeed these strange homologies Are in most flornithologies, And I have freely drawn upon The works of Gray and Audubon, Avoiding though the frequent blunders Of those who study Nature's wonders. [Illustration] Burr. Bird. [Illustration: Burr. Bird.] Who _is_ there who has never heard, About the Burdock and the Bird? And yet how very very few, Discriminate between the two, While even Mr. Burbank can't, Transform a Bird into a Plant. [Illustration: Burbank.] The Crow. The Crocus. [Illustration: The Crow. The Crocus.] Some are unable, as you know, To tell the Crocus from the Crow; The reason why is just be-caws They are not versed in Nature's laws. The noisy cawing Crows all come, Obedient to the Cro'custom, A large Crow Caw-cus to convoke. You never hear the Crocus croak! The Clover. The Plover. [Illustration: The Clover. The Plover.] The Plover and the Clover can be told apart with ease, By paying close attention to the habits of the Bees, For En-to-molo-gists aver, the Bee can be in Clover, While Ety-molo-gists concur, there is no B in Plover. The Ole Gander. The Oleander. [Illustration: The Ole Gander. The Oleander.] The Gander loves to promenade, Around the farmer's poultry yard, While as we see, the Oleander Is quite unable to meander: The Gardener tied it up indeed, Fearing that it might run to seed. The Hen. The Lichen. [Illustration: The Hen. The Lichen.] Lichens, regardless of conventions, Exist in only two dimensions, A life restricted to a plane, On rocks and stones a greenish stain, They live upon the simplest fare, A drop of dew, a breath of air. Contrast them with the greedy Hen, And her most careless regimen, She shuns the barren stones and rocks, And thrives upon the garbage box. The Pelican. The Panicle. [Illustration: The Pelican. The Panicle.] The Panicle and Pelican have often been confused, The letters which spell Pelican, in Panicle are used. If you recognize this Anagram you'll never go astray, Or make the careless blunder that was made by Mr. Gray. The Pea. The Pewee. [Illustration: The Pea. The Pewee.] To tell the Pewee from the Pea, Requires great per-spi-ca-city. Here in the pod we see the Pea, While perched close by is the Pewee; The Pea he hears the Pewee peep, While Pewee sees the wee Pea weep, There'll be but little time to see, How Pewee differs from the Pea. The Parrot. The Carrot. [Illustration: The Parrot. The Carrot.] The Parrot and the Carrot one may easily confound, They're very much alike in looks and similar in sound, We recognize the Parrot by his clear articulation, For Carrots are unable to engage in conversation. The Rue. The Rooster. [Illustration: The Rue. The Rooster.] When you awake at half-past-two, And hear a "Cock-a-doodle-doo," No argument need then ensue, It is the Rooster, not the Rue, Which never thus disturbs our dreams, With ruthless rude nocturnal screams. We sleep less soundly than we used ter And love the Rue but rue the Rooster. The Hawk. The Hollyhock. [Illustration: The Hawk. The Hollyhock.] To recognize this bird-of-prey, The broody hen you should survey: She takes her chicks on daily walks, Among the neighboring Hollyhocks, While with the Hawk association, Is quite beyond her toleration. The Pecan. The Toucan. [Illustration: The Pecan. The Toucan.] Very few can Tell the Toucan From the Pecan-- Here's a new plan: To take the Toucan from the tree, Requires im-mense a-gil-i-tee, While anyone can pick with ease The Pecans from the Pecan trees. It's such an easy thing to do, That even the Toucan he can too. The Cat-bird. The Cat-nip. [Illustration: The Cat-bird. The Cat-nip.] The Cat-bird's call resembles that Emitted by the Pussy Cat, While Cat-nip growing by the wall, Is never known to caterwaul: It's odor though attracts the Kits, And throws them in Cat-nip-tion fits. [Illustration] The Quail. The Kale. [Illustration: The Quail. The Kale.] The California Quail is said To have a tail upon his head, While contrary-wise we style the Kale, A cabbage-head upon a tail. It is not hard to tell the two, The Quail commences with a queue. The Auk. The Orchid. [Illustration: The Auk. The Orchid.] We seldom meet, when out to walk, Either the Orchid or the Auk. The awk-ward Auk is only known To dwellers in the Auk-tic zone, While Orchids can be found in legions, Within the equatorial regions. So if by chance you travel on The Lena or the Am-a-zon, Be certain of the tem-pera-ture Or you will make mistakes I'm sure. The Cow Bird. The Cowslip. [Illustration: The Cow Bird. The Cowslip.] Although the Cow'slips on this plant, Suggest perhaps a ru-min-ant, One never sees the opening bud, Devour the grass or chew its cud. The Cowbird picture, I suspect, Is absolutely incorrect; We make such errors now and then, A sort of cow slip of the pen. The Butter-ball. The Butter-cup. [Illustration: The Butter-ball. The Butter-cup.] The little Butter-cup can sing, From morn 'till night like anything. The quacking of the Butter-ball, Cannot be called a song at all. We thus the flower may learn to know, Its song is reproduced below. [Illustration] The Roc. The Shamrock. [Illustration: The Roc. The Shamrock.] Although I never took much stock, In Sinbad's yarn about the Roc, And really must confess I am Inclined to think the Roc a sham: Take notice that, the Sham-rock may Be seen upon St. Patrick's day. A Sparrer. Asparagus. [Illustration: A Sparrer. Asparagus.] Of the fall of the Sparrow we often have heard, And I've here represented the fall of the bird: In the case of Asparagus though, I may mention, A fall such as this, is quite out of the question: For observe that Asparagus, fat and well fed, Spends all of his time in the 'sparagus bed. The Blue Mountain Lory. The Blue Morning Glory. [Illustration: The Blue Mountain Lory. The Blue Morning Glory.] The Insects, to avoid surprise By Birds, sometimes themselves disguise As leaves and twigs, and thus escape The appetizing Insect's fate. Observe how cleverly this Vine Has forced its leaves and flowers to twine Themselves into a Bird design. And how it's artful turns and twists, Hides it from zealous Botanists. The Tern. The Turnip. [Illustration: The Tern. The Turnip.] To tell the Turnip from the Tern, A thing which everyone should learn, Observe the Tern up in the air, See how he turns, and now compare Him with this in-ert veg-et-able, Who thus to turn is quite unable, For he is rooted to the spot, While as we see, the Tern is not: He is not always doomed to be Thus bound to earth e-_tern_-ally For "cooked to a tern" may be inferred, To change the Turnip to a bird. [Illustration] Observe the Turnip in the Pot. The Tern is glad that he is not! The Larks. The Larkspur. [Illustration: The Larks. The Larkspur.] You must not make ad-verse remarks, About my drawing of the Larks. For, by the minor poet's lore The Larks--per-pet-ually soar. While Larkspurs, bordering garden walks, Are perched securely on their stalks. Cross Bill. Sweet William. [Illustration: Cross Bill. Sweet William.] Nobody but an imbecile Mistakes Sweet William for Cross Bill: And even I can scarcely claim, The skill to make them look the same. Some other shrubs and vines and trees, Express emotion much like these, You've seen the mad-wort plant I guess, And weeping willows and sigh-press, The passion-flower, at it's climax, The glad-iolus and the smile-ax. The Ibis. The 'Ibiscus. [Illustration: The Ibis. The 'Ibiscus.] The sacred Ibis, one might say, Was classified a "Bird-of-Pray" His body, after death, was dried, Embalmed in pitch, and mummyfied, And thus was handed down to us In some old King's sarcophagus. The Mallow, growing in the bogs, ('Ibiscus termed by pedagogues) Is much opposed to dessication, And bears no marks of veneration. The Pipe. The Snipe. [Illustration: The Pipe. The Snipe.] Observe the hybrid Indian Pipe, Likewise the high-bred English Snipe, Who is distinguished, as we see, By his superior pedigree. [Illustration: Two crosses botonny Bend sinister] [Illustration: Fess Argent Mantlets Sable] The Jay. The Bay. [Illustration: The Jay. The Bay.] The Blue Jay, as we clearly see, Is so much like the green Bay tree That one might say the only clue, Lies in their dif-fer-ence of hue, And if you have a color sense, You'll see at once this difference. The Gent-ians. The Lady-bird. [Illustration: The Gent-ians. The Lady-bird.] The reason why this beetle gay, Is called the Lady-bird, they say, Is just because he wastes his hours, In running after pretty flowers, Who, quite regardless of conventions, Most openly invite attentions. (And hence are aptly termed the Gent-ians.) Puffin. Nuffin. [Illustration: Puffin. Nuffin.] Upon this cake of ice is perched, The paddle-footed Puffin: To find his double I have searched, But have discovered--Nuffin'. The Bee. The Beet. The Beetle. [Illustration: The Bee. The Beet. The Beetle.] Good Mr. Darwin once contended That Beetles were from Bees descended, And as my pictures show I think The Beet must be the missing link. The sugar-beet and honey-bee Supply the Beetle's pedigree: The family is now complete,-- The Bee, the Beetle and the Beet. The Bunny. The Tunny. [Illustration: The Bunny. The Tunny.] The superficial naturalists have often been misled, By failing to discriminate between the tail and head: It really is unfortunate such carelessness prevails, Because the Bunnies have their heads where Tunnies have their tails. The Puss. The Octo-pus. [Illustration: The Puss. The Octo-pus.] The Octopus or Cuttle-fish! I'm sure that none of us would wish To have him scuttle 'round the house, Like Puss, when she espies a mouse: When _you_ secure your house-hold pet, Be very sure you do not get The Octopus, or there may be Domestic in-_felis_-ity. The Eel. The Eelephant. [Illustration: The Eel. The Eelephant.] The marked aversion which we feel, When in the presence of the Eel, Makes many view with consternation, The Elephant's front ele-vation. Such folly must be clearly due To their peculiar point of view. The Ant. The Pheas-ant. [Illustration: The Ant. The Pheas-ant.] The ant is known by his ant-ennae, Where-as the pheas-ant has'nt any, And that is why he wears instead, A small red cap upon his head: Without his Fez, indeed the pheasant, Would be quite bald and quite un-pleasant. The Hare. The Harrier. [Illustration: The Hare. The Harrier.] The Harrier, harassed by the Hare, Presents a picture of despair; Although as far as I'm concerned, I love to see the tables turned. The Harrier flies with all his might, It is a harum-scare'm flight: I'm not surprised he does not care To meet the fierce pursuing Hare. The Pen-guin. The Sword-fish. [Illustration: The Pen-guin. The Sword-fish.] We have for many years been bored By that old saw about the sword And pen, and now we all rejoice, To see how Nature made her choice: She made, regardless of offendin', The Sword-fish mightier than the Penguin. The Gnu. The Newt. [Illustration: The Gnu. The Newt.] The Gnu conspicuously wears His coat of gnumerous bristling hairs, While, as we see, the modest Newt Of such a coat is destitute. (I'm only telling this to you, And it is strictly "entre gnu") In point of fact the Newt is nude, And therefore he does not obtrude, But hides in some secluded gnook, Beneath the surface of the brook. It's almost more than he can bear, To issue slyly from his lair, And snatch a hasty breath of air, His need of which is absolute, Because, you see, he is a pneu-t.[A] [Illustration] [Footnote A: This word, of _air_ is emblematic, Greek, "pneumos"--air--compare Pneumatic.] The Ray. The Raven. [Illustration: The Ray. The Raven.] I always sing the hymn of hate, When I perceive the Ray (or skate) His ugly mouth I can't abide, His eyes are on the other side, His features are all out of place He hasn't even any face. I do not mind the Raven, though Maligned by Edgar Allan Poe: By his fun-er-ial array We recognize him from the Ray, Whose epiderm is white as snow, Not black as night, like Mr Crow. Though black, morose, and quite unshaven I'm sure we all prefer the Raven. [Illustration] The Ape. The Grape. [Illustration: The Ape. The Grape. To see her shape, Invert the Ape!] The Apes, from whom we are descended, Hang ape-x down from trees suspended, And since we find them in the trees, We term them arbor-ig-i-nes. This quite explains the monkey-shines Cut up by those who pluck from vines The Grape, and then subject its juices, To Bacchanalian abuses. The Doe. The Dodo. [Illustration: The Doe. The Dodo.] The Doe and her phonetic double, No longer are a source of trouble, Because the Dodo, it appears, Has been extinct for many years: _She_ was too haughty to embark, With total strangers in Noah's ark, And we rejoice because her pride, Our nature book has simplified. The Pipe-fish. The Sea-gar. [Illustration: The Pipe-fish. The Sea-gar.] To smoke a herring is to make A most lam-_en_-table mistake, Particularly since there are The pipe-fish and the long Sea-gar. Bear this in mind when next you wish To smoke your after-dinner fish. The Elk. The Whelk. [Illustration: The Elk. The Whelk.] A roar of welkome through the welkin Is certain proof you'll find the Elk in; But if you listen to the shell, In which the Whelk is said to dwell, And hear a roar, beyond a doubt It indicates the Whelk is out. The P-Cock. The Q-Cumber. [Illustration: The P-Cock. The Q-Cumber.] The striking similarity of this P-Q-liar pair, No longer need en-cumber us, or fill us with despair: The P-Cock and the Q-Cumber you never need confuse, If you pay attention to the Eyes and mind your P's and Q's. [Illustration] The Sloe. The Sloth. [Illustration: The Sloe. The Sloth.] See what a fix the Sloth is in, He has been captured by the gin: This gin is not the same gin though, In which we sometimes find the Sloe. This shows how careful one must be, To treat the gin most gingerly. The Cow. The Cowry. [Illustration: The Cow. The Cowry.] The Cowry seems to be, somehow, A sort of mouth-piece for the Cow: A speaking likeness one might say, Which I've endeavored to portray. The Antelope. The Cantelope. [Illustration: The Antelope. The Cantelope.] If you will tap the Cantelope reposing on the ground It will not move, but just emit a melon-choly sound But if you try this method on the antlered antelope, His departure will convince you that he is a mis-an-thrope. The Pansy. The Chim-pansy. [Illustration: The Pansy. The Chim-pansy.] Observe how Nature's necromancies Have clearly painted on the Pansies, These almost human counten-ances, In yellow, blue and black nu-ances. The face however seems to me To be that of the Chim-pan-zee: A fact that makes the gentle Pansy, Appeal no longer to my fancy. Naught. Nautilus. [Illustration: Naught. Nautilus.] The Argo-naut or Nautilus, With habits quite adventurous, A com-bin-a-tion of a snail, A jelly-fish and paper sail. The parts of him that did not jell, Are packed securely in his shell. It is not strange that when I sought To find his double, I found Naught. 
414	----	Transcribed from the 1914 Chatto & Windus edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org THE PAGEANT OF SUMMER BY RICHARD JEFFERIES LONDON CHATTO & WINDUS 1914 I. Green rushes, long and thick, standing up above the edge of the ditch, told the hour of the year as distinctly as the shadow on the dial the hour of the day. Green and thick and sappy to the touch, they felt like summer, soft and elastic, as if full of life, mere rushes though they were. On the fingers they left a green scent; rushes have a separate scent of green, so, too, have ferns, very different from that of grass or leaves. Rising from brown sheaths, the tall stems enlarged a little in the middle, like classical columns, and heavy with their sap and freshness, leaned against the hawthorn sprays. From the earth they had drawn its moisture, and made the ditch dry; some of the sweetness of the air had entered into their fibres, and the rushes--the common rushes--were full of beautiful summer. The white pollen of early grasses growing on the edge was dusted from them each time the hawthorn boughs were shaken by a thrush. These lower sprays came down in among the grass, and leaves and grass-blades touched. Smooth round stems of angelica, big as a gun- barrel, hollow and strong, stood on the slope of the mound, their tiers of well-balanced branches rising like those of a tree. Such a sturdy growth pushed back the ranks of hedge parsley in full white flower, which blocked every avenue and winding bird's-path of the bank. But the "gix," or wild parsnip, reached already high above both, and would rear its fluted stalk, joint on joint, till it could face a man. Trees they were to the lesser birds, not even bending if perched on; but though so stout, the birds did not place their nests on or against them. Something in the odour of these umbelliferous plants, perhaps, is not quite liked; if brushed or bruised they give out a bitter greenish scent. Under their cover, well shaded and hidden, birds build, but not against or on the stems, though they will affix their nests to much less certain supports. With the grasses that overhung the edge, with the rushes in the ditch itself, and these great plants on the mound, the whole hedge was wrapped and thickened. No cunning of glance could see through it; it would have needed a ladder to help any one look over. It was between the may and the June roses. The may bloom had fallen, and among the hawthorn boughs were the little green bunches that would feed the red-wings in autumn. High up the briars had climbed, straight and towering while there was a thorn or an ash sapling, or a yellow-green willow, to uphold them, and then curving over towards the meadow. The buds were on them, but not yet open; it was between the may and the rose. As the wind, wandering over the sea, takes from each wave an invisible portion, and brings to those on shore the ethereal essence of ocean, so the air lingering among the wood and hedges--green waves and billows--became full of fine atoms of summer. Swept from notched hawthorn leaves, broad-topped oak-leaves, narrow ash sprays and oval willows; from vast elm cliffs and sharp-taloned brambles under; brushed from the waving grasses and stiffening corn, the dust of the sunshine was borne along and breathed. Steeped in flower and pollen to the music of bees and birds, the stream of the atmosphere became a living thing. It was life to breathe it, for the air itself was life. The strength of the earth went up through the leaves into the wind. Fed thus on the food of the Immortals, the heart opened to the width and depth of the summer--to the broad horizon afar, down to the minutest creature in the grass, up to the highest swallow. Winter shows us Matter in its dead form, like the Primary rocks, like granite and basalt--clear but cold and frozen crystal. Summer shows us Matter changing into life, sap rising from the earth through a million tubes, the alchemic power of light entering the solid oak; and see! it bursts forth in countless leaves. Living things leap in the grass, living things drift upon the air, living things are coming forth to breathe in every hawthorn bush. No longer does the immense weight of Matter--the dead, the crystallized--press ponderously on the thinking mind. The whole office of Matter is to feed life--to feed the green rushes, and the roses that are about to be; to feed the swallows above, and us that wander beneath them. So much greater is this green and common rush than all the Alps. Fanning so swiftly, the wasp's wings are but just visible as he passes; did he pause, the light would be apparent through their texture. On the wings of the dragon-fly as he hovers an instant before he darts there is a prismatic gleam. These wing textures are even more delicate than the minute filaments on a swallow's quill, more delicate than the pollen of a flower. They are formed of matter indeed, but how exquisitely it is resolved into the means and organs of life! Though not often consciously recognized, perhaps this is the great pleasure of summer, to watch the earth, the dead particles, resolving themselves into the living case of life, to see the seed-leaf push aside the clod and become by degrees the perfumed flower. From the tiny mottled egg come the wings that by-and-by shall pass the immense sea. It is in this marvellous transformation of clods and cold matter into living things that the joy and the hope of summer reside. Every blade of grass, each leaf, each separate floret and petal, is an inscription speaking of hope. Consider the grasses and the oaks, the swallows, the sweet blue butterfly--they are one and all a sign and token showing before our eyes earth made into life. So that my hope becomes as broad as the horizon afar, reiterated by every leaf, sung on every bough, reflected in the gleam of every flower. There is so much for us yet to come, so much to be gathered, and enjoyed. Not for you or me, now, but for our race, who will ultimately use this magical secret for their happiness. Earth holds secrets enough to give them the life of the fabled Immortals. My heart is fixed firm and stable in the belief that ultimately the sunshine and the summer, the flowers and the azure sky, shall become, as it were, interwoven into man's existence. He shall take from all their beauty and enjoy their glory. Hence it is that a flower is to me so much more than stalk and petals. When I look in the glass I see that every line in my face means pessimism; but in spite of my face--that is my experience--I remain an optimist. Time with an unsteady hand has etched thin crooked lines, and, deepening the hollows, has cast the original expression into shadow. Pain and sorrow flow over us with little ceasing, as the sea-hoofs beat on the beach. Let us not look at ourselves but onwards, and take strength from the leaf and the signs of the field. He is indeed despicable who cannot look onwards to the ideal life of man. Not to do so is to deny our birthright of mind. The long grass flowing towards the hedge has reared in a wave against it. Along the hedge it is higher and greener, and rustles into the very bushes. There is a mark only now where the footpath was; it passed close to the hedge, but its place is traceable only as a groove in the sorrel and seed-tops. Though it has quite filled the path, the grass there cannot send its tops so high; it has left a winding crease. By the hedge here stands a moss-grown willow, and its slender branches extend over the sward. Beyond it is an oak, just apart from the bushes; then the ground gently rises, and an ancient pollard ash, hollow and black inside, guards an open gateway like a low tower. The different tone of green shows that the hedge is there of nut-trees; but one great hawthorn spreads out in a semicircle, roofing the grass which is yet more verdant in the still pool (as it were) under it. Next a corner, more oaks, and a chestnut in bloom. Returning to this spot an old apple tree stands right out in the meadow like an island. There seemed just now the tiniest twinkle of movement by the rushes, but it was lost among the hedge parsley. Among the grey leaves of the willow there is another flit of motion; and visible now against the sky there is a little brown bird, not to be distinguished at the moment from the many other little brown birds that are known to be about. He got up into the willow from the hedge parsley somehow, without being seen to climb or fly. Suddenly he crosses to the tops of the hawthorn and immediately flings himself up into the air a yard or two, his wings and ruffled crest making a ragged outline; jerk, jerk, jerk, as if it were with the utmost difficulty he could keep even at that height. He scolds, and twitters, and chirps, and all at once sinks like a stone into the hedge and out of sight as a stone into a pond. It is a whitethroat; his nest is deep in the parsley and nettles. Presently he will go out to the island apple tree and back again in a minute or two; the pair of them are so fond of each other's affectionate company, they cannot remain apart. Watching the line of the hedge, about every two minutes, either near at hand or yonder a bird darts out just at the level of the grass, hovers a second with labouring wings, and returns as swiftly to the cover. Sometimes it is a flycatcher, sometimes a greenfinch, or chaffinch, now and then a robin, in one place a shrike, perhaps another is a redstart. They are flyfishing all of them, seizing insects from the sorrel tips and grass, as the kingfisher takes a roach from the water. A blackbird slips up into the oak and a dove descends in the corner by the chestnut tree. But these are not visible together, only one at a time and with intervals. The larger part of the life of the hedge is out of sight. All the thrush-fledglings, the young blackbirds, and finches are hidden, most of them on the mound among the ivy, and parsley, and rough grasses, protected, too, by a roof of brambles. The nests that still have eggs are not, like the nests of the early days of April, easily found; they are deep down in the tangled herbage by the shore of the ditch, or far inside the thorny thickets which then looked mere bushes, and are now so broad. Landrails are running in the grass concealed as a man would be in a wood; they have nests and eggs on the ground for which you may search in vain till the mowers come. Up in the corner a fragment of white fur and marks of scratching show where a doe has been preparing for a litter. Some well-trodden runs lead from mound to mound; they are sandy near the hedge where the particles have been carried out adhering to the rabbits' feet and fur. A crow rises lazily from the upper end of the field, and perches in the chestnut. His presence, too, was unsuspected. He is there by far too frequently. At this season the crows are always in the mowing-grass, searching about, stalking in winding tracks from furrow to furrow, picking up an egg here and a foolish fledgling that has wandered from the mound yonder. Very likely there may be a moorhen or two slipping about under cover of the long grass; thus hidden, they can leave the shelter of the flags and wander a distance from the brook. So that beneath the surface of the grass and under the screen of the leaves there are ten times more birds than are seen. Besides the singing and calling, there is a peculiar sound which is only heard in summer. Waiting quietly to discover what birds are about, I become aware of a sound in the very air. It is not the midsummer hum which will soon be heard over the heated hay in the valley and over the cooler hills alike. It is not enough to be called a hum, and does but just tremble at the extreme edge of hearing. If the branches wave and rustle they overbear it; the buzz of a passing bee is so much louder, it overcomes all of it that is in the whole field. I cannot define it, except by calling the hours of winter to mind--they are silent; you hear a branch crack or creak as it rubs another in the wood, you hear the hoar frost crunch on the grass beneath your feet, but the air is without sound in itself. The sound of summer is everywhere--in the passing breeze, in the hedge, in the broad-branching trees, in the grass as it swings; all the myriad particles that together make the summer are in motion. The sap moves in the trees, the pollen is pushed out from grass and flower, and yet again these acres and acres of leaves and square miles of grass blades--for they would cover acres and square miles if reckoned edge to edge--are drawing their strength from the atmosphere. Exceedingly minute as these vibrations must be, their numbers perhaps may give them a volume almost reaching in the aggregate to the power of the ear. Besides the quivering leaf, the swinging grass, the fluttering bird's wing, and the thousand oval membranes which innumerable insects whirl about, a faint resonance seems to come from the very earth itself. The fervour of the sunbeams descending in a tidal flood rings on the strung harp of earth. It is this exquisite undertone, heard and yet unheard, which brings the mind into sweet accordance with the wonderful instrument of nature. By the apple tree there is a low bank, where the grass is less tall and admits the heat direct to the ground; here there are blue flowers--bluer than the wings of my favourite butterflies--with white centres--the lovely bird's-eyes, or veronica. The violet and cowslip, bluebell and rose, are known to thousands; the veronica is overlooked. The ploughboys know it, and the wayside children, the mower and those who linger in fields, but few else. Brightly blue and surrounded by greenest grass, imbedded in and all the more blue for the shadow of the grass, these growing butterflies' wings draw to themselves the sun. From this island I look down into the depth of the grasses. Red sorrel spires--deep drinkers of reddest sun wine--stand the boldest, and in their numbers threaten the buttercups. To these in the distance they give the gipsy- gold tint--the reflection of fire on plates of the precious metal. It will show even on a ring by firelight; blood in the gold, they say. Gather the open marguerite daisies, and they seem large--so wide a disc, such fingers of rays; but in the grass their size is toned by so much green. Clover heads of honey lurk in the bunches and by the hidden footpath. Like clubs from Polynesia the tips of the grasses are varied in shape: some tend to a point--the foxtails--some are hard and cylindrical; others, avoiding the club shape, put forth the slenderest branches with fruit of seed at the ends, which tremble as the air goes by. Their stalks are ripening and becoming of the colour of hay while yet the long blades remain green. Each kind is repeated a hundred times, the foxtails are succeeded by foxtails, the narrow blades by narrow blades, but never become monotonous; sorrel stands by sorrel, daisy flowers by daisy. This bed of veronica at the foot of the ancient apple has a whole handful of flowers, and yet they do not weary the eye. Oak follows oak and elm ranks with elm, but the woodlands are pleasant; however many times reduplicated, their beauty only increases. So, too, the summer days; the sun rises on the same grasses and green hedges, there is the same blue sky, but did we ever have enough of them? No, not in a hundred years! There seems always a depth, somewhere, unexplored, a thicket that has not been seen through, a corner full of ferns, a quaint old hollow tree, which may give us something. Bees go by me as I stand under the apple, but they pass on for the most part bound on a long journey, across to the clover fields or up to the thyme lands; only a few go down into the mowing-grass. The hive bees are the most impatient of insects; they cannot bear to entangle their wings beating against grasses or boughs. Not one will enter a hedge. They like an open and level surface, places cropped by sheep, the sward by the roadside, fields of clover, where the flower is not deep under grass. II. It is the patient humble-bee that goes down into the forest of the mowing- grass. If entangled, the humble-bee climbs up a sorrel stem and takes wing, without any sign of annoyance. His broad back with tawny bar buoyantly glides over the golden buttercups. He hums to himself as he goes, so happy is he. He knows no skep, no cunning work in glass receives his labour, no artificial saccharine aids him when the beams of the sun are cold, there is no step to his house that he may alight in comfort; the way is not made clear for him that he may start straight for the flowers, nor are any sown for him. He has no shelter if the storm descends suddenly; he has no dome of twisted straw well thatched and tiled to retreat to. The butcher-bird, with a beak like a crooked iron nail, drives him to the ground, and leaves him pierced with a thorn but no hail of shot revenges his tortures. The grass stiffens at nightfall (in autumn), and he must creep where he may, if possibly he may escape the frost. No one cares for the humble-bee. But down to the flowering nettle in the mossy-sided ditch, up into the tall elm, winding in and out and round the branched buttercups, along the banks of the brook, far inside the deepest wood, away he wanders and despises nothing. His nest is under the rough grasses and the mosses of the mound, a mere tunnel beneath the fibres and matted surface. The hawthorn overhangs it, the fern grows by, red mice rustle past. It thunders, and the great oak trembles; the heavy rain drops through the treble roof of oak and hawthorn and fern. Under the arched branches the lightning plays along, swiftly to and fro, or seems to, like the swish of a whip, a yellowish-red against the green; a boom! a crackle as if a tree fell from the sky. The thick grasses are bowed, the white florets of the wild parsley are beaten down, the rain hurls itself, and suddenly a fierce blast tears the green oak leaves and whirls them out into the fields; but the humble-bee's home, under moss and matted fibres, remains uninjured. His house at the root of the king of trees, like a cave in the rock, is safe. The storm passes and the sun comes out, the air is the sweeter and the richer for the rain, like verses with a rhyme; there will be more honey in the flowers. Humble he is, but wild; always in the field, the wood; always by the banks and thickets; always wild and humming to his flowers. Therefore I like the humble-bee, being, at heart at least, for ever roaming among the woodlands and the hills and by the brooks. In such quick summer storms the lightning gives the impression of being far more dangerous than the zigzag paths traced on the autumn sky. The electric cloud seems almost level with the ground, and the livid flame to rush to and fro beneath the boughs as the little bats do in the evening. Caught by such a cloud, I have stayed under thick larches at the edge of plantations. They are no shelter, but conceal one perfectly. The wood pigeons come home to their nest trees; in larches they seem to have permanent nests, almost like rooks. Kestrels, too, come home to the wood. Pheasants crow, but not from fear--from defiance; in fear they scream. The boom startles them, and they instantly defy the sky. The rabbits quietly feed on out in the field between the thistles and rushes that so often grow in woodside pastures, quietly hopping to their favourite places, utterly heedless how heavy the echoes may be in the hollows of the wooded hills. Till the rain comes they take no heed whatever, but then make for shelter. Blackbirds often make a good deal of noise; but the soft turtle-doves coo gently, let the lightning be as savage as it will. Nothing has the least fear. Man alone, more senseless than a pigeon, put a god in vapour; and to this day, though the printing press has set a foot on every threshold, numbers bow the knee when they hear the roar the timid dove does not heed. So trustful are the doves, the squirrels, the birds of the branches, and the creatures of the field. Under their tuition let us rid ourselves of mental terrors, and face death itself as calmly as they do the livid lightning; so trustful and so content with their fate, resting in themselves and unappalled. If but by reason and will I could reach the godlike calm and courage of what we so thoughtlessly call the timid turtle-dove, I should lead a nearly perfect life. The bark of the ancient apple tree under which I have been standing is shrunken like iron which has been heated and let cool round the rim of a wheel. For a hundred years the horses have rubbed against it while feeding in the aftermath. The scales of the bark are gone or smoothed down and level, so that insects have no hiding-place. There are no crevices for them, the horsehairs that were caught anywhere have been carried away by birds for their nests. The trunk is smooth and columnar, hard as iron. A hundred times the mowing-grass has grown up around it, the birds have built their nests, the butterflies fluttered by, and the acorns dropped from the oaks. It is a long, long time, counted by artificial hours or by the seasons, but it is longer still in another way. The greenfinch in the hawthorn yonder has been there since I came out, and all the time has been happily talking to his love. He has left the hawthorn indeed, but only for a minute or two, to fetch a few seeds, and comes back each time more full of song-talk than ever. He notes no slow movement of the oak's shadow on the grass; it is nothing to him and his lady dear that the sun, as seen from his nest, is crossing from one great bough of the oak to another. The dew even in the deepest and most tangled grass has long since been dried, and some of the flowers that close at noon will shortly fold their petals. The morning airs, which breathe so sweetly, come less and less frequently as the heat increases. Vanishing from the sky, the last fragments of cloud have left an untarnished azure. Many times the bees have returned to their hives, and thus the index of the day advances. It is nothing to the greenfinches; all their thoughts are in their song-talk. The sunny moment is to them all in all. So deeply are they rapt in it that they do not know whether it is a moment or a year. There is no clock for feeling, for joy, for love. And with all their motions and stepping from bough to bough, they are not restless; they have so much time, you see. So, too, the whitethroat in the wild parsley; so, too, the thrush that just now peered out and partly fluttered his wings as he stood to look. A butterfly comes and stays on a leaf--a leaf much warmed by the sun--and shuts his wings. In a minute he opens them, shuts them again, half wheels round, and by-and-by--just when he chooses, and not before--floats away. The flowers open, and remain open for hours, to the sun. Hastelessness is the only word one can make up to describe it; there is much rest, but no haste. Each moment, as with the greenfinches, is so full of life that it seems so long and so sufficient in itself. Not only the days, but life itself lengthens in summer. I would spread abroad my arms and gather more of it to me, could I do so. All the procession of living and growing things passes. The grass stands up taller and still taller, the sheaths open, and the stalk arises, the pollen clings till the breeze sweeps it. The bees rush past, and the resolute wasps; the humble-bees, whose weight swings them along. About the oaks and maples the brown chafers swarm, and the fern-owls at dusk, and the blackbirds and jays by day, cannot reduce their legions while they last. Yellow butterflies, and white, broad red admirals, and sweet blues; think of the kingdom of flowers which is theirs! Heavy moths burring at the edge of the copse; green, and red, and gold flies: gnats, like smoke, around the tree-tops; midges so thick over the brook, as if you could haul a netful; tiny leaping creatures in the grass; bronze beetles across the path; blue dragonflies pondering on cool leaves of water-plantain. Blue jays flitting, a magpie drooping across from elm to elm; young rooks that have escaped the hostile shot blundering up into the branches; missel thrushes leading their fledglings, already strong on the wing, from field to field. An egg here on the sward dropped by a starling; a red ladybird creeping, tortoise-like, up a green fern frond. Finches undulating through the air, shooting themselves with closed wings, and linnets happy with their young. Golden dandelion discs--gold and orange--of a hue more beautiful, I think, than the higher and more visible buttercup. A blackbird, gleaming, so black is he, splashing in the runlet of water across the gateway. A ruddy kingfisher swiftly drawing himself, as you might draw a stroke with a pencil, over the surface of the yellow buttercups, and away above the hedge. Hart's-tongue fern, thick with green, so green as to be thick with its colour, deep in the ditch under the shady hazel boughs. White meadow-sweet lifting its tiny florets, and black-flowered sedges. You must push through the reed grass to find the sword-flags; the stout willow-herbs will not be trampled down, but resist the foot like underwood. Pink lychnis flowers behind the withy stoles, and little black moorhens swim away, as you gather it, after their mother, who has dived under the water-grass, and broken the smooth surface of the duckweed. Yellow loosestrife is rising, thick comfrey stands at the very edge; the sandpipers run where the shore is free from bushes. Back by the underwood the prickly and repellent brambles will presently present us with fruit. For the squirrels the nuts are forming, green beechmast is there--green wedges under the spray; up in the oaks the small knots, like bark rolled up in a dot, will be acorns. Purple vetches along the mounds, yellow lotus where the grass is shorter, and orchis succeeds to orchis. As I write them, so these things come--not set in gradation, but like the broadcast flowers in the mowing-grass. Now follows the gorse, and the pink rest-harrow, and the sweet lady's bedstraw, set as it were in the midst of a little thorn-bush. The broad repetition of the yellow clover is not to be written; acre upon acre, and not one spot of green, as if all the green had been planed away, leaving only the flowers to which the bees come by the thousand from far and near. But one white campion stands in the midst of the lake of yellow. The field is scented as though a hundred hives of honey had been emptied on it. Along the mound by it the bluebells are seeding, the hedge has been cut and the ground is strewn with twigs. Among those seeding bluebells and dry twigs and mosses I think a titlark has his nest, as he stays all day there and in the oak over. The pale clear yellow of charlock, sharp and clear, promises the finches bushels of seed for their young. Under the scarlet of the poppies the larks run, and then for change of colour soar into the blue. Creamy honeysuckle on the hedge around the cornfield, buds of wild rose everywhere, but no sweet petal yet. Yonder, where the wheat can climb no higher up the slope, are the purple heath-bells, thyme and flitting stone-chats. The lone barn shut off by acres of barley is noisy with sparrows. It is their city, and there is a nest in every crevice, almost under every tile. Sometimes the partridges run between the ricks, and when the bats come out of the roof, leverets play in the waggon-track. At even a fern- owl beats by, passing close to the eaves whence the moths issue. On the narrow waggon-track which descends along a coombe and is worn in chalk, the heat pours down by day as if an invisible lens in the atmosphere focussed the sun's rays. Strong woody knapweed endures it, so does toadflax and pale blue scabious, and wild mignonette. The very sun of Spain burns and burns and ripens the wheat on the edge of the coombe, and will only let the spring moisten a yard or two around it; but there a few rushes have sprung, and in the water itself brooklime with blue flowers grows so thickly that nothing but a bird could find space to drink. So down again from this sun of Spain to woody coverts where the wild hops are blocking every avenue, and green-flowered bryony would fain climb to the trees; where grey-flecked ivy winds spirally about the red rugged bark of pines, where burdocks fight for the footpath, and teazle-heads look over the low hedges. Brake-fern rises five feet high; in some way woodpeckers are associated with brake, and there seem more of them where it flourishes. If you count the depth and strength of its roots in the loamy sand, add the thickness of its flattened stem, and the width of its branching fronds, you may say that it comes near to be a little tree. Beneath where the ponds are bushy mare's-tails grow, and on the moist banks jointed pewterwort; some of the broad bronze leaves of water-weeds seem to try and conquer the pond and cover it so firmly that a wagtail may run on them. A white butterfly follows along the waggon-road, the pheasants slip away as quietly as the butterfly flies, but a jay screeches loudly and flutters in high rage to see us. Under an ancient garden wall among matted bines of trumpet convolvulus, there is a hedge- sparrow's nest overhung with ivy on which even now the last black berries cling. There are minute white flowers on the top of the wall, out of reach, and lichen grows against it dried by the sun till it looks ready to crumble. By the gateway grows a thick bunch of meadow geranium, soon to flower; over the gate is the dusty highway road, quiet but dusty, dotted with the innumerable foot-marks of a flock of sheep that has passed. The sound of their bleating still comes back, and the bees driven up by their feet have hardly had time to settle again on the white clover beginning to flower on the short roadside sward. All the hawthorn leaves and briar and bramble, the honeysuckle, too, is gritty with the dust that has been scattered upon it. But see--can it be? Stretch a hand high, quick, and reach it down; the first, the sweetest, the dearest rose of June. Not yet expected, for the time is between the may and the roses, least of all here in the hot and dusty highway; but it is found--the first rose of June. Straight go the white petals to the heart; straight the mind's glance goes back to how many other pageants of summer in old times! When perchance the sunny days were even more sunny; when the stilly oaks were full of mystery, lurking like the Druid's mistletoe in the midst of their mighty branches. A glamour in the heart came back to it again from every flower; as the sunshine was reflected from them, so the feeling in the heart returned tenfold. To the dreamy summer haze, love gave a deep enchantment, the colours were fairer, the blue more lovely in the lucid sky. Each leaf finer, and the gross earth enamelled beneath the feet. A sweet breath on the air, a soft warm hand in the touch of the sunshine, a glance in the gleam of the rippled waters, a whisper in the dance of the shadows. The ethereal haze lifted the heavy oaks and they were buoyant on the mead, the rugged bark was chastened and no longer rough, each slender flower beneath them again refined. There was a presence everywhere, though unseen, on the open hills, and not shut out under the dark pines. Dear were the June roses then because for another gathered. Yet even dearer now with so many years as it were upon the petals; all the days that have been before, all the heart-throbs, all our hopes lie in this opened bud. Let not the eyes grow dim, look not back but forward; the soul must uphold itself like the sun. Let us labour to make the heart grow larger as we become older, as the spreading oak gives more shelter. That we could but take to the soul some of the greatness and the beauty of the summer! Still the pageant moves. The song-talk of the finches rises and sinks like the tinkle of a waterfall. The greenfinches have been by me all the while. A bullfinch pipes now and then further up the hedge where the brambles and thorns are thickest. Boldest of birds to look at, he is always in hiding. The shrill tone of a goldfinch came just now from the ash branches, but he has gone on. Every four or five minutes a chaffinch sings close by, and another fills the interval near the gateway. There are linnets somewhere, but I cannot from the old apple tree fix their exact place. Thrushes have sung and ceased; they will begin again in ten minutes. The blackbirds do not cease; the note uttered by a blackbird in the oak yonder before it can drop is taken up by a second near the top of the field, and ere it falls is caught by a third on the left-hand side. From one of the topmost boughs of an elm there fell the song of a willow warbler for a while; one of the least of birds, he often seeks the highest branches of the highest tree. A yellowhammer has just flown from a bare branch in the gateway, where he has been perched and singing a full hour. Presently he will commence again, and as the sun declines will sing him to the horizon, and then again sing till nearly dusk. The yellowhammer is almost the longest of all the singers; he sits and sits and has no inclination to move. In the spring he sings, in the summer he sings, and he continues when the last sheaves are being carried from the wheat field. The redstart yonder has given forth a few notes, the whitethroat flings himself into the air at short intervals and chatters, the shrike calls sharp and determined, faint but shrill calls descend from the swifts in the air. These descend, but the twittering notes of the swallows do not reach so far--they are too high to-day. A cuckoo has called by the brook, and now fainter from a greater distance. That the titlarks are singing I know, but not within hearing from here; a dove, though, is audible, and a chiffchaff has twice passed. Afar beyond the oaks at the top of the field dark specks ascend from time to time, and after moving in wide circles for a while descend again to the corn. These must be larks; but their notes are not powerful enough to reach me, though they would were it not for the song in the hedges, the hum of innumerable insects, and the ceaseless "crake, crake" of landrails. There are at least two landrails in the mowing-grass; one of them just now seemed coming straight towards the apple tree, and I expected in a minute to see the grass move, when the bird turned aside and entered the tufts and wild parsley by the hedge. Thence the call has come without a moment's pause, "crake, crake," till the thick hedge seems filled with it. Tits have visited the apple tree over my head, a wren has sung in the willow, or rather on a dead branch projecting lower down than the leafy boughs, and a robin across under the elms in the opposite hedge. Elms are a favourite tree of robins--not the upper branches, but those that grow down the trunk, and are the first to have leaves in spring. The yellowhammer is the most persistent individually, but I think the blackbirds when listened to are the masters of the fields. Before one can finish, another begins, like the summer ripples succeeding behind each other, so that the melodious sound merely changes its position. Now here, now in the corner, then across the field, again in the distant copse, where it seems about to sink, when it rises again almost at hand. Like a great human artist, the blackbird makes no effort, being fully conscious that his liquid tone cannot be matched. He utters a few delicious notes, and carelessly quits the green stage of the oak till it pleases him to sing again. Without the blackbird, in whose throat the sweetness of the green fields dwells, the days would be only partly summer. Without the violet, all the bluebells and cowslips could not make a spring, and without the blackbird, even the nightingale would be but half welcome. It is not yet noon, these songs have been ceaseless since dawn; this evening, after the yellowhammer has sung the sun down, when the moon rises and the faint stars appear, still the cuckoo will call, and the grasshopper lark, the landrail's "crake, crake" will echo from the mound, a warbler or a blackcap will utter his notes, and even at the darkest of the summer night the swallows will hardly sleep in their nests. As the morning sky grows blue, an hour before the sun, up will rise the larks, singing and audible now, the cuckoo will recommence, and the swallows will start again on their tireless journey. So that the songs of the summer birds are as ceaseless as the sound of the waterfall which plays day and night. I cannot leave it; I must stay under the old tree in the midst of the long grass, the luxury of the leaves, and the song in the very air. I seem as if I could feel all the glowing life the sunshine gives and the south wind calls to being. The endless grass, the endless leaves, the immense strength of the oak expanding, the unalloyed joy of finch and blackbird; from all of them I receive a little. Each gives me something of the pure joy they gather for themselves. In the blackbird's melody one note is mine; in the dance of the leaf shadows the formed maze is for me, though the motion is theirs; the flowers with a thousand faces have collected the kisses of the morning. Feeling with them, I receive some, at least, of their fulness of life. Never could I have enough; never stay long enough--whether here or whether lying on the shorter sward under the sweeping and graceful birches, or on the thyme-scented hills. Hour after hour, and still not enough. Or walking the footpath was never long enough, or my strength sufficient to endure till the mind was weary. The exceeding beauty of the earth, in her splendour of life, yields a new thought with every petal. The hours when the mind is absorbed by beauty are the only hours when we really live, so that the longer we can stay among these things so much the more is snatched from inevitable Time. Let the shadow advance upon the dial--I can watch it with equanimity while it is there to be watched. It is only when the shadow is _not_ there, when the clouds of winter cover it, that the dial is terrible. The invisible shadow goes on and steals from us. But now, while I can see the shadow of the tree and watch it slowly gliding along the surface of the grass, it is mine. These are the only hours that are not wasted--these hours that absorb the soul and fill it with beauty. This is real life, and all else is illusion, or mere endurance. Does this reverie of flowers and waterfall and song form an ideal, a human ideal, in the mind? It does; much the same ideal that Phidias sculptured of man and woman filled with a godlike sense of the violet fields of Greece, beautiful beyond thought, calm as my turtle-dove before the lurid lightning of the unknown. To be beautiful and to be calm, without mental fear, is the ideal of nature. If I cannot achieve it, at least I can think it. * * * * * BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD 
43013	----	Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have been preserved. Italic text is denoted by _underscores_. Animal Analogues. [Illustration] Verses and Illustrations By Robert Williams Wood. Author of "How To Tell The Birds From the Flowers." Published by Paul Elder and Company. San Francisco and New York. Copyright 1908 By Paul Elder and Company. Contents. Page. The Bee--The Beet--The Beetle. 1. The Ant--The Pheas-ant. 2. The Bunny--The Tunny. 3. The Eel--The Eelephant. 4. The Puss--The Octo-pus. 5. The Gnu--The Newt. 6. The Hare--The Harrier. 8. The Pipe-fish--The Sea-gar. 9. The Cow--The Cowry. 10. The Doe--The Dodo. 11. The Ray--The Raven. 12. The Coot--The Bandicoot. 14. The Ape--The Grape. 16. The Elk--The Whelk. 17. The Cross-Bill--The Sweet-William. 18. The Pitcher-Plant--The Fly-Catcher. 19. The Antelope--The Cantelope. 20. The P-Cock--The Q-Cumber. 22. The Pen-guin--The Sword-fish. 23. The Yellow-Hammer--The Saw-fish. 24. The Pansy--The Chim-pansy. 26. Naught--Argonaut. 27. Author's Add-end-'em. 28. [Illustration: The Bee. The Beet. The Beetle.] Good Mr. Darwin once contendeds That Beetles were from Bees descended; And as my pictures show, I think, The Beet must be the missing-link. The Sugar-Beet and Honey-Bee Supply the Beetle's pedigree: The family is now complete,-- The Bee, the Beetle and the Beet. [Illustration: The Ant. The Pheas-ant.] The Ant is known by his ant-ennae, Where-as the pheas-ant hasn't any, And that is why he wears, instead, A small red cap upon his head: Without his Fez, indeed the pheasant Would be quite bald and quite un-Pleasant. [Illustration: The Bunny. The Tunny.] The superficial naturalists have often been misled, By failing to dis-crim-inate between the tail and head: It really is unfortunate such carelessness prevails, Because the Bunnies have their heads where Tunnies have their tails. [Illustration: The Eel. The Eelephant.] The marked aversion which we feel, When in the presence of the Eel, Makes many view with consternation, The Elephant's front ele-vation. Such folly must be clearly due To their peculiar point of view. [Illustration: The Puss. The Octo-pus.] The Octo-pus or Cuttle-fish! I'm sure that none of us would wish To have him scuttle 'round the house, Like puss, when she espies a mouse: When you secure your house-hold pet, Be very sure you do not get The Octo-pus, or there may be Dom-es-tic in-_felis_-ity. [Illustration: The Gnu. The Newt.] The Gnu conspicuously wears His coat of gnumerous bristling hairs, While, as we see, the modest Newt Of such a coat is destitute. (I'm only telling this to you, And it is strictly "entre gnu".) In point of fact the Newt is nude, And therefore he does not obtrude, But hides in some secluded gnook, Beneath the surface of the brook: It's almost more than he can bear, To slyly take his breath of air, His need of which is absolute, Because, you see, he is a Pneu-t.[A] [A] This stands for air, like aero-static, Greek--"pneumos"--air--comp-air "pneu-matic". [Illustration] [Illustration: The Hare. The Harrier.] The Harrier, harassed by the Hare, Presents a picture of despair; Altho' as far as I'm concerned, I love to see the tables turned. The Harrier flies with all his might, It is a harum-scare'm flight: I'm not surprised he does not care To meet the fierce pursuing Hare! [Illustration; The Pipe-fish. The Sea-gar.] To smoke a herring is to make A most lamentable mistake, Particularly since there are The Pipe-fish and the long Sea-gar: Bear this in mind when next you wish To smoke your after-dinner fish. [Illustration: The Cow. The Cowry.] The Cowry seems to be, somehow, A sort of mouth-piece for the Cow: A speaking likeness one might say, Which I've endeavored to portray. [Illustration: The Doe. The Dodo.] The Doe and her peculiar _double_ No longer are a source of trouble, Because the Dodo, it appears, Has been extinct for many years. She was too proud to disembark With total strangers in Noah's Ark, And we rejoice because her pride Our Nature book has simplified. [Illustration: The Ray. The Raven.] The Raven is a kind of crow, Immortalized by Mr. Poe, And we are often led astray By its resemblance to the Ray; The one which I denominate, Is termed by fisher-men the Skate; I much prefer the latter phrase, There are so many kinds of Rays: There're Rays of hope, and Rays of light. X Rays, and Rays more _re_-con-dite, Which, though of interest to Science, With Ravens have but small alliance. [Illustration: The Coot. The Bandicoot.] I do not wish to at-tri-bute Importance to the common Coot, Or mud-hen, whom most persons scorn, Because she chanced to be "Earth-born". The small Australian Bandicoots Are said to spring from Kanga-roots, Which roots, as you of course foresee, Are those of their ancestral tree, The motto of which vegetable Is just "O possum"[B] (I am able). [B] The Bandicoot and Kangaroo, As well as the Opossum too, Are relatives because all three Belong to the same family. [Illustration] [Illustration: The Ape. The Grape. To see her shape Invert the ape!] The Apes, from whom we are descended, Hang ape-x down from trees suspended, And since we find them in the trees, We term them arbor-iginees. We all have seen the monkey-shines, Cut up by those who pluck from vines The Grape and then subject its juices To Baccha-nalian abuses. [Illustration: The Elk. The Whelk.] A roar of welkome through the welkin Is certain proof you'll find the Elk "in"; But if you listen to the shell, In which the Whelk is said to dwell, And hear a roar, beyond a doubt It indicates the Whelk is "out". [Illustration: Cross Bill. Sweet William.] No-body but an imbecile Mistakes Sweet William for Cross Bill; And even I can scarcely claim The skill to make them look the same, Which proves there's nothing in a name. [Illustration: The Pitcher Plant. The Fly-Catcher.] The Pitcher Plant we may define, The flower of the base-ball nine; This name perhaps the plant belies, For Pitcher Plants sometimes catch flies; The "Fly"-Catcher we educate To firmly stand behind the plate, To stop, and treat with circumspection, Whatever comes in his direction. [Illustration: The Antelope. The Cantelope.] The Antelope and Cantelope Lie side by side upon the slope, And careless persons might, I fear, Mistake the melon for the deer. If you will tap the Cantelope, reposing on the ground, It does not move, but just emits a melon-choly sound; But should you try, however, to apply a stethoscope, And attempt this auscultation on the antlered Antelope, And should see an imitation of a very rapid flight, And should say, "It is the Antelope!" I think you would be right. [Illustration: The P-Cock. The Q-Cumber.] The striking similarity of this P-Q-liar pair, No longer need en-cumber us or fill us with despair; The P-Cock and the Q-Cumber you never need confuse. If you pay attention to the I's[Illustration] and mind your P's and Q's. [Illustration: The Pen-guin. The Sword-fish.] We have for many years been bored By that old saw about the sword And pen, and now we all rejoice, To see how Nature made her choice: She made, regardless of offendin', The Sword-fish mightier than the Penguin. [Illustration: The Yellow-Hammer.] [Illustration: The Saw-Fish.] The Yellow-Hammer, or the Flicker, More briefly "Golden-winged Wood-picker", My drawing of which _striking_ bird May seem to you perhaps absurd, You even may suspect I stole The idea from some Totem-pole: But when you gaze upon the Fish, You lose all patience and say "Pish! I don't believe you ever saw A Saw-fish look like this, Oh Pshaw! There certainly is some mistake, This is a saw-did Nature fake, In fact a perfect cata-clysm Of fishy Yellow-journalism." [Illustration: The Pansy. The Chim-pansy.] Observe how Nature's necromancies Have clearly painted on the Pansies These almost human counte-nances, In yellow, blue and black nu-ances. The face, however, seems to me To be that of the Chimpanzee, A fact which makes the gentle Pansy Appeal no longer to my fancy. [Illustration: Naught. Nautilus.] The Argonaut or Nautilus, With habits quite adventurous, A combination of a snail, A jelly-fish and paper sail. The parts of him that did not jell Are packed securely in his shell. It is not strange that when I sought To find his double, I found naught. Author's Add-end-'em. If you have read my former words, And learned to recognize the Birds, And how to tell them from Flowers, And know these Analogues of ours, You never need be led astray By Darwin, Audubon, or Gray, Whose writings, though considered classic, Savor some-what of the Jurassic. Your work though is but just begun, While mine, I'm glad to say, is done. To you the field I now leave clear, Upset my ink, and disappear! 
26139	----	ONTARIO TEACHERS' MANUALS NATURE STUDY AUTHORIZED BY THE MINISTER OF EDUCATION TORONTO THE RYERSON PRESS COPYRIGHT, CANADA, 1915, BY THE MINISTER OF EDUCATION FOR ONTARIO Second Printing, 1918 Third Printing, 1923 Fourth Printing, 1924 Transcriber's note: Minor typos have been corrected. Italics are indicated by subscripts (_) and bold words are indicated by tildes (~). CONTENTS PAGE PREFATORY NOTE 1 COURSE OF STUDY--DETAILS 3 CHAPTER I The Aims of Nature Study; General Methods 13 Concrete Material 15 Topics and material must suit the season; matter suited to the child; use of the commonplace; order of development of lesson; problems in observation; note-books and records 15 The School Garden 19 Suggestions; Garden Expenses 20 The Excursion 23 Its value; difficulties; frequency; suggestions for ungraded schools; the teacher's excursions; a type excursion 23 Collections 29 Animal Studies 29 Domestic animals; references 29 Birds; references 30 Insects; insect collections 34 Butterfly and moth collections 37 Plant Collections 39 CHAPTER II Physical Science Phase of Nature Study 42 Instructions and General Method 42 Value of such lessons; conditions under which experiments should be performed 42 Correlations of physical science phase 44 List of Reference Books and Bulletins on garden and plant study, physical science, and animal study 45 Physical Science--Equipment for Forms III and IV 47 Desirable apparatus 47 Chemicals 48 Apparatus 50 Grenet cells; decomposition apparatus; pneumatic trough; spirit-lamp; barometer; hygrometer; hints 50 Time Apportioned to Nature Study 53 CHAPTER III. FORM I: AUTUMN Garden Work 54 Lessons on a Garden Plant--Pansy 55 Observation Exercises on the Dandelion 57 Correlation with literature and reading 59 Dwarf Nasturtium 59 Seeds 60 Field exercise; class-room lesson based on the collection 60 Seed Dispersal 61 Lesson on seeds that fly; correlations 62 Twigs and Buds 62 Lesson on Twigs 62 Further study of twigs; review lesson 63 Lesson on Buds 65 Review lesson; correlations 65 Leaves 66 Field exercises; class-room lesson on leaves 66 Garden Studies 68 Studies in the Pupil's individual Plot 68 Studies from the Garden as a Whole 69 Bulb Planting 69 Lesson on Bulbs and Bulb Planting 69 Planting the bulb 70 CHAPTER IV. FORM I: WINTER Pet Animals 72 The Rabbit--Lesson on; correlations 72 The Domestic Cat--detailed study 75 The Pigeon--detailed study 76 Winter-blooming Plants--Observation and care of 78 Trees 79 Pines of the Locality 79 The White Pine 79 Field exercises; class-room lesson 79 The Elm--field exercise 82 Domestic Animals 83 The Horse; correlations 83 Domestic Birds 85 The Duck--class-room lesson 85 CHAPTER V. FORM I: SPRING Garden Work 87 Garden Studies--window garden 88 Wild Flowers 90 Recognition of Wild Flowers 91 Lesson in Outline--Bloodroot; correlations 91 Insect Study 93 Cecropia, or Emperor-moth 93 Dragon-fly 94 Other Conspicuous Insects 95 Birds 95 The Robin 96 Field exercises; the nest, eggs, and young 96 The Song-sparrow 97 Field exercises; class-room lesson 97 The Sheep 99 Problems for Field Work 99 CHAPTER VI. FORM II: AUTUMN Bulb Planting Out-of-Doors 101 Bed for growing bulbs; planting of bulbs indoors 101 Garden Work 103 Seed selection; storing seeds; harvesting and storing of garden crops; class-room lesson; autumn cultivation 103 Garden Studies 106 Garden Records; correlations 107 Climbing Plants 108 Trees 109 Storing of Tree Seeds 110 A Flower 110 Type--Nasturtium 110 Soil Studies 112 Kinds of Soil 112 Animal Studies 113 Bird Migration; correlations 113 Common Wild Animals 114 General method for field work 114 The Wood-chuck 116 The Chipmunk--field exercises 117 The Eastern Swallow-tail Butterfly 118 CHAPTER VII. FORM II: WINTER Care of Plants in the Home 120 Trees 121 Collection of Wood Specimens 122 Related Reading 122 The Dog 123 Class-room lesson; observation exercises; correlations 123 Lessons Involving Comparison 125 Cat and dog; experiments for assisting in the study of the cat; comparison of the horse and cow 126 The Squirrel 129 Field exercises; class-room lesson 129 Winter Birds 130 Field exercises; class-room lesson; correlations 130 Animals of the Zoological Gardens 132 CHAPTER VIII. FORM II: SPRING Garden Work 133 Combating Garden Pests 134 Cutworms; root-maggots; flea-beetles 134 Seed Germination 135 Plants for Individual Plots 137 Studies Based on Observations of Growing Plants 137 Planting and care of sweet-peas 138 Wild Flowers 139 Weeds 140 The Apple Tree 141 Field exercise; class-room lesson; field exercise following class-room lesson 141 Bird Study 143 The Toad 143 Field exercises; class-room lesson; detailed study; life history of the toad 143 The Earthworm 147 Class-room lesson; references 148 The Aquarium 149 Aquarium Specimens 150 Mosquito; study of adult form; the development; references 150 Caddice-fly 152 Insects Suitable for Lessons in Form II 153 CHAPTER IX. FORM III: AUTUMN Garden Work 154 Treatment of Fungi 154 Treatment of Insects--cabbage-worm 156 Plants 158 Annuals, Biennials, and Perennials 158 Class-room lesson 158 Garden Studies 159 Annuals, biennials, perennials 159 Special Study of Garden Plants 160 Sweet-pea; pumpkin; corn; correlations 160 Seed Dispersal--Lesson 164 Detailed Study of Seed Dispersal--class-room lesson 165 Seed collections; man as a disperser of seeds 166 The Sugar Maple--field exercises 168 Maple Leaves--class-room lesson; correlations 169 Weed Studies 170 Observation lesson on weed seeds 171 Grasshopper--field exercises; class-room lesson 172 Aphides 174 Tomato Worm--the adult; the chrysalis 175 The Crow; correlations 177 CHAPTER X. FORM III: WINTER Care of Plants in the Home 178 Plant Cuttings 179 Selection of cuttings; potting of rooted cuttings 179 Evergreens--class-room lesson 181 Collection of Wood Specimens 182 Related Reading 183 How Animals Prepare for Winter 183 Summary of Lessons; correlations 184 Chickens 185 Conversation lesson; arithmetic lesson; care and food of chickens 185 Physical Science Phase of Nature Study 188 Solids, Liquids, and Gases 188 Change of State 189 Expansion of Solids 189 Practical applications; questions for further investigation 190 Expansion of Liquids--applications 192 The Thermometer 193 Expansion of Air 194 Sources of Heat and Light 194 Notes for a Series of Lessons 194 Conduction--problems 196 Convection--problems, convection in gases; applications 198 Radiation of Heat--problems 199 CHAPTER XI. FORM III: SPRING Window Boxes 201 Window Gardens 201 Suitable Plants; Fertilizer 202 Soil Studies--constituents 203 Garden Work 206 Tree Seeds 207 Transplanting--flowers, vegetables, tree seedlings 208 Budding 209 Cuttings--leaf cuttings, root cuttings, layering 211 Planting and Care of Herbaceous Perennials 212 Garden Studies--biennials 212 Wild Flowers 213 Study of the Trillium 213 Class-room lesson on the specimens 213 Adaptations of Animals 215 Bird Types 217 Woodpeckers--the downy woodpecker; observations 217 Flycatchers 219 Wrens 219 Insect Types 220 Cabbage-butterfly 220 Tussock-moth 221 Potato beetle 222 References 222 Fish--Observations; problems; references 223 CHAPTER XII. FORM IV: AUTUMN Garden Work 225 Herbaceous Perennials from Seed 226 Trees--Deciduous; references 227 Trees in Relation to their Environment 228 Fruits--Excursion to a well-kept orchard 229 Small Fruits 230 Autumn Wild Flowers--Milkweed; correlations 230 Trees--The White Pine 232 Outline of a class-room lesson on the white pine; correlations; references 235 Apples--Comparative Lesson on Winter Varieties 239 King, Baldwin, Northern Spy 239 Codling moth; references 240 Some Common Animal Forms; references 242 Centipeds and millipeds 243 Salamanders or newts 243 Spiders 244 Bird Studies 245 CHAPTER XIII. FORM IV: WINTER Forest Trees 246 Evergreens; Wood Specimens 246 Fruits 247 Weeds and Weed Seeds 248 Physical Science Phase of Nature Study 248 Water Pressure--exercises 248 Study of Air 249 The barometer; the common pump; expansive force of air; composition of air; oxygen; carbon dioxide; impurities of air 250 Solutions of Solids 255 Solutions of Liquids 256 Solutions of Gases 256 Limestone 256 Carbon 257 Hydrogen 258 Magnets 258 Electricity 259 Steam 260 Farm tools--machines; problems 260 CHAPTER XIV. FORM IV: SPRING Method of Improving Home and School Grounds 263 Making and Care of a Lawn; References 264 Soil Studies 265 Weight 265 Subsoils 266 Fertilizers--experiments 268 Soil-forming Agents 268 Tilling the Soil 269 Garden Work--experiments in plots out-of-doors 270 Function of Parts of Plants 273 How the plant gets its food from the soil; germination of some of the common grains 274 Weeds 278 Vines 279 Wild Flowers 279 Planting of Trees, Shrubs, and Herbaceous Perennials in Home and School Grounds 280 Shade trees; transplanting 281 Animal Studies 283 Scale Insects 283 San José scale; oyster-shell bark-louse; cutworms; white grubs 283 Crayfish 285 Freshwater Mussel 286 Bird Study 287 Different Aspects of Nature Study 288 PREFATORY NOTE This Manual is placed in the hands of the teachers in the hope that the suggestions which it contains on lesson topics, materials, books of reference, and methods in teaching will be found helpful to all teachers and in particular to those who have had little or no instruction in Nature Study during their academic or professional training. The first Chapter of the Manual discusses topics which have general reference to the subject as a whole. The remaining part of the Manual deals more particularly with the subject in its application to the different Public and Separate School Forms. While this division of the matter into Forms is convenient for general classification, it is not to be regarded as arbitrary. Materials and methods of presentation suitable for one class of pupils in a certain Form might, under different conditions, be quite unsuitable for another class of pupils in the same Form. For example, work which would be suitable for a class in Form I made up of pupils admitted to a school at seven or eight years of age, after two years' training in a kindergarten where nature lessons received special attention, would not be suitable for a Form I class made up of pupils admitted to a school at five years of age with no such previous training. In selecting work for any class the teacher, therefore, should not be guided solely by the arbitrary divisions of the Manual, but should exercise his own judgment, taking into account his environment and the attainments of his pupils. To facilitate such a selection, page references are given in the details of the Course of Study, which in reality forms a detailed expansion of the Public and Separate School Course in Nature Study. By means of these references, the teacher may find, in any department of the subject, typical matter suited to the development of his pupils. The numerous type lessons that are contained in the Manual are intended to suggest principles of method that are to be applied in lessons upon the same and similar topics, but the teacher is cautioned against attempting to imitate these lessons. This error can be avoided by the teacher's careful preparation of the lesson. This preparation should include the careful study of the concrete materials that are to be used. The books, bulletins, etc., that are named in the Manual as references will be found helpful. To facilitate teaching through the experimental and investigation methods, special attention has been given to the improvising of simple apparatus from materials within the reach of every teacher. From the character of the subject the Course of Study must be more or less elastic, and the topics detailed in the programme are intended to be suggestive rather than prescriptive. It may be that, owing to local conditions, topics not named are among the best that can be used, but all substitutions and changes should be made a subject of consultation with the Inspector. The treatment of the subject must always be suited to the age and experience of the pupils, to the seasons of the year, accessibility of materials, etc. Notes should not be dictated by the teacher. Mere information, whether from book, written note, or teacher, is not Nature Study. The acquisition of knowledge must be made secondary to awakening and maintaining the pupil's interest in nature and to training him to habits of observation and investigation. As a guide to the minimum of work required, it is suggested that at least one lesson be taught from the subjects outlined under each general heading in the detailed Course of Study, with a minimum average of three lessons from the subjects under each general heading. PUBLIC AND SEPARATE SCHOOL COURSE OF STUDY DETAILS FORM I AUTUMN GARDEN WORK AND GARDEN STUDIES: Division of the garden plots, removal of weeds and observations on these weeds, identification of garden plants, observation lessons based on garden plants, selection of seeds, harvesting and disposing of the crop. (See pp. 54-9.) STUDY OF PLANTS: Class lessons based on a flowering garden plant, as pansy, aster, nasturtium; study of a field plant, as buttercup, goldenrod, dandelion. (See pp. 55-9.) Potted and garden plants: Observation lesson based on a bulb; planting bulbs in pots, or in the garden. (See pp. 69-71.) BIRDS AND CONSPICUOUS INSECTS: Identification of a few common birds, as robin, English sparrow, meadow-lark; observation lessons on the habits of these birds; collection of the adult forms, the larvæ and the cocoons of a few common moths and butterflies, as emperor-moth, promothea moth, eastern swallow-tail butterfly. (See pp. 30-9 and 93-8.) COMMON TREES: Identification of a few common trees, as white pine, elm, maple; observations on the general shape, branches, leaves, and bark of these trees. (See pp. 62-7 and 79-82.) WINTER FARM ANIMALS, INCLUDING FOWLS: Habits and characteristics of a few domestic animals, as horse, cow, sheep, hen, duck; the uses of these animals, and how to take care of them. (See pp. 83-6.) PET ANIMALS: Observations on the habits, movements, and characteristics of pet animals, as cat, pigeon, bantam, rabbit, etc.; conversations about the natural homes and habits of these animals, and inferences upon their care. (See pp. 72-7.) COMMON TREES: Observations on the branching of common trees. (See pp. 79-82.) SPRING GARDEN WORK: Preparation, planting, and care of the garden plot; observations on the growing plants. (See pp. 87-90.) FLOWERS: Identification and study of a few spring flowers, as trillium, bloodroot, hepatica, spring-beauty. (See pp. 90-2.) BIRDS AND INSECTS: Identification and study of the habits of a few common birds, as song-sparrow, blue-bird, wren; observations of the form and habits of a few common insects, as house-fly, dragon-fly. (See pp. 30-3 and 93-9.) COMMON TREES: Observations on the opening buds of the trees which were studied in the Autumn. (See p. 65.) FORM II AUTUMN BIRDS AND INSECTS: Autumn migration of birds; identification and observations on the habits and movements of a few common insects, including their larval forms, as grasshopper, eastern swallow-tail butterfly. (See pp. 113-4 and 118-9.) ANIMALS OF THE FARM, FIELD, AND WOOD: Observations on the homes and habits of wild animals, as frog, toad, squirrel, ground-hog; habits and structures, including adaptive features, of domestic animals, as dog, cat, horse, cow. (See pp. 83 and 123-30.) TREES OF THE FARM, ROADSIDE, WOOD, AND ORCHARD: Observations on the shapes, sizes, rate of growth, and usefulness of common orchard, shade, and forest trees, as apple, elm, horse-chestnut. (See pp. 109-10.) WILD FLOWERS AND WEEDS: Identification and study of a few common weeds, noting their means of persistence and dispersal. (See pp. 139-40.) CARE OF POTTED AND GARDEN PLANTS: Preparation of pots and garden beds for bulbs; selecting and storing garden seeds; observations on the habits of climbing plants, and application of the knowledge gained to the care required for these plants. (See pp. 101-9 and 120.) WINTER BIRDS: Identification of winter birds and study of their means of protection and of obtaining food. (See pp. 130-2.) ANIMALS OF THE FARM: Comparative study of the horse and cow, of the dog and cat, and of the duck and hen. (See pp. 123-8.) ANIMALS OF THE PARK AND ZOOLOGICAL GARDEN: Observations on the general structural features, noting the natural adaptations of such animals as bear, lion, deer, tiger, etc. (See p. 132.) TREES: Winter study of trees, noting buds, branches, and foliage of spruce, cedar, horse-chestnut, etc. (See pp. 121-3.) SPRING BIRDS AND INSECTS: Observations on the structure, adaptations and development of insect larvæ kept in an aquarium, as larva of mosquito, dragon-fly, caddice-fly; spring migration of birds. (See pp. 149-153.) ANIMALS OF THE FIELD AND WOODS: Observations on the forms, homes, habits, and foods of wild animals, continued. (See pp. 114-8, 143-9.) ORCHARD TREES: The buds and blossoms of apple, and cherry or plum, observed through the stages up to fruit formation. (See pp. 141-3.) EXPERIMENTS IN THE GERMINATION OF SEEDS: Germination of seeds and general observations on the stages of development; testing the conditions required for seed germination; introductory exercises in soil study as a preparation for seed planting. (See pp. 133-8 and 112-3.) WILD FLOWERS AND WEEDS: Field and class-room study of marsh marigold, Jack-in-the-pulpit, violet, etc. (See pp. 139-40.) FORM III AUTUMN BIRDS AND INSECTS: Observations on the habits and the ravages of common noxious insects, as cabbage-worm, grasshopper, tussock-moth, etc.; discussion of means of checking these insects. (See pp. 156-7 and 172-7.) FARM AND WILD ANIMALS OF THE LOCALITY: Field study and class-room lessons on the habits and structure, including adaptive features, of common animals, as musk-rat, fox, fish, sheep. (See pp. 99 and 183-5.) GARDEN AND EXPERIMENTAL PLOTS: Harvesting of garden and field crops; preparation of cuttings from geraniums, begonia, currant, etc.; identification of garden plants; seed dispersal. (See pp. 154, 179-80, and 164-8.) STUDY OF COMMON FLOWERS, TREES, AND FRUITS: Characteristics of annuals, biennials, and perennials; life histories of common plants, as sweet-pea, Indian corn, etc. (See pp. 158-64 and 168-70.) STUDY OF WEEDS AND THEIR ERADICATION: Identification of the common noxious weeds of the locality; collection, description, and identification of weed seeds; cause of the prevalence of the weeds studied, and means of checking them. (See pp. 164-8 and 170-2.) WINTER FARM AND WILD ANIMALS OF THE LOCALITY: Habits and instincts of common domestic animals, as fowls, sheep, and hogs; the economic values of these animals. (See pp. 185-8.) GARDEN WORK AND EXPERIMENTAL PLOTS: The characteristics of common house plants, and care of these plants. (See pp. 178-9.) STUDY OF COMMON FLOWERS, TREES, AND FRUITS: Comparative study of common evergreens, as balsam, spruce, hemlock, etc.; collection of wood specimens. (See pp. 181-3.) OBSERVATIONS OF NATURAL PHENOMENA: Simple experiments to show the nature of solids, liquids, and gases. (See pp. 188-9.) HEAT PHENOMENA: Source of heat, changes of volume in solids, liquids, and gases, accompanying changes in temperature; heat transmission; the thermometer and its uses. (See pp. 189-200.) SPRING BIRDS AND INSECTS: Field and class lessons on the habits, movements, and foods of common birds, as crow, woodpecker, king-bird, phoebe, blackbird, etc. (See pp. 217-22.) GARDEN WORK AND EXPERIMENTAL PLOTS: Care of garden plots; transplanting; testing best varieties; making of, and caring for, window boxes; propagation of plants by budding, cuttings, and layering. (See pp. 201-3 and 208-13.) COMMON WILD FLOWERS: Field lessons on the habitat of common wild flowers; class-room study of the plant organs including floral organs; study of weeds and weed seeds continued, also the study of garden and field annuals, biennials, and perennials. (See Autumn.) (See pp. 170-2 and 212-5.) SOIL STUDIES AND EXPERIMENTS: The components of soils, their origin, properties, and especially their water absorbing and retaining properties; the relation of soils to plant growth; experiments demonstrating the benefits of mulching and of drainage. (See pp. 203-6.) FORM IV AUTUMN INJURIOUS AND BENEFICIAL INSECTS AND BIRDS: Identification of common insects and observations on their habits; means of combating such insects, as codling moth, etc.; bird identification, and study of typical members of some common families, as woodpeckers, flycatchers; spiders. (See pp. 217-22 and 240-5.) ORNAMENTAL AND EXPERIMENTAL GARDEN PLOTS: Observations and conclusions based upon experimental plots; common shrubs, vines, and trees, and how to grow them. (See pp. 225-30 and 279.) FUNCTIONS OF PLANT ORGANS: Simple experiments illustrating roots as organs of absorption, stems as organs of transmission, and leaves as organs of respiration, transpiration, and food building. (See pp. 273-8.) ECONOMIC STUDY OF PLANTS: Comparative study of varieties of winter apples, of fall apples, or of other fruits of the locality; visits to orchards; weed studies continued. (See Form III.) (See pp. 229-30 and 239-40.) RELATION OF SOIL AND SOIL TILLAGE TO FARM CROPS: Soil-forming agents, as running water, ice, frost, heat, wind, plants, and animals, and inferences as to methods of tillage. (See pp. 268-70.) WINTER AIR AND LIQUID PRESSURE: Simple illustrations of the buoyancy of liquids and of air; simple tests to demonstrate that air fills space and exerts pressure; the application of air pressure in the barometer, the common pump, the bicycle tire, etc. (See pp. 248-52.) OXYGEN AND CARBON DIOXIDE: Generate each of these gases and test for properties, as colour, odour, combustion, action with lime-water; the place occupied by these gases in nature. (See pp. 252-5.) PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF HEAT, STEAM, AND ELECTRICITY: Making a simple voltaic cell, an electro-magnet, and a simple electroscope. Test the current by means of the two latter and also with an electric bell. Explain the application of the above in the electric telegraph and motor. Simple demonstration of pressure of steam; history and uses of the steam-engine. (See pp. 259-60.) SPRING INJURIOUS AND BENEFICIAL INSECTS AND BIRDS: Identification of noxious insects and observations thereon; study of representatives of common families of birds, as thrushes, warblers, sparrows; economic values of birds. (See pp. 283-5 and 286-7.) AQUATIC ANIMALS: Observation exercises upon the habits, movements, and structures, including adaptive features of aquatic animals, as crayfish, mussel, tadpole, etc. (See pp. 285-6.) ORNAMENTAL AND EXPERIMENTAL GARDEN PLOTS: Experimental plots demonstrating the benefits of seed selection; ornamental plots of flowering perennials and bulbous plants; how to improve the school grounds and the home lawns. (See pp. 270-3 and 263-5.) TREE STUDIES: Comparison of the values of the common varieties of shade trees, how to plant and how to take care of shade trees. (See pp. 280-2.) THE FUNCTIONS OF PLANT ORGANS: Examination of the organs of common flowers; use of root, flower organs, fruit, and seed. (See pp. 273-8.) ECONOMIC STUDY OF PLANTS: Plants of the lawn and garden; weed studies. (See pp. 263-5, 270-3, and 278-9.) RELATION OF SOIL AND SOIL TILLAGE TO FARM CROPS: Study of subsoils; capillarity in soils; benefits of crop rotations and mulching; experiments in fertilizing, mulching, depth of planting, and closeness of planting. (See pp. 265-7.) NATURE STUDY CHAPTER I THE AIMS OF NATURE STUDY Nature Study means primarily the study of natural things and preferably of living things. Like all other subjects, it must justify its position on the school curriculum by proving its power to equip the pupil for the responsibilities of citizenship. That citizen is best prepared for life who lives in most sympathetic and intelligent relation to his environment, and it is the primary aim of Nature Study to maintain the bond of interest which unites the child's life to the objects and phenomena which surround him. To this end it is necessary to adapt the teaching, in matter and method, to the conditions of the child's life, that he may learn to understand the secrets of nature and be the better able to control and utilize the forces of his natural environment. At all times, the teacher must keep in mind the fact that it is not the quantity of matter taught but the interest aroused and the spirit of investigation fostered, together with carefulness and thoroughness, which are the important ends to be sought. With a mind trained to experiment and stimulated by a glimpse into nature's secrets, the worker finds in his labour a scientific interest that lifts it above drudgery, while, from a fuller understanding of the forces which he must combat or with which he must co-operate, he reaps better rewards for his labours. The claims of Nature Study to an educative value are based not upon a desire to displace conventional education, but to supplement it, and to lay a foundation for subsequent reading. Constant exercise of the senses strengthens these sources of information and develops alertness, and at the same time the child is kept on familiar ground--the world of realities. It is for these reasons that Nature Study is frequently defined as "The Natural Method of Study". Independent observation and inference should be encouraged to the fullest degree, for one of the most important, though one of the rarer accomplishments of the modern intellect, is to think independently and to avoid the easier mode of accepting the opinions of others. Reading from nature books, the study of pictures, and other such matter, is not Nature Study. These may supplement Nature Study, but must not displace the actual vitalizing contact between the child and natural objects and forces. It is this contact which is at the basis of clear, definite knowledge; and clearness of thought and a feeling of at-homeness with the subject is conducive to clearness and freedom of expression. The Nature Study lesson should therefore be used as a basis for language lessons. Undoubtedly one of the most important educative values that can be claimed for Nature Study is its influence in training the pupil to appreciate natural objects and phenomena. This implies the widening and enriching of human interests through nurturing the innate tendency of the child to love the fields and woods and birds; the checking of the selfish and destructive impulses by leading him to see the usefulness of each creature, the harmony of its relation to its environment, and the significance of its every part. Nor is it a mistake to cultivate the more sentimental love of nature which belongs to the artist and the poet. John Ruskin emphasizes this value in these words: "All other efforts are futile unless you have taught the children to love trees and birds and flowers". GENERAL METHODS IN NATURE STUDY CONCRETE MATERIAL It is evident that concrete material must be provided and so distributed that each member of the class will have a direct opportunity to exercise his senses, and, from his observations, to deduce inferences and form judgments. The objects chosen should be mainly from the common things of the locality. The teacher should be guided in the selection by the interests of the pupils, first finding out from them the things upon which they are expending their wonder and inquiry. Trees, field crops, flowers, birds, animals of the parks, woods, or farmyard, all form suitable subjects for study. TOPICS AND MATERIAL MUST SUIT THE SEASON The material should be selected not only with reference to locality but also with due regard to season. For example, better Nature Study lessons can be taught on the elm tree of the school grounds than on the giant Douglas fir of British Columbia; and on the oriole whose nest is in the elm tree than on the eagle portrayed in Roberts' animal stories; and it is manifestly unwise to teach lessons on snow in summer, or on flowers and ants in winter. MATTER MUST BE SUITED TO THE CHILD For the urban pupil the treatment of the material must be different from that in the case of the pupil of the rural school. Rural school pupils have already formed an extensive acquaintance with many plants and animals which are entirely unknown to the children of the city. The simpler facts which are interesting and instructive to the pupils of the urban classes would prove commonplace and trivial to rural pupils. For example, while it is necessary to show the city child a squirrel that he may learn the size, colour, and general appearance of the animal, the efforts of the pupil of the rural school should be directed to the discovery of the less evident facts of squirrel life. USE OF THE COMMONPLACE It must be kept in mind that besides leading the pupils to discover new sources of interest, the teacher should strive to accomplish that which is even greater, namely, to lead them to discover new truth and new beauty in old, familiar objects. It may be true that "familiarity breeds contempt" and there is always a danger that the objects with which children have associated in early life may be passed by as uninteresting while they go in search of something "new and interesting". For example, to be able to recognize many plants and to call them by name is no doubt something of an accomplishment, but it should not be the chief aim of the teacher in conducting Nature Study lessons on plants. It is of much greater importance that the child should be led to love the flowers and to appreciate their beauty and their utility. Such appreciation will result in the desire to protect and to produce fine flowers and useful plants, and this end can be reached only through intelligent acquaintanceship. There can be no true appreciation without knowledge, and this the child gets chiefly by personal observation and experiment. With reference to the wild flowers of the woods and fields, the method employed is that of continuous observation. ORDER OF DEVELOPMENT OF THE LESSON Each animal or plant should be studied as a living, active organism. The attention of the pupils should be focused upon activities; for these appeal to the child nature and afford the best means for securing interest and attention. What does this animal do? How does it do it? How is it fitted for doing this? How does this plant grow? What fits it for growing in this way? These are questions which should exercise the mind of the child. They are questions natural in the spirit of inquiry in child nature and give vitality to nature teaching. They are an effective means of establishing a bond of sympathy between the child and nature. The child who takes care of a plant or animal because it is his own, does so at first from a purely personal motive, which is perfectly natural to childhood; but while he studies its needs and observes its movements and changes, gradually and unconsciously this interest will be transferred to the plant or animal for its own sake. The nature of the child is thus broadened during the process. PROBLEMS IN OBSERVATION In studying the material provided, whether it be in the class-room, or during a nature excursion, or by observations made in the farmyard at home, the teacher must guide the efforts of the pupils by assigning to them definite and suitable problems. Care must be taken to reach the happy mean of giving specific directions without depriving the pupils of the pleasure of making original discovery. For example, instead of asking them to study the foot of the horse and learn all they can about it, more specific problems should be assigned, such as: Observe how the hoof is placed on the ground in walking. What are the arrangements for lessening the shock when the hoof strikes the ground? Examine the under surface of the hoof and discover what prevents the unshod horse from slipping. NOTE-BOOKS AND RECORDS In Grades higher than Form I, written exercises should be required and also sketches representing the objects studied. For this purpose a Nature Study note-book is necessary--a loose-leaf note-book being preferable because of necessary corrections, rearrangements, additions, or omissions. In all records and reports, independence of thought and of expression should be encouraged. The drawing and the oral or written description should express what is actually observed, not what the book or some member of the class says has been, or should be, observed. The descriptions should be in the pupil's own words, because these are most in keeping with his own ideas on the subject. More correct forms of expression may be obtained when notes are taken from the teacher's dictation, but this is fatal to the development of originality. The disparity of the results in individual work gives opportunity for impressing upon the pupil, in the first place, the necessity for more accurate observation and, secondly, the impossibility of reaching a correct general conclusion without having studied a large number of examples. The development of critical and judicious minds, which may result from carefully observing many examples and generalizing from these observations, is vastly more important than the memorizing of many facts. THE SCHOOL GARDEN In the study of garden plants there is added a certain new interest arising out of experimentation, cultivation, and ownership. The love of the gardener has in it elements that the love of the naturalist does not usually possess--a sort of paternal love and care for the plants produced in his garden; but every gardener should be a naturalist as well. Most people have a higher appreciation for that which they own and which they have produced or acquired at some expense or personal sacrifice; therefore it is that the growing of plants in home and school gardens or in pots and window boxes is so strongly advocated throughout this Course. Ownership always implies responsibility, which is at once the chief safeguard of society and the foundation of citizenship. A careless boy will never respect the property of others so much as when he himself has proprietary interests involved. We believe, therefore, that every teacher should encourage his pupils to cultivate plants and, if possible, to own a plot of ground however small. The teacher should not merely aim at _making_ a garden in the school grounds. The great question is rather how best to use a school garden in connection with the training of boys and girls. To learn to do garden work well is indeed worth while and provides a highly beneficial kind of manual training. To understand something of soils and methods of cultivation, of fertilizers and drainage, the best kinds of flowers, vegetables, fruits, and farm crops, and how to grow them successfully, is very important in such a great agricultural country as this; but the greatest of all results which we may hope to realize in connection with school gardening is the ennobling of life and character. The pupils are taught to observe the growing plants with great care, noting developments day by day. This adds to their appreciation of the beauties and adaptations found among plants on every side, and cannot fail to produce good results in moral as well as in mental development. The teachers must always remember that the gardeners with whom they are working are more important than the gardens which they cultivate. The best garden is not always the largest and most elaborate one. It is rather the garden that both teacher and pupils have been most deeply interested in. It is the garden in which they have experienced most pleasure and profit that makes them want to have another better than the last. No school is too small to have a garden of some kind, and no garden is too small to become the joy and pride of some boy or girl. SUGGESTIONS For the benefit of teachers beginning their duties on the first of September, in school sections where school gardening has never been carried on, the following suggestions are offered: 1. See if the grounds will permit of a part being used for a garden. To ascertain this, note the size of the present grounds and see if they meet the requirements of the Department as laid down in the Regulations. If they do not, consult your Inspector at once and acquaint him with your plans. If the grounds are to be enlarged, try to take in sufficient land of good quality to make a good garden. The part chosen for the garden should be both convenient and safe. Examine the soil to see if it is well drained and sufficiently deep to permit of good cultivation. Lack of fertility can be overcome by good fertilizing. 2. See that the fences and gates are in good repair. When circumstances will permit, a woven wire fence that will exclude dogs, pigs, and poultry is most desirable. If not used to inclose the whole grounds, it should at least inclose the part used for gardening. 3. Begin modestly and provide room for extension as the work progresses. Sow clover on the part to be held in reserve for future gardening operations. 4. If local public sentiment is not strongly in favour of school gardening, or is somewhat adverse, begin on a small scale. If the work is well done, you will soon have both moral and financial support. 5. See that the land is well drained. Plough it early in the autumn and, if a load of well-rotted manure is available, spread it on the land before ploughing. Commercial fertilizer may also be used on the plots the following spring, but no stable manure. 6. In spring, when dry enough, cultivate thoroughly with disc and drag harrows. Build up a compost heap in the rear of the garden with sods and stable manure, for use in the autumn and also the following spring. GARDEN EXPENSES In connection with those schools where the teacher holds a diploma from the Ontario Agricultural College in Elementary Agriculture and Horticulture, there is no difficulty in meeting the expenses for seeds, tools, fertilizers, and labour, as the Government grant for such purposes is sufficient. In other schools, however, where the teacher holds no such diploma (and such is the case in most of the schools as yet), other means of meeting the expenses must be resorted to. The following are offered as suggestions along this line: 1. Part of the grant made to every school for the maintaining of the school grounds should be available for school garden expenses. 2. An occasional school entertainment may add funds that could not be used to better advantage. 3. An occasional load of stable manure supplied free from neighbouring farms will help to solve the fertilizer problem. 4. Donations of plants and seeds by the parents and other interested persons and societies will be forthcoming, if the teacher is in earnest and his pupils interested. 5. If it is required, the trustees could make a small grant each year toward the cost of tools. 6. Fencing and cultivation of the garden can often be provided for by volunteer assistance from the men of the school section. 7. It is often possible to grow a garden crop on a fairly large scale, the school being formed into a company for this purpose and the proceeds to be used to meet garden expenses. 8. The pupils can readily bring the necessary tools from home for the first season's work. 9. Many Agricultural and Horticultural societies offer very substantial cash prizes for school garden exhibits, and all funds so obtained should be used to improve the garden from which the exhibits were taken. 10. An earnest, resourceful teacher will find a way of meeting the necessary expenses. THE EXCURSION Nature Study is essentially an outdoor subject. While it is true that a considerable amount of valuable work may be done in the class-room by the aid of aquaria, insectaria, and window boxes, yet the great book of nature lies outside the school-house walls. The teacher must lead or direct his pupils to that book and help them to read with reverent spirit what is written there by its great Author. ~Value.~--The school excursion is valuable chiefly because it brings the pupil into close contact with the objects that he is studying, permits him to get his knowledge at first hand, and gives him an opportunity of studying these objects in their natural environment. Incidentally the excursion yields outdoor exercise under the very best conditions--no slight advantage for city children especially; and it gives the teacher a good opportunity to study the pupils from a new standpoint. It also provides a means of gathering Nature Study material. ~Difficulties.~--Where is the time to be found? How can a large class of children be managed in the woods or fields? If only one class be taken, how, in an ungraded school, are the rest of the children to be employed? Will the excursion not degenerate into a mere outing? What if the woods are miles away? These are all real problems, and the Nature Study teacher, desirous of doing his work well, will have to face some of them at least. SHORT EXCURSIONS The excursion need not occupy much time. It should be well planned beforehand. _One_ object only should be kept in view and announced to the class before starting. Matters foreign or subordinate to this should be neglected for the time. The following are suggested as objects for excursions: ~Objects.~--A bird's nest in an adjacent meadow; a ground-hog's hole; a musk-rat's home; crayfish or clams in the stream near by; a pine (or other) tree; a toad's day-resort; the soil of a field; the pests of a neighbouring orchard; a stone-heap or quarry; ants' nests or earthworms' holes; the weeds of the school yard; buds; the vegetable or animal life of a pond; sounds of spring; tracks in the snow; a spider's web. Such excursions may be accomplished at the expenditure of very little time. Many of them will take the pupils no farther than the boundaries of the school yard. Of course the locality will influence the character of the excursion, as it will that of the whole of the work done in Nature Study, but in any place the thoughtful teacher may find material for open-air work at his very door. Much outside work can be done without interfering with the regular programme. The teacher may arrange a systematic list of questions and problems for the pupils to solve from their own observations, and these observations may be made by the pupils at play hours, or while coming or going from school, or on Saturdays. The following will serve as an example of the treatment that may be followed: ~Pests of Apple Trees.~--Look on the twigs of your apple trees for little scales. Bring an infected branch to school. Note whether unhealthy-looking or dead branches are infected. Examine scales with a lens. Loosen one, turn it over, and examine with a lens the under side. For eggs, look closely at the twigs in June. Do you see white specks moving? If so examine them with a lens. Are there any small, prematurely ripe apples on the ground in the orchard? Cut into one of these and look for a "worm". Look for apples with worm holes in the side. Are there worms in these apples? What is in them? Note the dirty marks that the larva has left. Keep several apples in a close box and watch for the "worms" to come out. Examine the bark of apple trees for pupæ in the fall. FREQUENCY OF EXCURSIONS As to the frequency of excursions, the teacher will be the best judge. It is desirable that they occur naturally in the course of the Nature Study work as the need for them arises. One short trip each week with a single object in view is much more satisfactory than a whole afternoon each term spent in aimless wandering about the woods. EXCURSIONS TO A DISTANCE Long-distance excursions will of necessity be infrequent. If the woods are far away, one such trip in May or June would prove valuable to enable the pupils to become acquainted with wild flowers, and another in October to gather tree seeds, autumn leaves, pupæ, and other material for winter study. When a large class is to be taken on an excursion, preparations must be made with special care. The teacher and one or two assistants should go over the ground beforehand and arrange for the work to be done. Some work must be given to every pupil, and prompt obedience to every command and signal must be required. The class, for example, may decide to search a small wood or meadow to find out what flowers are there. The pupils should be dispersed throughout the field to hunt for specimens and to meet at a known signal to compare notes. SUGGESTIONS FOR UNGRADED SCHOOLS 1. The teacher may take all the classes, choosing an object of study from which he can teach lessons suitable to all ages, a bird's nest, for example. 2. In many sections, the little ones are dismissed at 3.30 p.m. Opportunity is thus given for an excursion with the seniors. 3. The older pupils may be assigned work and left in charge of a monitor, elected by themselves, who shall be responsible for their conduct, while the teacher is working outside with the lower Forms. 4. Boys who are naturally interested in outdoor work should be encouraged to show the others anything of interest they may have found. 5. An occasional Saturday excursion may be arranged. ~Discipline.~--The teacher should insist on making the excursion a serious part of the school work, not merely recreation. School-room behaviour cannot be expected, but the boisterous conduct of the playground should give place to earnest expectancy. The pupils should keep within sound of the teacher's voice (a sharp whistle may be used) and should promptly respond to every call. Topics of conversations should as far as possible be restricted to those pertaining to the object of the excursion or related matters. In visiting woods, children should be trained to study flowers in their environment and leave them there, plucking or digging for none except for some excellent reason. The same respect should be shown to birds and their nests, and to insects, and all other living things encountered. THE TEACHER'S EXCURSIONS As soon as possible after coming to a section, the teacher should acquaint himself with the woods, groves, streams, or other haunts that may provide him with material for his indoor or outdoor work. He can then direct the pupils effectively. The teacher should go over the route of an excursion shortly before it takes place. This prevents waste of time in looking for the objects that he wishes his pupils to see. If the teacher wishes to increase his love for nature, he must take many walks without his pupils. The school garden offers a partial solution of the difficulties mentioned above. It brings a large amount of material to the doors of the school. Plants of the farm or the garden may be studied under various changeable conditions, and it will be seen that insect pests, weeds, and fungous diseases follow the lessons on plants, while lessons on birds and toads follow those on insects. With sections of the garden devoted to the cultivation of wild flowers, ferns, and forest trees, the specially organized excursion will become less of a necessity, although it will still continue to be a valuable factor in Nature Study work. After an excursion is over, it should be discussed in class. The various facts learned should be reviewed and related. If any pupils have made inaccurate observations, they should be required to observe again to correct their errors. Finally, the excursion may form the subject of a composition. A TYPE EXCURSION ~A Bird's Nest.~--The children have been instructed to study the meadow-lark, beginning about March twenty-first. While engaged in this work, a nest is discovered near the school. The teacher is informed and the pupils are conducted to the spot. What is growing in the field? Is there a long or a short growth? Did the mother bird make much noise as she rose from the nest? Did this help to reveal its presence? Is the nest easy to see? The class will halt a few paces from it and try to find it. How many eggs? Their colour? Note the arch of grass so beautifully concealing the nest. Returning to school, the facts observed are reviewed. The pupils may then express themselves by written composition or by drawings, paintings, or modellings of the nest, the eggs, or the surroundings. Frequent visits to the nest should not be made, and the pupils should be warned not to disturb the bird, as she may desert the nest on slight provocation. A second excursion may be made, when the eggs are hatched, to see the young birds. ~A Wasp's Nest.~--A nest having been discovered, the pupils note how it is suspended and how it is situated with regard to concealment or to protection from rain, its colour, the material of the nest, and the position of the entrance. Is the opening ever deserted? How many wasps enter and how many leave the nest in a minute? Try to follow one and watch what he does. Wasps may be found biting wood from an old board fence. This they chew into pulp, and from this pulp their paper is made. Get the children to verify this by observations. If the nest is likely to become a nuisance, smoke out the wasps, take the nest carefully down, and use it for indoor study, examining the inside of the nest to ascertain the nature and the structure of the comb which, in this case is entirely devoted to larvæ. COLLECTIONS General school collections of such objects as noxious weeds, weed seeds, wild flowers, noxious insects, leaves of forest trees, rocks or stones of the locality, etc., should be undertaken. All the pupils should contribute as many specimens as possible to each collection and should assist in the work of preparing them. In addition to the above collections it is advisable that pupils who show special interest in this phase of nature work should be encouraged to make individual collections. Collections, when properly prepared, have a value within themselves, because of the beauty and variety of the forms that they contain, and also because of their usefulness in illustrating nature lessons and in the identifying of insects, weeds, etc. Nevertheless the chief value of the collection rests in the making of it, because of the training that it gives the collector in carefulness and thoroughness, and also because it causes the child to study natural objects in their natural surroundings. ANIMAL STUDIES DOMESTIC ANIMALS The teacher, before attempting to teach lessons on domestic animals, should carefully consider how his lessons will best fulfil the following important aims: 1. The cultivation of a deeper sympathy for, and a more complete understanding of, farm animals. 2. The development of more kindly treatment of domestic animals through awakened sympathy and more intelligent understanding. 3. Implanting the idea that the best varieties are the most interesting and profitable. The following domestic animals are suggested as being suitable for study: horse, cow, sheep, dog, cat, goose, duck, hen. There are two practical methods of observation work; namely, home observation and class-room observation. The observation work on some of the animals named must of necessity be done out of school. In this the teacher can direct the efforts of the pupils by assigning to them definite problems to be solved by their study of the animals. The results of their observations can be discussed in the class in lessons of ten or fifteen minutes length. It may frequently be necessary to re-assign the problems in order that the pupils may correct their observations. It is possible for the teacher or the pupils to bring to the school-room certain of the animals, as the dog, cat, duck, hen, and the observations may then be made by the whole class directly under the guidance of the teacher. REFERENCES Crawford: _Guide to Nature Study._ Copp Clark Co., 90 cents. Dearness: _How to Teach the Nature Study Course._ Copp Clark Co., 60 cents. Shaler: _Domesticated Animals._ Scribners, $2.50. Smith: _The Uses and Abuses of Domestic Animals._ Jarrold & Sons, 50 cents. BIRDS The chief aims in developing lessons on birds are: 1. To teach the children to recognize their bird neighbours, to love them for their beauty, and sweet songs, and their sprightly ways. 2. To train the pupils to appreciate them for their usefulness in destroying insect pests. Many persons spend their lives surrounded by singing birds, yet they never hear their songs. Many children see and hear the birds, but if they have not been brought into sympathetic relation with them, they never learn to appreciate them; on the contrary, their attitude becomes one of indifference or of destructiveness. Too often, boys cruelly destroy the nests and young and persecute the old birds with stone and catapult. The cowardice of such acts should be condemned, but more effective lessons may be taught through leading the children to find in the birds assistants and companions that contribute to their material progress and to their joy in life. With these aims in view, the teacher will readily perceive that the most effective work in bird study results from observing the living birds in their natural environment. Field excursions are valuable for this, but good results can seldom be attained when the class is large, for birds are shy and will hide or fly away from the unusual excitement. Quietness is absolutely necessary for success. Better results are obtained when only one or two accompany the teacher. If the teacher selects a few who are interested in birds, and there are always some pupils in every school who are readily interested in bird study, these few can soon be made sufficiently acquainted with the more common birds, so that they will be able to point them out to the other pupils of the school, and thus they become the teacher's assistants in the work. By beginning with the most common and conspicuous birds, an acquaintance grows rapidly. Early spring is a good time to begin, when the first birds return from their winter sojourn. The teacher and pupils may now learn to recognize the birds, because there are only a few, and these are easily seen, as the robin, blue-bird, junco, meadow-lark, goldfinch, bronzed grackle, sapsucker, blue jay, downy woodpecker, and flicker. The teacher, assisted by the pupils who already know these birds, directs the younger pupils to where these birds may be seen, and they are also required to describe the birds observed and to identify them by means of the bird chart or colour key. The description should include: Size (compare with some common bird); shape; colour of head, back, and breast; conspicuous markings, as crest, stripes, bright patches of feathers; movements in flight or on the ground; song, call notes; whether in flocks, or pairs, or single birds. Later in spring, other birds will attract attention, as the song-sparrow, phoebe, wren, horned lark, cowbird, and red-winged blackbird; while in summer the oriole, catbird, vesper sparrow, American redstart, night hawk, scarlet tanager, and crested flycatcher are some of the birds that will call for attention, because of their plumage, songs, or peculiar habits. When a nest has been found by a pupil, he should report it to the teacher, and the other pupils should be permitted to visit it only upon promising not to molest the nest or to annoy the mother bird by remaining too long near it. While it is well that the pupils should see the nest with the young birds, they should be taught to respect the desire of the bird for quietness and seclusion. In studying the nest, observe: Concealment, protection, size, comfort, number and colour of eggs, young birds, size, colour, covering, food. The pupils should be asked to observe the feeding of birds thus: Watch the wrens returning to the nest; what do they carry to their young? Where do the wrens get the snails and grubs? Observe how the robins find the worms and how they pull them out of the ground. Follow the downy woodpecker to the apple tree and find out what he was pecking. Watch the crow in the pasture field and learn whether this bird kills grasshoppers and crickets. Observe the birds that pick seeds out of the weeds. Collecting birds' eggs should be condemned, because it nearly always leads to the robbing of the nests. The practice of exchanging eggs is the chief cause of this; for although an occasional boy will collect wisely, the greater number are simply anxious to add to their collection without regard for the sacredness of the birds' homes. A collection of birds' nests may be made after the nests have been abandoned for the season, and it will be found useful for interesting the pupils in the ingenuity, neatness, and instinctive foresight of the builders. REFERENCES Chapman and Reed: _Colour Key to North American Birds_ $2.75 Reed: _Bird Guide, Pts. I and II_ .75 Silcox and Stevenson: _Modern Nature Study_ .75 Cornish: _Thirty Lessons in Nature Study on Birds._ Dominion Book Company 1.00 _Canadian Birds in Relation to Agriculture._ This chart has pictures in colours of eighty-eight Canadian birds. G. M. Hendry Co., $3.00. _The Audubon Charts._ These three charts have pictures of fifty-five birds; the pictures are larger in the latter charts than in the first named. G. M. Hendry Co., $2.00 each. _Coloured Bird Pictures_, Mumford, Chicago, (separate coloured pictures) are very suitable for illustrating nature lessons on birds. INSECTS There are three classes of insects that are of immediate interest to the pupils of the Junior Grades, and the teacher who makes direct use of this natural interest has taken possession of the key to success in insect study in the primary classes. The three classes, basing the classification upon their power to attract attention, are: The beautiful insects, including moths, butterflies, and beetles, The wonderful insects, including such insects as ants, ant-lions, caddice-flies, etc., The economic insects, including bees, silk-worms, codling-moths, etc. Economic insects are interesting because of their relations to the occupations of the home. The successful growing of farm, orchard, and garden crops practically depends upon keeping a proper balance of insect and bird life. The teacher who feels that his knowledge of insects is too limited to allow him to undertake the teaching of this branch of Nature Study should cast his misgivings aside; for it is not difficult for the teacher who knows nothing about insects at the outset to become acquainted with such members of the three classes named above as attract the attention of the pupils of the Nature Study classes. The following suggestions in insect study are offered as guides to teacher or pupil: Obtain books and pamphlets from the Department of Agriculture, Toronto, on the subject of Insect Pests on Farm Crops and Fruit Trees. Secure a good general book on insects. _Modern Nature Study_, by Silcox and Stevenson, contains illustrations of several of the most common moths and butterflies, which are clear enough to make possible the identification of the forms represented. Comstock's _Manual for the Study of Insects_ is the best general book on the subject. This, and Holland's _The Moth Book_ and _The Butterfly Book_, are valuable for those who wish to follow the study of insects at any length. Begin by studying the more conspicuous moths, butterflies, and beetles, and especially by studying the injurious forms which thrust themselves into prominence by causing destruction of grain, vegetable, or fruit crops in the locality. The utility phase of lessons on these insects will appeal to the older children and also to their parents. Moreover, these are the easiest insects to identify and upon which to obtain literature dealing with their life histories and habits. Carefully observe the colour, size, and shape of the insect, and note the plant on which it is feeding and its manner of feeding. Consult available books on plant pests to find descriptions of the insects that feed upon this plant, and study carefully what is said about the insect observed. If this method is persistently followed, the teacher will be surprised at the rapidity with which his acquaintance with insects broadens. Pictures of moths, butterflies, and beetles are of great assistance in the identification of these insects. A school collection, made from the insects studied, is useful for future collection and for identification of insects. Do not allow any insect to be killed unless it is a good specimen intended to fill a place in the collection, or unless it is known to be an injurious insect. The teacher, by exercising proper control of the collecting, has an efficient means of teaching the sacredness of life. The fact should be emphasized that killing even an insect, when there is no good reason for doing so, is the act of a mean and selfish coward. In addition to a collection of insects, including larval and pupal forms, collections of insect nests, of plant galls, of markings of engraver beetles, of burrows of tree borers, and of samples of the destructive workings of insect pests should be made. While nothing is more beautiful than a carefully prepared collection of moths, butterflies, and beetles with their infinite variety of form and colour, nothing is more disgusting than a badly preserved collection of distorted, shrivelled, vermin-infested specimens. The teacher should avail himself of the collecting instinct which is prominent in boys of nine to fourteen years of age and of their desire to have things done well, to develop in them habits of carefulness, neatness, and thoroughness. INSECT COLLECTIONS See Manual on _Manual Training_, for details for making collecting appliances. Agricultural Bulletin No. 8, _Nature Collections for Schools_, Department of Education, Ontario, for detailed instructions on making insect collections. The outfit for collecting is neither expensive nor hard to prepare. It consists of (1) an insect net for catching the insects, made by sewing a bag of cheese-cloth to a stout ring one foot in diameter, which is fastened to a broom handle; (2) a cyanide bottle for killing the insects, prepared by pouring some soft plaster-paris over a few lumps of potassium cyanide (three pieces, each of the size of a pea) in a wide-mouthed bottle. When the plaster has set, keep the bottle tightly corked to retain the poisonous gases. (3) Pins to mount the specimens. Entomological pins, Nos. 2, 3, and 4, are the best for general use. Beetles are usually pinned through the right wing-cover at about one fourth of its length from the front end of it. Moths and butterflies are pinned through the thorax. Small insects may be fastened to a very small pin, which in turn is set into a bit of cork, supported by a pin of ordinary size. (4) Spreading board for moths and butterflies. (5) Insect boxes to hold the specimens. This should be secured before the collection is begun. It is a common mistake to believe that any box whatever will do for storing insects. It is necessary to encourage effort in drying, spreading, pinning, and labelling, by providing an effective means of permanently preserving the specimens. In cigar-boxes, pasteboard boxes, and such makeshifts, the specimens soon become broken, covered with dust, and marred in other ways, and the collectors become discouraged; hence it is necessary to secure good boxes from dealers in entomological supplies. A sponge saturated with carbon bisulphide should be placed in the box at intervals of not more than three months, to ensure the killing of parasites that destroy the specimens. Entomological supplies may be obtained from Chapman & Co., London, Ont., or from G. M. Hendry Co., Toronto, Ont., or from Messrs. Watters Bros., Guelph, Ont. BUTTERFLY AND MOTH COLLECTIONS For a study of the metamorphosis of butterflies and moths, it is necessary to have an insect cage. This can be purchased from any dealer in entomological supplies or it may be made by the pupils in the Manual Training Class. See Manual on _Manual Training_. A very satisfactory cage may be made, by the teacher or larger pupils, from a soap box, by tacking wire gauze over the open surface of the box, removing the nails from one of the boards of the bottom, and converting this board into a door by attaching it in its former position by light hinges and a hook and staple. The box, if now placed on end with two inches of loose soil in the bottom, will constitute a satisfactory insect cage, or vivarium. A large lamp chimney with gauze tied over the upper end is useful for inclosing a small plant upon which eggs or insect larvæ are developing. The base of the chimney may be thrust an inch into the soil and the development of the larva as it feeds upon the growing plant can be studied. The following are larvæ suitable for study and may be found in the places named: The tomato worm on tomato or tobacco plants. (Look for stems whose leaves have been stripped off.) The milkweed butterfly larvæ on milkweed, The potato beetle on potato vines, The eastern swallow-tail butterfly on parsnip or carrot plants, The tussock-moth on horse-chestnuts, The promothea moth on lilac bushes, The cabbage-butterfly on cabbage or mustard plants, The red-spotted purple, banded purple, and viceroy butterfly larvæ on willow and alder, Cocoons of tussock-moth and tiger-moth under bark, logs, and rubbish in early autumn. Larvæ of the emperor-moth (cecropia) may be found wandering about, apparently aimlessly, in September; but they are searching for suitable places for attaching their cocoons to orchard and forest trees. After the leaves have fallen from shrubs and trees, cocoons can be found more easily on the naked twigs or in withered, rolled-up leaves that are fastened by the silk of the cocoon to the branches. Larvæ, when placed in the cage, should be supplied with green plant food such as they were found feeding upon, and the pupils should be instructed to observe the chrysalis building or the cocoon weaving. It will be found that some larvæ burrow into the soil. During winter the cage should be kept in a cool place, such as a shed, so that the winter conditions may be as nearly natural as possible. In a few cases, the development within the cocoon is quite rapid; and the adult form hatches out in a few weeks, for example, the cabbage-butterfly, monarch or milkweed butterfly, and tussock-moth. For this reason these are preferable for study by Form I pupils. In April the cage should be placed in the school-room, that the pupils may observe the emergence of the insects and the spreading of the wings. The insects can be fed with syrup or honey until they are strong, then the pupils should set them free. Reference.--_Reports of the Entomological Society of Ontario_, Department of Agriculture. PLANT COLLECTIONS The instructions given below for collecting, pressing, and mounting plants are applicable to wild flowers, grains, grasses, and weeds. ~The specimen.~--Select a plant which in form and size is typical of its species and which is in full flower. Care must be taken to dig down and secure the root. If the plant is too large for the mounting sheet, cut out the central part, and use the root, lower leaves, upper leaves, and flower. If the root is very thick, cut slices lengthwise off the sides so as to reduce it to a flat form that is not too bulky. Before the plant has had time to wither, spread it out flat on a sheet of paper and spread another sheet over it, taking care to straighten the leaves and flower out. Blotting-paper is preferable, but any soft paper that will absorb moisture will make a very good substitute. ~Pressing and drying.~--Place several sheets of paper above and below the specimen. Any number of specimens prepared as described in the last paragraph may be placed in a pile, one over another, resting on the floor or on a table. Place on top of the pile a board which is large enough to cover the surface of the pile, and on the board place a weight of about fifteen pounds of bricks, or other convenient material. A box containing sand, stones, or coal may be used in place of the board and weights. The weight prevents the shrivelling and distortion of the plants. To prevent discoloration and mildewing of the plants, the papers around them must be changed at the end of the following successive intervals: two days, three days, five days, one week, etc., until they are quite dry. The length of time required for pressing and drying depends upon the quantity of sap in the plants and also upon the dryness or humidity of the atmosphere. ~Mounting.~--When dry, the specimens are mounted on sheets of heavy white paper. These sheets are cut to a standard size, eleven inches by fourteen inches, or sheets of half this size, namely, seven inches by eleven inches; are permissible. The best method of attaching the plant to the sheet is by pasting narrow strips of gummed paper across the plant in such positions as will serve to hold all parts of it in position. ~Labelling.~--The name of the specimen, the date of collection, the place from which collected, and the name of the collector are to be neatly written in a column in the lower right-hand corner of the sheet. Printed labels which are pasted on this corner of the sheet are also used. Collections of leaves may be prepared by the same process as that given for plants. Leaves will retain their autumn tints if their surface is covered with varnish or paraffin, which will prevent the admission of air. To cover with paraffin dip the leaf for a moment into melted paraffin. CHAPTER II PHYSICAL SCIENCE PHASE OF NATURE STUDY INSTRUCTIONS AND GENERAL METHOD The preceding portions of this Manual dealt with living things. There is another phase of Nature Study which has a more direct relation to the physical sciences, Chemistry and Physics, two subjects that are essentially experimental in their methods. Although the lessons that follow are grouped in one portion of this book, the teacher should understand that he is to introduce them into his work as the occasion demands. They may be used to throw light on other parts of the school work. The experimental method is somewhat advanced for young children, hence no lessons are outlined for Forms I and II. In ungraded schools, Forms III and IV may be combined for the subject. It will be found most convenient to take this portion of the Nature Study during the winter months. VALUE OF SUCH LESSONS 1. They are _interesting_, hence there is attention. The senses must be alert, hence pupils are trained to observe accurately. 2. After the experiment comes the inference, hence reasoning powers are developed. 3. They enable the teacher to make exceedingly _concrete_ some very difficult abstract principles. 4. They can be _correlated_ with a large number of other subjects and made to have a beneficial influence on the whole of the school work. 5. The great advance that is being made in all useful inventions to-day is largely due to the study of the physical sciences. Many boys and girls (seventy-five per cent.) never attend the High School. The Elementary School owes them a taste at least of these sciences that have such a bearing on their lives, that have surrounded them with so many mechanical contrivances for their comfort and convenience, and that explain so many common natural phenomena. Give a boy a taste for experimental science, and there is some chance that after leaving school he will not throw aside his studies to subsist intellectually on the newspaper, but that he will continue to investigate for himself, and make himself a well-informed man, an influential man in his section. The Elementary School must aim at fitting the boys and girls for life. 6. The advent of the experiment marks the downfall of superstition, prejudice, and reliance on authority and tradition. To lead a child to think for himself is a great achievement. 7. The use of the experiment in gaining knowledge will result in a cautiousness in accepting statements and making decisions. CONDITIONS UNDER WHICH EXPERIMENTS SHOULD BE PERFORMED 1. They should be introduced into the school work naturally, as answers to questions which arise either in the regular course of the work or from suggestions made by the teacher at appropriate times. 2. As far as possible, the pupils should assist in performing the experiment. In small rural schools the scarcity of apparatus will necessitate the teacher's doing most of the work. In Form V classes and Continuation Schools the pupils may do the experiments individually. 3. The bearing of an experiment is not always evident; the teacher must be ready with judicious questions to lead the class to the proper conclusions. 4. The pupils must be acquainted with all the apparatus used. They must know what the teacher is doing and must be near enough to see the result. 5. A problem may be suggested, and a few days allowed for the pupils to think out a means of solution. If they invent and make their own apparatus, so much the better. 6. Whenever possible, the experiment should be applied to some natural phenomenon or everyday occurrence. CORRELATIONS OF PHYSICAL SCIENCE PHASE Geography.--The value of Physical Science in the Elementary School is largely due to the light it throws on geographical data. Numerous examples will appear in the succeeding pages. Hygiene.--Experiments in carbon dioxide, oxygen, air, water, sound, and light, are absolutely necessary, if the children are to grasp with any degree of clearness the principles of respiration and ventilation, and the phenomena of hearing and seeing. Manual Training.--Many pieces of apparatus may be made by the boys in their work with wood or iron. Some of the elementary principles of chemistry enable the girls to do their cooking intelligently. A knowledge of some of the principles of machines will help the pupils to understand the tools they may use in any employment. Drawing.--Careful drawing of the apparatus used helps to fix the experiment in the mind and at the same time gives practice in art. Composition.--Pupils must have ideas before they can write. The description of the experiment will make a good composition exercise, oral or written. LIST OF REFERENCE BOOKS AND BULLETINS GARDEN AND PLANT STUDY Bulletins of the Ontario Department of Agriculture, Toronto. Bulletins of the Dominion Department of Agriculture, Ottawa. Improvement of School Grounds. Department of Education, Toronto. Atkinson. First Studies of Plant Life. Ginn & Co. 60 cents. Bailey. Manual of Gardening. Macmillan Co. $2.00. Blanchan. Nature's Garden. Doubleday Co. $2.00. Comstock, A. M. Handbook of Nature Study. Comstock Pub. Co. $3.25. Gray. Field, Forest, and Garden Botany. Amer. Book Co. $1.40. Green, Louise. Among School Gardens. Charities Pub. Co. $1.25. Hodge. Nature Study and Life. Ginn & Co. $1.50. Holtz. Nature Study. Scribners' Sons. $1.50. Jackson and Dougherty. Agriculture through the Laboratory and School Garden. Judd. $1.50. James. Agriculture. Appleton & Co. 80 cents. Keeler. Our Native Trees. Scribners' Sons. $2.00. Osterhout. Experiments with Plants. Macmillan Co. $1.50. Parsons. How to Plan the Home Grounds. Doubleday Co. $1.00. Sergeant. Corn Plants. Houghton, Mifflin Co. 75 cents. PHYSICAL SCIENCE Miller. Minerals and How They Occur. The Copp, Clark Co. $1.50. Milliken and Gale. First Course in Physics. Ginn & Co. $2.00. Newman. Laboratory Exercises. Ginn & Co. 10c. each. Remsen. College Chemistry. Am. Pub. Co. $2.50. Simmons and Syenhouse. Science of Common Life. The Macmillan Company, $1.00. Woodhull. Home-made Apparatus. High School Text-books. ANIMAL STUDY Bulletin No. 52. Dominion Department of Agriculture, Ottawa. Bulletin No. 134. Ontario Department of Agriculture, Toronto. Bulletin No. 161. Ontario Department of Agriculture, Toronto. Bulletin No. 124. Ontario Department of Agriculture, Toronto. Reports of Entomological Society of Ontario. Department of Education. Fishes of Ontario. Nash. Department of Education. Bailey and Coleman. First Course in Biology. The Macmillan Company. $1.25. Buchanan. Senior Country Reader. The Macmillan Company. 40 cents. Chapman. Bird Life. Appleton. $2.00. Crawford. Guide to Nature Study. The Copp, Clark Co. 90 cents. Dearness. How to Teach the Nature Study Course. The Copp, Clark Co. 60 cents. Jordan and Kellogg. Animal Life. Appleton & Co. $1.20. Kellogg. Elementary Zoology. Holt & Co. $1.35. Reed. Bird Guide--Parts I and II. Musson Book Co., Toronto. 40 cents each. Shaler. Domesticated Animals. Scribners' Sons. $2.50. Silcox and Stevenson. Modern Nature Study. The Macmillan Company. 75 cents. NOTE.--The bulletins named above are supplied free to schools. Chemical and Physical Apparatus and Entomological Supplies may be obtained from G. M. Hendry Co., Victoria Street, Toronto. Rocks and Minerals may be obtained from the Ward Natural Science establishment, Rochester, or from the Central Scientific Co., Chicago. PHYSICAL SCIENCE FORMS III AND IV DESIRABLE APPARATUS 1 lb. glass tubing in 3 ft. lengths 3/16 in. to 1/4 in. outside diameter. 6 Florence flasks, 4 oz. to 8 oz. $ .50 1 Funnel, 3 in. diameter .10 1 Beaker, 8 oz. .10 1 Evaporating dish .10 3 ft. pure gum rubber tubing 1/8 in. inside .25 1/2 sq. foot thin sheet rubber .20 1 doz. test-tubes 6 in. by 5/8 in. .20 1/2 doz. test-tubes 6 in. by 7/8 in. .10 Capillary glass tubing, 3 sizes .10 2 rubber stoppers No. 2, one hole 1 " " " 4, " " 1 " " " 7, two holes .30 2 watch glasses .10 Ball and ring 1.00 2 Dry cells .60 2 Bar magnets .50 1 Chemical thermometer 212 deg. F. to 0 deg. F. .40 1 Spirit-lamp .20 1 Retort, 4 oz. stoppered .15 Wax candles .10 Retort stand of iron, two rings .85 1 Thistle tube .10 Common corks, assorted .10 Filter paper 5 in. diameter .05 Test-tube holder .10 Test-tube rack .10 Test-tube cleaner .10 1 piece glass tubing 30 in. long, 1/4 in. inside, for barometer .20 1 clamp for closing rubber tube .10 Covered copper wire .10 Small compass .50 Glass model of common pump 1.00 Globe for weighing air 2.50 Small piece of platinum foil, 1/2 in. by 2 in. .25 Glass prism 60 .50 Tuning fork 4-1/2 in. .50 Electric bell .50 Motor (Ajax) 1.50 Balance 10.00 Air-pump 15.00 Iron wire gauze .05 Sheet metals, iron, copper, zinc, lead, aluminum .25 2 lamp chimneys, straight ones preferred, at 10c .20 Iron ball, 2 in. in diameter .20 2 dairy thermometers at 15c .30 CHEMICALS Sulphuric acid, 1 lb. .10 Hydrochloric acid, 8 oz. .10 Nitric acid, 4 oz. .10 Washing soda .05 Sugar .05 Salt .05 Blue vitriol .10 Alum .05 Saltpetre .05 Sulphur .05 Potass. permanganate .05 Lime .05 Plaster-paris .05 Potass. bichromate .10 Methylated spirits, 1 pt. .10 Alcohol, 95% .10 Iodine crystals .10 Mercury, 1 lb. 1.00 Pot. chlorate .15 Manganese dioxide .10 Phosphorus .10 Sweet oil, 2 oz. .10 Benzine, 2 oz. .10 The following tools will be found very valuable: saw, square, plane, brace and bit, knife, hammer, glass cutter, files--round, flat, and triangular. Where the circumstances will not allow of the purchase of the preceding list, the following apparatus is recommended as sufficient for the performance of a large number of the experiments: 1/2 lb. glass tubing in 3 ft. lengths, 3/16 in. and 1/4 in. outside $ .20 2 Florence flasks, 4 oz. .15 1 Funnel .10 2 ft. pure gum rubber tubing, 1/8 in. inside .15 1/2 doz. test-tubes assorted, 5/8 to 7/8 diameter, 6 in. long .20 2 rubber stoppers, No. 2, one hole .10 1 rubber stopper, No. 4, one hole .10 Expansion of heat apparatus (made at blacksmith's) .10 Common corks, assorted .10 1 chemical thermometer 0 deg. F. to 212 deg. F. .40 1 spirit-lamp, 4 oz. .10 1 thistle tube .10 Covered wire, copper .10 CHEMICALS Iodine crystals .10 Sulphuric acid, 1 lb. .10 Methylated spirits 1 pt. .20 Alcohol, 95% .10 Mercury, 1/2 lb. .50 Pot. chlorate .15 Manganese dioxide .10 The following may be obtained, for either list, at little or no cost from household stores or home-made sources: washing soda, sugar, salt, ammonia, coal, coke, saltpetre, sulphur, blue vitriol, alum, potass. bichromate, blueing, lime, pickle-jars, wire gauze, candles, wire, sheet metals, test-tube holder and rack, balance, battery cells, horse-shoe magnet, pneumatic trough, lamp chimneys, tin cans, melting spoon, bicycle pump, baking-powder. For home-made apparatus, consult _Laboratory Exercises in Physics_ by Newman, Ginn & Co., 50c., and Manual on _Manual Training_. Reference has been made in the preceding experiments to the use of simple and easily contrived apparatus. The more of this the pupils can contrive and make under the direction of the teacher, the more valuable will be the course in Physical Science. GRENET CELLS Into a pint gem-jar put water 10 parts, sulphuric acid 1 part, potass, bichromate 1 part. Have jar three quarters full. Cut a piece of board 4 in. square, bore two holes in it, and through the holes thrust two pieces of electric light carbon, 5 in. or 6 in. long. The outer edges of the carbons should not be more than two inches apart. With a saw, cut a slit in the board between the holes and insert a strip of zinc 2 in. by 7 in. previously rubbed over with mercury. Set the three elements in the jar, connect the two carbons to one wire, and the zinc to another. One cell of this kind will run a small motor, operate a telegraph sounder, make a simple electro-magnet, or ring an electric bell; two cells will decompose water: three will heat a piece of fine iron wire red-hot. DECOMPOSITION APPARATUS 1. Cut the neck end from a pickle bottle. Get a No. 1 stopper, (rubber) with two holes in it and insert a piece of platinum foil 2 in. by 1/8 in. into each hole so that 1/2 in. projects above and below. Insert a tight plug beside each strip, thus holding it fast and making the stopper watertight. Insert the stopper into the neck of the jar. Pour into the vessel thus formed enough water to cover the platinums, and add a few drops of sulphuric acid. Touch the wires from the battery to the lower ends of the strips. Note bubbles of gas arise from the platinums. These may be collected in test-tubes and found by test to be oxygen and hydrogen. 2. Fasten a strip of platinum 1 in. by 1/8 in. to each wire from the battery and dip these into some acidulated water contained in a tumbler. The decomposition of the water into two gases can be seen, but the gases cannot be collected so readily as in 1 above. Bits of electric light carbon will do instead of platinum if the current is not too weak. PNEUMATIC TROUGH When oxygen or other gas is to be collected over water, use a milk pan or similarly shaped vessel. SPIRIT-LAMP Use an ink-bottle to contain the alcohol and several strands of string for the wick; make a hole in a piece of tin and draw the wick through; then let the tin rest on the neck of the bottle to support the wick. BAROMETER A siphon barometer takes less mercury than a cistern barometer. To the open end of the barometer tube attach a piece of strong rubber tubing 4 in. long and to this a piece of glass tubing 3 in. long. Fill the tube thus formed with mercury to within 3 in. from the top. Holding the short glass tube open end up, turn the long tube closed end up. (A tube of 1/8 in. bore needs only one quarter of the mercury required to fill a tube 1/4 in. bore.) HYGROMETER For a hygrometer, suspend two dairy thermometers side by side against the wall, cover the bulb of one with thin muslin, and let the muslin hang down and dip into water in some small vessel placed about three inches below the bulb on a little shelf. HINTS To avoid explosions, a spirit-lamp should be kept filled. Toy rubber balloons answer well for sheet rubber. Red ink makes good colouring matter. Make touch-paper by soaking any porous paper in a solution of saltpetre, and drying it. Instead of bending glass tubes, join them with rubber tubing. To make a test-tube holder, fold a sheet of paper until it is about half an inch wide and wrap this around the tube. To bend glass tubing, hold in the flame of the spirit-lamp and rotate between the fingers till it becomes soft and flexible, remove from the flame, and bend. To break glass tubing, first scratch with a file. To break glass bottles, make neatly a deep cut with a file, then touch the glass near the cut with a red-hot wire. When a crack appears, move the hot wire and the crack will follow. Several heatings may be necessary. In the case of a heavy glass bottle, file the cut as before, wrap the bottle with string dipped in alcohol, light it, and after it has burned, plunge the bottle vertically into cold water. Melted paraffin is good for closing small leaks. TIME APPORTIONED TO NATURE STUDY The Nature Study lesson should be given a definite place on the time-table. It is recommended that each class should have at least one lesson of fifteen minutes in length, a week. In addition to this, about five minutes a week should be spent in assigning problems for out-of-door work and in discussing the observations which the pupils have made on problems previously assigned. CHAPTER III FORM I AUTUMN GARDEN WORK On the re-opening of school after the summer holidays, the pupils should see that their plots are put into good order without delay. If they have been neglected during the holidays, a good deal of attention will be needed, and in some cases it may not be possible to reclaim them because of prolonged neglect. If such plots are found, they should be cleaned off completely, spaded up, and left in readiness for planting the following spring. All plots should be cultivated throughout the month of September to keep the soil mellow and prevent the growth of weeds. The pupils should be allowed to pick flowers from their own plots, but should always leave a few in bloom for the sake of the general appearance of the garden. Paths should be kept clean, and all rubbish, weeds, dead plants, etc., removed to the compost heap, which should be in the least conspicuous part of the garden. Hoes, rakes, and claw-hand weeders should be used in cleaning up and cultivating the plots. The soil should be kept fine and loose on top to prevent drying out. LESSONS ON A GARDEN PLANT PANSY LESSON I ~Materials.~--A flower for each pupil A plant set into a flower-pot A leaf for each pupil A pile of leaves containing a few pansy leaves and several of other kinds. ~Introduction.~--A conversation with the pupils about their favourite flowers. ~Observations.~--The pansy flowers are now distributed and the general form of the flower is first noted. The resemblance to the face of an animal will be discovered. The name _corolla_ is given, but no other botanical terms are to be introduced in this lesson. The details of colours, perfumes, velvety feeling of the corolla, and the number of leaflets in it are next _discovered_ and described by the _pupils_. Lastly, in a withering flower they discover the seed cases and the little seeds. LESSON II The conception of the relationship between the flower, root, and stem is developed by a method similar to the following: What soon happens to a pansy flower after it is broken from the plant? Are the flowers that you have in your hands withering? How can you keep them from withering? Hence, what must the flower get from the stem? Where does the stem get the moisture? Hence, what is one use of the root? A pupil is asked to pull the plant out of the soil in the flower-pot. What is another use that you have discovered for the root? The plant is now uprooted from the soil, and the pupils examine the root to find how it is fitted for gathering water and food from the soil and for holding the plant in place. Note the number of branches touching a great deal of soil and also the twisted form of the roots for grasping the soil. The form of the leaves is studied by the pupils, and, as a test of the accuracy of their observation, they are asked to pick out the pansy leaves from the pile of leaves. _To the teacher._--The pupils must be active participants in the lesson. They must use their eyes, hands, and even their noses in gaining first-hand impressions, and they are to be required to express in their own way the things that they discover. The beautiful flower with its face like that of an animal is an appeal to the child's imagination, and the child's interest in the _use_ of things is utilized in the study of the relations of root, stem, and flower. This lesson may be used as the basis for busy work by means of the following correlations: 1. With art: Represent the flower in colours. 2. With reading and literature: The pupils are required to express the meaning and sentiment of the following stanza: The pansy wakes in early spring To make our world more bright; All summer long its happy face Fills children with delight, Lessons similar to those on the pansy may be based upon the following plants of the garden or field: dandelion, aster, buttercup, nasturtium, goldenrod. The teacher in preparing the lesson should read a description of the plant from a Nature Study book and should also study the plant itself until he is familiar with all the phases of its life. OBSERVATION EXERCISES ON THE DANDELION The exercises given below are suggestive for out of school observation work, but must not be too long. By way of preparation for an exercise of this kind, the interest of the pupils in the dandelion must first be aroused. FIRST EXERCISE The teacher places the pupils at the school windows from which dandelions are visible and asks them to name any flower that they can see. A short conversation about the brightness of the flower follows. The pupils are next instructed to: 1. Find dandelions late in the evening, and find out how they prepare to go to sleep and how they are tucked in for the night. 2. Find where the leaves of the dandelion are, and bring a leaf to school next morning, and also observe how the leaves are grouped or placed. _To the teacher._--Dandelion flowers close up in the evening; the green leaves beneath the head wrap closely around the flowers to form a snug covering. The leaves have margins with teeth shaped like those of a lion, and from this the plant gets its name, for the name is the French _dent de lion_, which is pronounced very much like the word dandelion. The use of the leaf cluster as a system of rain-spouts for guiding the rain toward the root should be noted. SECOND EXERCISE 1. Why is the dandelion easy to find? 2. What makes it easy to find even in long grass? 3. What insect friends visit the dandelion? 4. Find out just how these visitors act during their visits, and find whether they carry anything to or away from the flowers. _To the teacher._--The bright yellow colour of the dandelion attracts attention. When it grows in long grass, the flower stalk grows long, so that the flower surmounts its obstructions and climbs up to the sunshine. The flowers are visited by ants, bees, and wasps, and these may be seen burrowing into the flowers in search of honey. If their bodies and legs be touched, the yellow pollen of the flowers will be found sticking to them. THIRD EXERCISE 1. Look for flower heads that do not open to the sun. Do not disturb them, but watch them for a few days and find out what they become. 2. Examine the large white balls of the dandelions and find out what they are. 3. Blow the down away. What does it carry with it? _To the teacher._--In this exercise the pupils will learn that the large white balls are the mature, or ripened, flowers and are composed of little brown seeds, each being a little airship for wafting it away. CORRELATION WITH LITERATURE AND READING When the above exercises have been completed, the pupil's knowledge of the dandelion may be utilized in interpreting the following stanzas: Oh dandelion! yellow as gold, What do you do all day? I just wait here in the tall green grass Till the children come to play. And what do you do when your hair is white And the children come to play? They take me up in their dimpled hands And blow my hair away. In addition to the dandelion, the following plants are suitable for observation exercises: morning-glory, wild balsam, sweet-pea, snap-dragon, nasturtium. DWARF NASTURTIUM ~Observations.~--The size of the plant at the time of flowering; its leaves--size, colour, shape, length of petiole and how arranged; colours found in the flower, comparison with others of same species found in the garden; size and shape of the flower and the length of its stems. Do the flowers grow higher than the leaves? Do they look better when with the leaves or when alone? Note the perfume and taste of the flower stem, the insect visitors, and what part of the flower they tried to get at, when the first blossom was seen, and how long the blossoms continued to come out. Do they keep well in bouquets? Do they stand hot, dry weather as well as other flowers? When did the frost kill them? Compare with the climbing nasturtium. Find the seeds. SEEDS The autumn months are the best for seed studies, for almost all annuals are ripening their seeds at this time of year. FIELD EXERCISE Assign to the pupils the following exercise: Collect the seed pods from as many plants of your garden plots, or home gardens, or wild plants, as possible, and be careful to write the name of each plant on the paper in which you put the seed pod of that plant. Notice the part of the plant from which the seed pod is formed. CLASS-ROOM LESSON BASED ON THIS COLLECTION The pupils place the seed pods on their desks, and observations and problems are dealt with of which the following are representative: How does each seed case open? What are the seeds for? How many seeds are in each case? Why should a plant have so many seeds? How are the seed cases fitted for protecting the seeds? Are any two seeds alike in shape? Are the seeds easy to find if they are spilled upon the ground? What makes them hard to find? Where do nearly all seeds spend the winter? Of what use is the hard shell of the seed? SEED DISPERSAL Study only a few of the more striking examples of seed dispersal with the Form I class. Seeds that fly and seeds that steal rides are good examples of classes of seeds whose methods of dispersal will prove of interest to children. LESSON ON SEEDS THAT FLY ~Materials.~--A milkweed pod; a ripe dandelion head. ~Introduction.~--A short conversation about the effects of the crowding of plants, as carrots and turnips, in a garden plot, and hence the need for the scattering of seeds. ~Observations.~--Open a milkweed pod in the presence of the class, so that they may see how the pod opens, how beautifully the seeds are arranged, and how the silk tufts are so closely packed in together. Allow a pupil to lift a seed out, blow it in the air, and observe how the silk opens out like an umbrella. Distribute seeds, one to each pupil. Ask the pupils to find out why this little airship is able to carry the seed. They will find that the seeds though broad, are thin and light, and the silky plumes very light. Ask the pupils to release their milkweed seeds at recess, when out of school, and find out how far they can fly. This is an interesting experiment for a windy day. The white balls of the dandelion are next examined, the tiny seeds are found standing on tiptoe on a raised platform, each grasping a tiny parachute and waiting for a puff of wind to start them off. A pupil is permitted to give the puff. Seeds are distributed, and the means of flight is compared with that of the milkweed. The shape of the seeds is observed and also the tiny anchor points at the lower end of the seed for clutching the ground when the seed alights. Another lesson on seeds that fly can be based on the study of tree seeds, using those of the maple, elm, basswood, pine, and spruce. CORRELATIONS 1. Drawing of milkweed pods and seeds, and drawing of the dandelion seed-ball and the seeds when floating in the air. 2. Reading and literature. Interpret the thought and read expressively: Dainty milkweed babies, wrapped in cradles green, Rocked by Mother Nature, fed by hands unseen, Brown coats have the darlings, slips of milky white, And wings, but that's a secret, they're folded out of sight. TWIGS AND BUDS The study of buds is a part of tree study and may be taken as observation work in the class-room. This somewhat detailed study should follow the general lessons on tree study. The materials for the lessons may be collected by the pupils at the time of the field lesson and kept fresh in a jar of water until required for use. LESSON ON TWIGS ~Materials.~--A twig of horse-chestnut about six inches long, for each pupil. A twig of the same tree with the leaves still on it. ~Observations.~--The twigs are distributed and the teacher asks the pupils to examine them and to describe all marks and projections that can be found on the twig. Answers are required from the pupils separately. The pupil's answer in each case should be sufficiently clear for all the class to recognize the feature that the answer is intended to describe. A few brief questions will guide the answerer in making his description more definite, but the description should be the result of the pupil's observation and expressed in his own words. The meaning or use of each feature should be discussed, when possible, immediately after it has been described. The following features will be discovered and the problems suggested will be solved: The brown or greenish-brown bark. The buds. One bud (sometimes two) is at the end of the twig. Some buds are along the side of the twig. What caused the end bud to grow larger than the others? There is a leaf scar under each bud. Of what use is it to the bud to be between the twig and the leaf stalk? The bands of rings, one or more on each twig. The tiny oval pores, each surrounded by a little raised band. The detailed study of the buds is left for a separate lesson. FURTHER STUDY OF TWIGS The study in detail of various features is illustrated in the following: Look closely at the leaf scars and describe them fully, as to shape, colour, and marks. Do the scars look like fresh wounds, or are they healed over? Of what use to the tree is the healing of the scar? We will learn later that the part of the twig between each pair of bands of rings represents one year's growth. How old is your twig? Who has the oldest twig? Do all twigs grow at the same rate? Who has the twig that had the most rapid growth? _To the teacher._--The bud at the end of the twig or its branches is called the end bud; there are two leaf scars underneath it. The buds along the sides of the stem are called side buds, the latter are smaller than the end bud. The bud situated between the stem of the leaf and the twig is in a sheltered position. This position also puts the bud close to the pantry door, for the plant food is prepared in the leaf. The leaf scars are yellowish-brown, or if they are the scars from the leaves of former years, are dark brown in colour. Each scar is shaped like a horse-shoe and tiny dots are found in the position that the horse-shoe nails would have. Even before the leaf falls, a layer of corklike substance has formed over the scar. This layer is a protection against the entrance of frost and rain and germs of fungi and it also prevents the loss of sap from the scar. The tiny oval pores, each as large as the point of a needle, are the breathing pores of the twig. The bands of rings are the scars of the scales of the end buds of successive years. This latter fact can be discovered when the bud is opening. REVIEW LESSON The review lesson should consist of a review of the points taken up in the lessons that were based on the horse-chestnut twig, supplemented by the examination of the twigs of elm, apple, or lilac. LESSON ON BUDS ~Materials.~--Twigs and buds of horse-chestnut, one for each pupil. An opening bud. (A bud or a twig placed in water in a warm room will develop rapidly.) ~Lesson.~--Distribute specimens, and review the positions of the buds. Pupils examine the buds and tell all they can about them. They describe the colour, shape, and size of the buds, and also their gummy and scalelike covering. Of what use are the gum and scales? Of what use is the brown colour of the bud? They next find out what is inside the little brown house. They open the buds and try to identify the contents. There will be some uncertainty as to the meaning of the contents. Leave this over till spring. _To the teacher._--The brown colour of the bud makes it an absorbent of sunlight, and also serves as a protection from observation by the sharp eyes of bud-eating birds. The gummy scales are waterproof, and the scales, by spreading open gradually, cause the waterproof property to be retained even after the bud has grown quite large. The inner part of the bud is composed of two, four, or six tiny leaves folded up and supported on a short bit of stem. Some of the buds have, in addition to leaves, a tiny young flower cluster. All of these things are densely covered with white down. The down is the fur coat to protect the tender parts from the cold. REVIEW LESSON Review the lesson on buds, but substitute buds of the lilac or apple for the horse-chestnut buds of the original lesson. CORRELATIONS The observational study of the buds and twigs is a good preparation for busy work in art and manual training, and the pupils may be assigned exercises, such as charcoal drawing of a horse-chestnut twig, paper cutting of a lilac twig and buds, clay or plasticine modelling of twigs and buds. For oral and written language exercises, enlarge the vocabulary of the pupils by requiring sentences containing the words--scales, twigs, buds, protection, terminal, lateral, leaf stalk, blade, etc. LEAVES Leaves, because of their abundance and the ease with which they may be obtained, are valuable for Nature Study work. It is possible to arouse the interest of even young children in the study of leaves, but care must be taken not to make the observation work too minute and the descriptions too technical for the primary classes. FIELD EXERCISES An excursion to the school grounds or to some neighbouring park will suffice to bring the pupils into direct contact with the following plants: a maple tree, a Boston ivy (or other climbing vine), a nasturtium, a geranium. Ask the pupils to find out where and how leaves are placed on each of these plants, that is, whether they are on the inner parts of the branches of the tree or out at the ends of the branches. Do the leaves overlap one another or does each make room for its neighbours? Are the leaves spread out flat or curled up? What holds the leaves out straight and flat? What do the leaves need to make them green and healthy? Are the leaves placed in the right way, and are they of the right form to get these things? _To the teacher._--The leaves of the plants named are quite noticeably so placed on the plants, have such relations to one another, and are of such outline that they present the greatest possible surface to the _air_ and _sunshine_ and _rain_. The leaf stalk and midrib and veins are stiff and strong to keep the leaves spread out. Compare with the ribs of an umbrella. The benefit of sunshine to leaves and plants can be developed by discussing with the pupils the paleness and delicateness of plants that have been kept in a dark place, such as in a dark cellar. They are also acquainted with the refreshing effect of rains upon leaves. The use of air to the leaves is not so easy to develop with pupils of this age, but the use of air for breathing just as boys and girls need air for breathing may be told them. CLASS-ROOM LESSON ON LEAVES ~Introduction.~--Tell me all the things that you know upon which leaves grow. On trees, bushes, flowers, plants, vegetables, etc. Are leaves all of the same shape? To-day we are going to learn the names of some of the shapes of leaves. ~Observations.~--Show the class the heart-shaped leaf of catalpa or lilac, and obtain from the pupils the name _heart-shape_. Use the following types: Maple leaf as star-shape, Grass or wheat or corn as ribbon-shape, Nasturtium or water-lily as shield-shape, Ash or rowan, as feather-shape. ~Drill.~--Pupils pick out the shape named. Pupils name the plant to which each belongs. Which shape do you think is the prettiest? GARDEN STUDIES If the pupils of this Form have planted and cared for garden plots of their own, they will have a greater love for the flowers or vegetables that grow in them than for any others in the garden, because they have watched their development throughout. For them such continuous observation cannot but result in a quickening of perception and a deepening of interest and appreciation. STUDIES IN THE PUPIL'S INDIVIDUAL PLOT What plant is the first to appear above ground? What plant is the last to appear? Describe what each plant was like when it first appeared above ground. What plants grow the fastest? What effect has cold weather, warm weather, dry weather, on the growth of the plants? What weeds grow in the plot? Why do these weeds obstruct the growth of the other plants? What kind of root has each weed? Find out what kind of seeds each weed produces? Why is each weed hard to keep out of fields? What garden plants produce flowers? How are the seeds protected? Compare the seeds with those that you planted. Select the seeds of the largest plants and finest flowers for next year's seeding. STUDIES FROM THE GARDEN AS A WHOLE What plants grow tallest? What plants are most suitable for borders? What plants are valuable for their flowers? What plants are valuable for their edible roots, for their edible leaves, for their edible seeds? How are the edible parts stored for winter use? Compare the plants that are crowded, with others of the same kind that are not crowded. Compare the rate of growth of the plants in a plot that is kept hoed and raked with the rate of growth of plants in a neglected plot. BULB PLANTING The planting of bulbs in pots for winter blooming should be commenced with pupils in Form I and continued in the higher Forms. As a rule, the potted bulbs will be stored and cared for in the home, as most school-rooms are not heated continuously during the winter. Paper-white narcissus and freesia are most suitable and should be planted about the fifteenth of October, so that the plants will be in bloom for Christmas. LESSON ON BULBS AND BULB PLANTING ~Materials.~--The bulbs to be planted. As many four-inch flower-pots or tomato cans as are required. Soil, composed of garden loam, sand, and well-rotted manure in equal proportions. Stones for drainage. Sticks for labels (smooth pieces of shingle, one and a half inches wide and sharpened at one end, will answer). Pictures of the plants in bloom. ~Observations.~--The attention of the pupils is directed to the bulbs, and they are asked to describe the size, form, and colour of each kind of bulb. A bulb is cut across to make possible the study of the parts, and the pupils observe the scales or rings which are the bases of the leaves of the plant from which the bulb grew. The use of the fleshy mass of the bulb as a store of food for the plant that will grow from it is discussed. The sprout in the centre of the scales with its yellowish-green tip is observed, and its meaning inferred. The picture is shown to illustrate the possibilities within the bulb. PLANTING THE BULB The teacher directs, but the work is done by the pupils, and the reasons for the following operations are developed: What is the use of the one-inch layer of pebbles, or broken brick, or stone, that is placed in the bottom of the pot? Why are the bulbs planted near the top of the soil? Why is the soil packed firmly around the bulbs? Why must the soil be well wetted? Why is the pot set in a cool, dark place for a month or more? _To the teacher._--The pebbles or broken bricks are for giving drainage. The bulbs are planted with their tips just showing above the surface of the soil and there is about half an inch of space between the top of the soil and the upper edge of the pot in order to facilitate watering. The potted bulbs must be set in a cool, dark place until they are well rooted. This is subjecting them to their natural winter conditions, and it will cause them to yield larger flowers, a great number of flowers, and flowers that are more lasting. Sand in the soil permits of the more free passing of air through the soil. Basements and cellars are usually suited for storing bulbs until they have rooted, but they must not be warm enough to promote rapid growth. The pots when stored should be covered with leaves, sawdust, or coarse sand to prevent drying out. The soil must be kept moist, but not wet. Paper-white narcissus, if brought out of the dark after three or four weeks, will be in bloom at the end of another month if kept in the window of a warm room. Care must be taken not to expose the plants to bright light until they have become green. The bulbs of the white narcissus are to be thrown away after the flowers have withered, as they will not bloom again, but freesia bulbs may be kept and planted again the following year. CHAPTER IV FORM I WINTER LESSONS ON A PET ANIMAL: THE RABBIT I The lesson is introduced by a conversation with the pupils about their various pets. Since we are to have a rabbit brought to the school we must learn how to take care of it, and the proper method of taking care of it is based upon a knowledge of the habits of the wild rabbit. Where do wild rabbits live? What sort of home does a rabbit have? In what ways does this home protect the rabbit? Hence, what kind of home must we have ready for the rabbit? What does the rabbit eat? Are there any of these foods that are not good for its health? Give a list of foods that you can bring for the rabbit. Why will the rabbit, when kept in a hutch, require less food than one that runs about? Since the rabbit likes a soft bed, what can you bring for its bed? II ~Observations.~--The teacher or a pupil brings a rabbit to the school-room, where, during recreation periods, the pupils make observations on topics suggested by the teacher, such as: Its choice of food; its timidity; its movements--hopping, squatting, listening, scratching, and gnawing. These observations are discussed in the class and are corrected or verified. _To the teacher._--Wild rabbits live in the woods or in shrubbery at the edges of fields. The home of the rabbit is either a burrow under ground or a sheltered place under a root or log closely concealed among the bushes. This home is dry and affords a shelter from enemies, and from wind, rain, and snow. From this we know that we must provide a dry bed for our rabbit in a strong box in which it will feel secure, and in which it will be protected from wind and rain. The food of the rabbit consists of vegetables and soft young clover and grains. It also gnaws the bark of trees, and in winter it feeds upon buds. We can, therefore, feed our rabbit on carrots, beets, apples, oats, bran, grass, and leaves of plants, and we must provide it with some twigs to gnaw, for gnawing helps to keep its large chisel-shaped teeth in good condition. We must be careful not to give it too much exercise, and we must not give it any cabbage, because this is not good for the rabbit's health. A dish of water must be placed in the hutch, for the rabbit needs water to drink. III Details, if studied in isolation, are uninteresting to Form I pupils. Detailed study should be based upon the animal's habits, movements, and instincts, and each detail should be studied as an answer to questions such as: How is the animal able to perform these movements? How is the animal fitted for this habit of life, etc.? Watch the rabbit moving. How does a rabbit move? Which legs are the more useful for hopping? How are the hind legs fitted for making long hops? Why is the rabbit able to defend itself by kicking with its hind feet? Find out how the rabbit is fitted for burrowing. Listen carefully and find out whether the rabbit makes much noise while moving. Of what advantage is it to the rabbit to move silently? Find out, by examining the feet of the rabbit, what causes it to make very little noise. How are rabbits prepared for living during cold weather? Test the ability of the rabbit to hear faint noises. Why is it necessary for the rabbit to be able to hear faint sounds? How is it fitted for hearing faint sounds? Examine the teeth and find out how they are fitted for gnawing. _To the teacher._--The long, strong, hind legs of the rabbit are bent in the form of levers and enable the animal to take long, quick hops. When the rabbit attacks, it frequently defends itself by vigorous kicks with its hind feet, which are armed with long, strong claws. Ernest Thompson-Seton's story of Molly Cottontail and "Raggylug", in _Wild Animals I Have Known_, contains an interesting account of how Molly rescued Raggy from a snake by this manner of fighting. The rabbit has many enemies, hence it has need of large, movable ears to aid its acute sense of hearing. The thick pads of hair on the soles of its feet enable it to move noiselessly. The thick, soft, inner hair keeps the animal warm, while the longer, stiffer, outer hair sheds the rain. Impress upon the pupils the cruelty of rough handling of the rabbit and of neglecting to provide it with a place for exercise and with a clean, dry home. The following pet animals may be studied, using the same order and general method of treatment: pigeon, cat, canary, guinea pig, white mouse, raccoon, squirrel, parrot. In many cases these animals can be brought to school by the pupils. Encourage the keeping of pet animals by the pupils, for the best lessons grow out of the actual care of the pets. The study of a pet bird may be conducted along lines similar to the outline given below for the study of the pigeon. CORRELATIONS With literature and reading: Ernest Thompson-Seton's "Raggylug". With art: Charcoal drawing representing the rabbit in various attitudes, as squatting, listening, hopping. With modelling in clay or plasticine. With paper cutting. With language: The vocabulary of the pupils is enlarged by the introduction of new words whose meaning is made clear by means of the concrete illustration furnished by direct observation of the rabbit. They use these new words in sentences which they form in describing the rabbit; for example: hutch, gnaw, padded, cleft lip, timid. The rabbit has padded feet so that it can walk without noise. The rabbit has a soft bed in its hutch. THE DOMESTIC CAT The following facts are suggested as topics for a first lesson on the domestic cat. The teacher can rely upon the pupil's knowledge of the cat to furnish these statements of fact during a conversation lesson: The cat goes about at night as readily as during the day. The cat can hear faint noises quite readily. The cat can walk noiselessly. The cat creeps along until it is close to its prey, then pounces upon it, and seizes it with its claws. The cat enjoys attention and purrs if it is stroked gently. The cat likes to sleep in a warm place. The cat can fight viciously with her claws. The cat keeps her fur smooth and clean and her whiskers well brushed with her paws. The cat eats birds, mice, rats, meat, fish, milk, bread, and cake. DETAILED STUDY Base the study of the details upon the facts of habit, movements, instincts, etc., which were developed in the preceding lesson. ~Observations.~--Find out how the cat's feet are fitted for giving a noiseless tread. Find the claws. How are the claws fitted for seizing prey? How are the claws protected from being made dull by striking against objects when the cat is walking? THE PIGEON A pigeon is kept in a cage in the school-room and the pupils observe: its size as compared with that of other birds; outline of body, including shape of head; the feathers, noting quill feathers, and covering or contour feathers; manner of feeding and drinking; movements, as walking, flying, tumbling. The owner or the teacher describes the dove-cot, the necessity of keeping it clean, the use of tobacco stems for killing vermin in the nest, the two white eggs, the habits of male and female in taking turns in hatching, the parents' habit of half digesting the food in their own crops and then pouring it into the crops of the young, the rapid growth of the young, the next pair of young hatched before the first pair is full-fledged. Descriptions of the habits of one or more well-known varieties--pouters, fantails, homing pigeons, etc. Read stories of the training and flights of homing pigeons, from Ernest Thompson-Seton's _Arnex_. MORE DETAILED STUDY FOR CLASS WORK Compare the uses of the quill and contour feathers. Find out how these two kinds differ in texture; the differences fitting them for their difference in function. The names quill and contour may be replaced by some simple names, as feathers for flying and feathers for covering the body. Study the adaptations for flight, noting the smooth body surface, the overlapping feathers of the wing for lifting the bird upward as the wing comes down, the long wing bones, the strong breast, and the covering of feathers giving lightness and warmth. The warmth and lightness of feathers is illustrated by the feather boas worn by ladies. Examine the feet and find out why pigeons are able to perch on trees. Examine the beak, mouth, tongue, nostrils, eyes, ears. How is the bill adapted for picking up grains and seeds? OBSERVATION AND CARE OF WINTER-BLOOMING PLANTS Children are most interested in things which they own and care for themselves. If a child plants a bulb or a slip and succeeds in bringing it to maturity, it will be to him the most interesting and, at the same time, will bring him more into sympathy with plants wherever he may find them. The teacher should impress upon the pupil the desirability of having beautiful flowers in the home in winter, when there are none to be had out-of-doors. Every pupil should be encouraged to have one plant at least, and the bulbs planted in October and stored away in the dark in the home cellar will require a good deal of care and afford an excellent opportunity for observing plant growth and the development of flowers. If the pots have been stored in a cool cellar and have been kept slightly moist, the bulbs will have made sufficient root growth in a month and should be brought up into a warmer room where they can get some sunshine every day. The pupils will make a report each week as to what changes are noticeable in the growing plant. They will note the appearance of pale green shoots, which later develop into leaves and at least one flower stalk. They should make a drawing once every week and show it to the teacher, and the teacher should make it a point to see a number of the pupils' plants by calling at their homes. In this way the pupils come to know what plants need for their development in the way of soil, water, light, and heat. This interest will soon be extended, until, in a very few years, the children will add new and beautiful plants to the home collection and assume the responsibility of caring for all of them. TREES PINES OF THE LOCALITY This study may be commenced in November after the deciduous trees have lost their leaves and have entered their quiescent winter period. This is the time when the evergreens stand out so prominently on the landscape in such sharp contrast with the others that have been stripped of their broad leaves and now look bare and lifeless. If no pines are to be found in the vicinity, balsam or spruce may be substituted. The lessons should, as far as possible, be observational. The pupils should be encouraged to make some observations for themselves out of school. At least one lesson should be conducted out-of-doors, a suitable pine tree having been selected beforehand for the purpose. The following method might serve as a guide in the study of any species of tree. THE WHITE PINE FIELD EXERCISES Have the pupils observe the shape and height of the tree from a distance, tracing the outline with the finger. Compare the shape of this tree with that of other evergreens and also with that of the broad-leafed trees. Have them describe in what particulars the shapes differ in different trees. They will come to realize that the difference in shape results from difference in length, direction, and arrangement of branches. They may notice that other evergreen trees resemble the pine in that the stems are all straight and extend as a gradually tapering shaft from the bottom to the top, that all have a more or less conical shape, and that the branches grow more or less straight out from the main stem, not slanting off as in the case of the maples and elms. Coming close to the tree, the pupils may first examine the trunk. By using a string or tape-line, find its diameter and how big it is around. Tell them how big some evergreens are (the giant trees of the Pacific Coast are sometimes over forty feet around). Have them notice where the trunk is largest, and let them find out why a tree needs to be so strong at the ground. Heavy wind puts a great strain on it just at this point. Illustrate by taking a long slat or lath, drive it into the ground firmly, and then, catching it by the top, push it over. It will break off just at the ground. If a little pine tree could be taken up, the pupils would be interested in seeing what long, strong, fibrous roots the pine has. Let them examine the bark of the trunk and describe its colour and roughness. The fissures in the bark, which are caused by the enlarging of the tree by the formation of new wood under the bark, are deeper at the bottom of the tree than at the top, the tree being younger and the bark thinner the nearer to the top we go. Let the pupils look up into the tree from beneath and then go a little distance away and look at it. They will notice how bare the branches are on the inside, and the teacher will probably have to explain why this is so. They will discover that the leaves are nearly all out toward the ends of the branches as they get light there, while the centre of the tree top is shaded, and the great question that every tree must try to solve is how to get most light for its leaves. The pupils will now see an additional reason why the lower limbs should be longer than the upper ones. The greater length of the lower limbs brings the leaves out into the sunlight. The reason for calling this tree an "evergreen" may now be considered. Why it retains its leaves all winter is a problem for more advanced classes; but if the question is asked, the teacher may get over the difficulty by explaining to the class that the leaves are so small, and yet so hardy, that wind, frost, or snow does not injure them. Each pupil may bring a small branch or twig back to the school-room for use in a class-room lesson. CLASS-ROOM LESSON ~Materials.~--Small branches--one for each pupil, cones, bark, pieces of pine board. ~Introduction.~--Review the general features of the pine that were observed in the field lesson. ~Observations.~--The branches are distributed. Pupils test the strength and suppleness of the branches and find the gummy nature of the surface. Of what value are these qualities to the tree during winter storms? Examine the texture, stiffness, and fineness of the needles. Note that the needles are in little bunches. How many are in each bunch? Are there any buds on the branches? If so, where are the buds? How are the buds protected from rain? The pupils examine the cones and describe their general shape. The pupils are asked to break open the tough scales and find the seeds. Allow the seeds to fall through the air, and thus the pupils will discover the use of the wings attached to the seeds. The wood is next examined, its colour and odour are noted, and its hardness is tested. Find articles in the school-room that are made of pine wood. ELM The following topics are suggested for aiding in the selection of matter for a lesson on a typical broad-leafed tree: The height of the tree. The part of the height that is composed of tree tops. The umbrella shape or dome shape of the top. The gracefully drooping branches of the outer part of the top. Try to find other trees with tops like that of the elm. The diameter of the trunk. The diameter is almost uniform up to the branches. The branches all come off from one point, like the ribs of an umbrella. The thick bark, that of the old trees being marked by deep furrows. The birds that make their nests in the elm. In spring find and examine the flowers, fruits, seeds, and also the leaves. FIELD EXERCISE A good out-of-door exercise to follow the general lesson outlined above, is to require the pupils to find all the elm trees or a number of elm trees growing in the locality and to describe their location and the kind of soil on which they grow. The maple, oak, horse-chestnut, and apple are also suitable trees upon which to base lessons for Form I. DOMESTIC ANIMALS Domestic animals not only furnish suitable subjects for observation work, but also afford good opportunities for developing that sympathetic interest in animal life which will cause the pupils to more nearly appreciate the useful animals and to treat them more humanely. THE HORSE I ~Introduction.~--By means of a conversation with the pupils, find out what they know about the horse and lead them to think about his proper treatment. ~Lesson.~--The matter and method are suggested by the following: What are the different things for which horses are useful? What kinds of horses are most useful for hauling heavy loads? Why are they most useful? What kinds are the most useful for general farm work? Why are they the most useful? What kinds are the most useful for driving? Are there any other animals that would be as useful as the horse for all these things? What causes some horses to be lean and weary while others are fat and brisk? What kinds of stables should horses have as to warmth, dryness, and fresh air? Why is it cruel to put a frosty bit into a horse's mouth? When a horse is warm from driving on a cold day, how should he be protected if hitched out-of-doors? Why, when he is warm from driving, should the blanket not be put on until he has been in the stable for a little while? Correlate with reading from _Black Beauty_. II ~Preparation.~--I want you to find out some more things about the horse, but you will understand these things better if you remember that long ago all horses were wild, just as some horses are wild on the prairies to-day, and that the habits learned by wild horses remain in our tame horses. The teacher should read to the class parts of "The Pacing Mustang" from Ernest Thompson-Seton's _Wild Animals I Have Known_, or "Kaweah's Run" from _Neighbours with Claws and Hoofs_. This will give the pupils a motive for making the required observations. ~Observations.~--Compare the length of the legs of the horse with his height. Of what use were these long legs to the wild horses? What causes horses to "shy"? Of what use was this habit to wild horses? In how many directions can a horse move his ears? Of what use was this to wild horses? When horses in a field are alarmed, do they rush together or keep apart, and where are the young foals found at this time? Of what use were these habits to wild horses? Are the eyes of the horse so placed that he can see behind him and to either side as well as in front? Of what use was this to wild horses? _To the teacher._--The horse is an animal which is strong, swift, graceful, gentle, obedient, docile. The pupils should learn that, in return for his good services, the horse should be treated with kindness and consideration. The legs of the horse are long, straight, and strong, and the single toe (or hoof) means that the horse walks on the tip of one toe, and the hoof is in reality a large toe nail developed to protect the tip of the toe. To these features is due the great speed of the horse. Horses gather together in the field with the foals in the most protected part of the group, just as wild horses found it necessary to do for protection. The wild horses "shied" at a fierce enemy concealed in the grass, and the tame horse shies at a strange object. CORRELATIONS With literature and reading: By interpretation of _The Bell of Atri_. With language: By exercise on new words, as graceful, etc. DOMESTIC BIRDS THE DUCK ~Home Observations.~--Compare the duck and the drake as to size, colouring, calls, and other sounds. Observe the position of the birds when standing. Observe their mode of walking, of swimming, and of flying. Where do they prefer to make their nests? Why is the duck more plain in dress than the drake? What is the shape, size, and build of the nest? Describe the eggs. When does the duck sleep? Why can it not sleep upon a perch as hens do? How do ducks feed on land? Compare with the feeding of hens. Observe how ducks feed when in water. Observe the various sounds, as alarm notes, call notes, social sounds. Describe the preening of the feathers and explain the meaning of it. Compare the appearance of the young ducks with that of the older ones. Do the young ducks need to be taught to swim? CLASS-ROOM LESSON Provide, where convenient, a duck for class study. ~Observations.~--Colour, size, general shape of the body, and the relation of the shape to ease of swimming; divisions of the body. Size of head, length of neck, and the relation of the length of the neck to the habit of feeding in water. The legs and web feet, and the relation of these to the bird's awkward walking and ease in swimming. The bill and its relation to the bird's habits of feeding by scooping things from the bottom of the water and then straining the water out. The sensitive tip of the bill by which the duck can feel the food. The feathers, their warmth, and compactness for shedding water. The oil spread over them during the preening is useful as a protection against water. The bill, feet, and feathers should be compared with those of the hen and goose, and reasons for the similarities and differences should be discussed. The uses that people make of ducks and their feathers and eggs; the gathering of eider-down. For desk work, make drawings of the duck when swimming, flying, and standing. CHAPTER V FORM I SPRING GARDEN WORK The pupils in Form I cannot be expected to do heavy work, such as spading plots or making paths. In some cases the larger boys will undertake to line out the walks and do the spading or digging. Sometimes it may be best to engage a man to do the spading. In any case the boys and girls should do the measuring and marking out of the plots. If stable manure is used in fertilizing the plots, it must be well rotted and then carefully spaded into the plots. The rest of the work should be done by the pupils themselves under the direction of the teacher. This work will include the levelling of the plots with hoes and rakes, and the trimming of the edges to the exact size of the plots, as determined by a string drawn taut about the four corner pickets. If the pupils in this Form have individual plots, each pupil will mark out his drills, put in the seeds, and cover them. The teacher may give demonstrations in connection with the work but should not do the work for the pupils. The teacher must use his own judgment as to what seeds to allow the pupils to plant. One variety of vegetable and one of flowers is sufficient for Form I pupils, and it is desirable that large seeds be chosen for them and such as are pretty sure to grow under ordinary circumstances. Beans, beets, radishes, or lettuces are suitable as vegetables, and nasturtiums, balsams, or four-o'clocks as flowers. These seeds should be planted at least an inch apart in the drill and the drills, twelve to fifteen inches apart. Large seeds may have an inch of soil over them and smaller seeds much less. Unless the soil is very dry, watering should not be allowed, and in any case it is better to water the plot thoroughly the day before planting the seed instead of after, as is commonly done. The pupils must not allow a crust to form over the plot either before the seeds come up or after. Claw-hand weeders are convenient for loosening the soil close to the plants, and small-sized garden rakes can be used between the rows as soon as the seedlings appear. It is always better to cultivate before the weeds get a start, and thus prevent their growth. Usually the young plants will be too thick in the row, so that thinning should be begun when the plants are about two inches high. The edges of the plots should be kept straight and the paths clean and level. Each plot should have a wooden label bearing the owner's name or number and Form. The teacher is referred to _Circular 13_ of the Ontario Department of Education, _Elementary Agriculture and Horticulture_, for lists of seeds, tools, etc. GARDEN STUDIES The pupils should be in the garden every day as soon as gardening commences. In this way only will they be able to follow and appreciate the whole life of the plant from seed to seed again. The teacher should give a few minutes daily to receiving verbal reports from the pupils. All new developments that the pupils notice should be reported for the good of all. The teacher should make a practice of visiting the garden for a few minutes daily before or after school, in order that he may be in a position to direct the pupils in their studies in the garden. The pupils should watch for the first appearance of the young plants above ground, noting how they get through the soil, and the size, shape, and colour of the first leaves. They can readily determine whether all of the seeds grow. They will then watch for the opening of the second pair of leaves and compare them with the first pair. They should report the amount of growth made from day to day, and also what insect enemies attack the plants, and what animals, such as toads and birds, are seen during the season. They will also have occasion to note the effect of rain and sun upon the soil and upon the plants. The first vegetables fit for use and the first flowers in bloom will be reported. While they give special attention to the development of the plants in their own plots, they will of course observe what is going on in the garden generally. Correlate with the interpretation of "The Seed" in _Nature in Verse_.--Lovejoy. Silver, Burdett & Co., 60 cents. WINDOW GARDEN The pupils should plant some seeds in sand or moist sawdust in boxes or pots in the school-room, so that they may be able to examine the progress of germination. In this way they will come to realize that every good seed has in it a tiny plant asleep and that warmth and moisture are needed to awaken it and help it to grow. It sends one delicate shoot down into the soil and another up into the light. Another interesting way to plant seeds is in egg-shells filled with fine, moist soil, which are set in rows in a box of sand. One seed only should be put in a shell. The plants may be grown to quite a size and then set out in the garden plot, the shell having first been broken off and the ball of earth containing the roots carefully set down in a small hole, packed about with garden soil, and watered. The pupils should draw diagrams or maps of their plots and afterwards of the whole garden. (See Manual on _Geography_.) They can mark the lines of plants, and those who can write can give in short, simple sentences the main things noticed from day to day. They should give the day and date when the seeds were planted, when plants came up, when rain storms occurred, when work in weeding, thinning, and cultivating was done, when the plants were fit to use, and how they were disposed of, etc. This will serve as profitable seat work in writing, drawing, and language. Simple problems based upon dimensions of plots and the value of vegetables, etc., afford excellent supplementary exercises in arithmetic. WILD FLOWERS The admiration that even little children have for the wild flowers of the woods and their delight in finding and gathering them is sufficient justification for including them in studies for Form I. The teacher must be careful, however, lest he go too far in the critical examination of the parts of the flowers, forgetting that little children are not interested in stamens and petals, but in the fresh, fragrant, and delicate blossoms that beautify the little banks and hollows of every woodland and that brighten up the fields and roadsides in spring time. The teacher should aim to deepen that childish admiration and give to the child a more intelligent appreciation of the beauties of the wild flowers and a desire to protect them from extermination. No attempt should be made to prohibit the picking of wild flowers, but the pupils should be instructed not to pull up plants by the roots. The picking of flowers in moderation does not injure the plants, but rather tends to increase their vigour. Pupils should pick flowers with some purpose in view, rather than to see how big a bunch each can gather. The teacher should show them how to arrange a few flowers in a neat bouquet and emphasize the fact that a great mass of blossoms crushed closely together is far from being artistic or ornamental. Pupils should then be encouraged to make up pretty bouquets for the teacher's desk, for the home dining-room, and for old or invalid people who love flowers--especially those plucked by the hands of thoughtful children. RECOGNITION OF WILD FLOWERS The pupils should learn to recognize each year a few species of wild flowers by name as well as by sight. This may be accomplished in two ways, (1) by means of excursions to the woods a few times each year during the spring and summer months, and (2) by having occasional observation lessons in the school-room based upon the flowers gathered for the school-room bouquets. Both methods are to be recommended, but it must be borne in mind that a wilted, lacerated flower has no interest for a little child. LESSON IN OUTLINE BLOODROOT Plants are always most interesting when studied in their natural environment, and this is one reason why the school excursion deserves the highest commendation as a method of studying wild flowers. When studying wild flowers out-of-doors, the pupils should notice what seems to be the favourite or usual location for the particular species under consideration. Have the pupils observe the following about the bloodroot: It seems to prefer fairly dry, rich soil, on or near a hillside. It opens its beautiful white blossoms early in the spring, as if to enjoy the bright sunshine before the trees put out their thick coat of leaves to shade it. It, like many another early spring flower, comes into bloom so early in the spring because it got ready the summer before. The teacher should carefully dig up a specimen--root and all--as young pupils cannot be depended on to get up all of the underground part. Note the large amount of plant food stored up in the underground stem, how the flower was protected before it opened out, and what becomes of the protection. Note the peculiar beauty of the snow-white blossoms with their yellow centres, and how beautiful they look as they nestle amongst the handsome green leaves with their pinkish-tinted stems. Wound the root, and notice the reddish, bloodlike juice whence the plant derives its name. Indians sometimes use this juice for war-paint, and some mothers give it to their children on sugar as a cure for coughs and colds. Other wild flowers suitable for Form I are buttercup, spring beauty, dog's-tooth violet, hepatica, and trillium. If there is a corner of the school ground that is partly shaded, and if the soil is fairly mellow and moist, some of these wild flowers should be transplanted there where they will grow well and can be seen every day during the blooming period. The leaves and flowers of the bloodroot and the above-mentioned wild flowers can be used for drawing. CORRELATIONS Oral and written descriptions of the flowers studied afford suitable exercises in language and composition. INSECT STUDY CECROPIA, OR EMPEROR-MOTH The larvæ of this, the largest of Canadian moths, may be found early in September, as they wander about in search of a suitable branch upon which to fasten their cocoons. If the pupils are not successful in finding the larvæ, the cocoons can be found after the leaves have fallen, because their size makes them conspicuous. The only difficulty in finding them is due to their being of the same colour as the withered leaves, so that they are easily mistaken for the latter. The pupils should be directed to look carefully at what appears at first sight to be a withered leaf attached to a tree or shrub, and in this way many cocoons of various moths will be found. ~Observe.~--The large size--from three to four inches long; the greenish colour; the stumpy legs; movements, as walking, feeling, clinging; the rows of warts, and short, stiff spines on these; the feeding habits, biting or sucking; eggs of parasites, for frequently these are found on the larvæ. Place the larva in a box covered with gauze, and observe the spinning and weaving of the cocoon. From what part of the body is the silk obtained? With what organs are the threads placed in position? What part of the cocoon is made first and what part is made last? What time is required for making the cocoon? How is the cocoon fastened to the tree? What provision is made in the cocoon for warmth, for protection from birds, for shelter from rain? Cut open a cocoon and examine the pupa, noting the mummy-like case on which can be seen the impressions of the wings developing within. If the cocoon is kept in the vivarium in a cool place, so that the conditions may be as nearly as possible like the natural conditions, the adult moth will emerge about the first of May. In April the cocoon should be wetted occasionally, as it would be if exposed to rains; this ensures more perfect development of the insect. ~Observe.~--At what part of the cocoon the moth makes an opening; the slow spreading and strengthening of the wings; the size and coloration of the moth; the feathery feelers; the position of the wings and sucking mouth parts when at rest. Require the pupils to make drawings of the cocoon, larva, and adult. The promothea moth, whose cocoons are common on lilac bushes, may be studied in the same way as the emperor. Reference.--Silcox and Stevenson: _Modern Nature Study_ DRAGON-FLY The larvæ of this insect may be obtained in May or June by scraping leaves, weeds, and mud from the bottom of ponds and allowing the mud and water to settle in a pail or tub. The larvæ may be distinguished from other aquatic creatures by the long insect-like body, three pairs of legs, and the "mask"--a flap with pincers at the end. This mask can be turned under the head and body when not in use, or it can be projected in front of the larva for catching prey. At the rear end are three tubes, which fit together to form the breathing tube. The pupils should observe the above features, and also the movements, seizing of prey, breathing, moulting, semi-resting or pupa stage, at the close of which the pupa climbs up a reed or stalk of grass and bursts the skin from which the adult emerges. The pupils should put into the aquarium various kinds of insects and decide what foods are preferred by the larva and the adult. ~Observe.~--The size, length of body, movements in flight, lace-like wings, and insect-killing habits of the dragon-fly. Should dragon-flies be protected? Give reasons. Are all dragon-flies of the same size, build, and colour? At what time of year are dragon-flies most numerous? ~Reference.~--Silcox and Stevenson: _Modern Nature Study_. OTHER CONSPICUOUS INSECTS The potato-beetle, giant water-bug, eastern swallow-tail butterfly, and promothea moth are insects suitable as types to be studied by the pupils of Form I. The giant water-bug is the large, broad, grayish-brown insect that is found on the sidewalks in May and June mornings. (For information on the eastern swallow-tail and promothea see Metamorphosis, in Butterfly and Moth Collections.) BIRDS Bird studies for Form I should be limited to observations made directly upon a few common birds, such as the robin, house-sparrow (English), song-sparrow, flicker, house-wren, crow, bronzed grackle, and meadow-lark. These are easily reached by the pupils of every rural and village school, and the purpose of the lessons should be to teach the pupils to recognize these birds, and by making use of child interest in living active creatures, to develop their interest in birds. THE ROBIN FIELD EXERCISES I Observe the robins and find out the following things: 1. Are all robins of the same colour? If not of the same colour, what difference do you note? 2. Does the bird run or hop? Imitate its movements. 3. Listen to its song. Is it sweet or harsh? Is it loud or low? Is it cheerful or gloomy? 4. Watch the robin as it moves along the grass and learn how it finds out where the worms are. _To the teacher._--The pupils should be given a few days in which to find out answers to these questions, and at the end of that time the answers should be discussed in the class. Male robins have more pronounced colours than female robins. The beak is yellower, the breast is brighter, the back and the top of the head are darker. Robins both run and hop. The sense of sight of the robin is very acute, but its sense of hearing is even more keen. The bird may be observed turning its head to one side to listen for the sound of a worm which is still inside its burrow. II A second set of exercises may now be assigned which will demand a more detailed study of the bird, namely, a study of the size, colour, form of body, manner of flight, and length of beak. III THE NEST, EGGS, AND YOUNG 1. Find out various places in which robins build their nests. In what ways are these places all alike? Examine the materials of the nest and find out why the nests are built in the kind of places in which they are found. 2. Describe the eggs. 3. What kinds of food do the parent birds bring to the young? Does the father bird aid in bringing food to the young? _To the teacher._--The nests are found in well-sheltered parts of apple trees and evergreens, in sheds, under ledges of roofs, and in other sheltered places. The nests, since they are composed largely of mud and grass, would easily be washed away if exposed to rain storms. The food brought to the young consists of worms and insect larvæ, and the father bird is very industrious in helping to take care of his family. It is the father bird that sings, and the mother bird devotes all her energies to working and scolding. THE SONG-SPARROW FIELD EXERCISES In early March, when the streams are just beginning to break from underneath the ice and spots of ground peep here and there through the snow, assign to the pupils an exercise such as the following: Watch for a small, gray-brown bird which perches near the top of a bush, or small tree, and sings the "Tea-kettle Song". Try to interpret the song in the words: "Maids! Maids! Maids! Put on the tea-kettle, tea-kettle, tea-kettle, tea-kettle, tea-kettle-ettle." Is the song bright and cheerful or dull and gloomy? Does the bird sing this song often? Approach close to the bird. Are there any stripes or spots on its breast or head? Describe the flight of the bird from its perch, when it is disturbed. _To the teacher._--It is possible for the pupils to distinguish the song-sparrow by means of the above exercises. It is one of the first birds to return in the spring, and, as it is a lusty singer, it will attract the attention of all who are looking for birds. The dark brown spot in the centre of the breast is a distinguishing mark, and the more observant will find the three ashy-gray stripes on its head and the dark line through the eye. When disturbed, it does not rise into the air, but flies downward and disappears with a swish of its tail. The nest is usually built on the ground or in a low bush or tree. It is composed of grass, fine roots, or weed stems, and lined with fine grass or hair. The eggs are usually four or five, but sometimes there are as many as seven. They are white with a greenish-blue tint and are closely spotted with brown. CLASS-ROOM LESSON Discuss with the pupils the observations that they have made on the field exercises. Generalize as to the similarity of the places in which the pupils have seen the sparrow singing, and as to the times of day in which the bird sings. Teach the marks of identification which some have discovered, using for this purpose pictures of the bird or black-board drawings; and encourage those who have not yet seen the song-sparrow to try again and to secure the assistance of those who have succeeded. Compare the size and form of the song-sparrow with that of the house-sparrow (English). Tell the pupils the great value of the bird in killing cutworms, plant-lice, caterpillars, ground-beetles, grasshoppers, flies, and other insects. It also helps to prevent the spread of weeds by eating thousands of seeds of noxious weeds. Assign the pupils some other things to discover, as for example: Through how many months of the summer does the bird sing? Find the nest. Why is it hard to find? Describe the eggs, as to size, colour, and number. Do not disturb the nest and do not visit it very often. _To the teacher._--Base lessons in bird study upon the English sparrow, flicker, wren, and meadow-lark. THE SHEEP PROBLEMS FOR FIELD WORK How do sheep find one another when they have become separated? How old are the lambs before they can keep up with the old sheep when running? What fits the lamb for running so well? Watch the lambs when they are playing, and find out whether they play: 1. I'm the king of the castle. 2. Follow the leader. Find out by watching a flock of sheep what is meant by "Men follow one another like a flock of sheep". Describe how sheep move when they are going very fast. Why should sheep be kept in a well-ventilated building that protects them from snow and rain but is not very warm? _To the teacher._--Each movement, habit, and instinct implied in this exercise is explained by the life of the wild sheep. Their natural home is in the mountain, and their swift movement is that of bounding from rock to rock as they follow the strongest and boldest (their leader) to a place of safety. The legs of the lamb grow rapidly, beyond all proportion to the rate of growth of the body, so that within two weeks after birth the young lamb is almost as strong of limb and fleet of foot as its mother. In their games the lambs are fitting themselves for their place in the flock, and these games very much resemble those named in the exercise. CHAPTER VI FORM II AUTUMN BULB PLANTING OUT-OF-DOORS Tulips and daffodils (narcissus) are the most suitable bulbs for out-of-door planting. The best varieties for outdoor culture are usually designated in catalogues. Bulbs should not be planted in individual plots, but in borders and ornamental beds. The latter should not be placed in the centre of a lawn, as is frequently done. Bulbs should be planted before the last of October. BEDS FOR GROWING BULBS To make a bulb bed, throw out the top soil to a depth of eight or nine inches, put about three inches of well-rotted stable manure in the bottom, and cover it with about three inches of the soil which was thrown out. Rake the plot level and then place the bulbs about eight inches apart on the top of the soil, arranging them in any design chosen. Cover them with the rest of the soil and rake it level. There will be about five inches of soil over the bulbs. When a solid crust has formed over the bed, put on a covering of leaves, straw, or branches of evergreens, and some pieces of boards to hold them in place. This covering does not protect the bulbs from freezing, but prevents too rapid thawing out in the spring. This covering should remain until the tips of the bulbs are showing above ground, when it should be removed. Ordinarily the bulbs may be left a second year before digging up. They should then be re-set or replaced with new ones, and the bed made and fertilized as before. In clay soil the bulbs should not be set quite so deep as in sandy soil, and the bulbs have better drainage about their roots if a handful of sand is placed under each bulb in planting. Crocus bulbs may be planted in clumps anywhere about the grounds or borders by simply making a small hole about five inches deep, dropping the bulb in, and covering it. Lily of the valley grows best in partial shade in some unfrequented corner. PLANTING OF BULBS INDOORS Read again the instructions given under this heading in Form I work, regarding soil, planting, and care. The Chinese sacred lily and trumpet narcissus may be chosen for the pupils of this Form. The narcissus, also called daffodil, may be held back until early spring if kept in a cool, dark cellar, but the Chinese sacred lily, which is also a variety of narcissus, comes into bloom from four to six weeks after planting. It is usually grown in water in a bowl of suitable size. Place a few pieces of charcoal in the bottom of the bowl, set the bulb upon them, and pack coloured stones and shells around it as a support. Keep the bowl about two thirds full of water and set it in a warm, sunny place. It does not need to be set in the dark, as is the case with other bulbs. These may also be grown in soil in the same way as other varieties of narcissus. When blooming is over, the bulbs may be thrown away, as they cannot be used again. GARDEN WORK (See Autumn work for Form I.) The pupils in Form II should be given more responsibility with reference to the care and management of their garden plots. If they have had a couple of years in gardening while in Form I, they will have gained sufficient knowledge as to the needs of plants and sufficient practice in garden craft to do a certain amount of work quite independently. The boys of Form II are able, with suitable garden tools, to do all the work needed in the management of their own plots and may even be allowed to do some of the harder work for the girls of their Form. SEED SELECTION Besides the usual work of weeding, cultivating, and harvesting of their crops, the pupils should undertake some work in seed selection. This work not only results in the improvement of the plants grown from year to year, but also helps to train the pupils in painstaking observation and the discerning of minute points of excellence. The ambition to produce, by careful selection and thorough cultivation, a grain or flower better than has been, is aroused, and, as the pupil's interest increases, his love for the art increases and his efforts meet with greater success. The teacher should aim from the first to use only the best available seed even if the cost be greater. He should send for a number of catalogues and carefully choose those varieties of seeds that possess evident merit for the purpose intended. In the case of flowers, the pupils should be asked to decide what individual plants showed greatest excellence, and these should be marked, and the seed from them preserved for next season's planting. When the flower is in full bloom, a small string tag should be tied to the flower stem (string tags can be got from a local merchant). On this tag should be written in lead-pencil the name of the species, the shade, and date of flowering. These flowers should be left to ripen thoroughly, and then the seed picked and sealed up in small envelopes, which the pupils should make as part of their manual training work. The date on the tag should be transferred to the seed envelope. STORING SEEDS All the envelopes should be collected, placed in a mouse-proof box, and stored in a cool, dry place until time to plant in the spring. Small bottles are excellent for holding seed and safer than envelopes. If such selection is carried on systematically, it will result in an increase of yield and of quality not to be equalled by even the best seed that the markets have to offer. Thus the school garden may become the centre of interest for the community. Seeds of good varieties can be distributed to the ratepayers, and the standard of gardening and horticulture raised. Here, as elsewhere, much--almost everything--depends upon the teacher's interest and ability to lead as well as to instruct. HARVESTING AND STORING OF GARDEN CROPS As soon as the vegetables reach their best stage of development, they should be taken from the garden by the owner. All dead plants and refuse should be removed and covered up in a compost heap. The boys of this Form should also assist in doing part of the general work of the school garden. They might take up from the garden border such tender plants as dahlias, gladioli, and Canna lilies. These should be dried off and stored in a cool, dry cellar. If the cellar be warm, it is necessary to cover the bulbs with garden soil to prevent their drying out too much. CLASS-ROOM LESSON The pupils are led, through conversation, to state their experiences and observations. The teacher assists them in interpreting their observations and organizing their knowledge and stimulates them to thoughtful search for further information. Discuss with the pupils such questions as: What are people busy doing on their farms and in their gardens at this time of year? Why do they harvest and store the wheat, oats, corn, potatoes, and apples, etc.? Are there any countries in which people do not need to gather in the grains, vegetables, and fruits? The discussion of these questions will direct their thought to the need of storing sufficient food for animals and for man to last through the winter, when these things do not grow. They must be gathered to protect them from destruction by storms of wind and rain and the severe frosts of winter. People who live in very warm countries find foods growing all the year round, and they do not need to prepare for winter, but these people are always lazy and unprogressive. Discuss the means taken to protect the various crops, as follows: Why can grain be kept in barns or granaries or in stacks? Why can apples, turnips, and potatoes not be kept in the same way as grains? What are the conditions that are best suited for keeping the latter products? Name some kinds of crops that cannot be kept in any of the ways already discussed. Why can they not be kept in these ways? These discussions will develop the idea of the necessity of keeping apples, potatoes, and turnips, in cellars, root-houses, and pits, where they cannot freeze, but where they are kept at uniformly low temperatures which are as close as possible to their freezing points. The air must not be too dry, as dryness causes them to shrivel up. In dry cellars they should be covered with fine soil. Very delicate fruits, such as cherries, grapes, peaches, plums, strawberries, etc., can only be kept for a length of time by preserving or canning them. Correlate with lessons in Household Management on preserving and canning. FALL CULTIVATION When the garden has been finally cleaned out, the plot should be spaded up and left without raking. Clay soil especially is much improved in physical qualities by thus being exposed to the air and frost. All garden tools should receive a special cleaning up before storing for winter. GARDEN STUDIES The observational studies suggested under this head for Form I will be followed also in Form II. The pupils of Form II will be expected to make more critical observations in connection not only with the plants growing in their own individual plots, but also with those plants which other pupils have been growing. They should give some attention also to the plants in the perennial flower border. GARDEN RECORDS. In this Form the pupils should begin to make garden records on such points as the following: 1. Description of the plant--size, habit of growth, kind of leaves and their arrangement, date of flowering, form, size and colouring of the flowers, points of merit or the reverse, description of the seed and how scattered, how disposed of, and the value. 2. The work done in the garden from day to day, with dates. 3. The effect of rain, drought, or other weather conditions on the growth of the plants. 4. What insects were seen visiting the flowers and what they were doing--whether beneficial or harmful. 5. What birds or other animals were found frequenting the garden. (See Animal Studies, pp. 30, 96, 217.) 6. What plants suffered from earliest frosts; what from subsequent frosts; what ones proved to be most hardy, etc. 7. What plants the pupils like most in the garden, and what ones seem to suit the soil and weather conditions best. The pupils in this Form, by direct observation, should come to appreciate the development of the fruit and seed from the flower. Their work in seed selection, based upon the excellence of the flower, helps to ensure this line of observation. CORRELATIONS Art: Drawing of leaves, flowers, and vegetables, in colour when possible. Arithmetic: Calculations as to dimensions, number of plants, number of flowers on a plant and seeds in a flower, value of products of flowers and vegetables. Cost of seeds, fertilizer, and labour, gross and net proceeds. Statement showing the above. Composition: General connected account or story of the work done and the things learned during the season, as taken from the garden diary and from memory. Exercises in writing and spelling, as suitable seat work. Geography: Weather observations, as related to the garden work and to plant growth. Comparison of the soil of the garden with other samples from the district, as to composition and origin. Direction, as related to the paths or walks in the garden. Map drawing: Plans of plots and of whole garden and grounds, represented on sand-table, paper, or black-board. Map drawing on a horizontal surface is best for the first year or two. The products of the garden, as compared with home products, as food supplies for man and beast. Manual Training: Making of seed envelopes and boxes, modelling in clay of fruits and vegetables. CLIMBING PLANTS Observe particularly the sweet-pea and morning-glory. Consider the following points: 1. Advantages gained by climbing, such as securing of more light, production of many leaves and flowers, and not so much stem. 2. Method of climbing--sweet-pea by tendrils that wind around the support; morning-glory by twining its rough stem closely around its support. Do all morning-glory vines twine in the same direction? Find other vines that climb. Examine their modes of climbing. 3. Time of flowering and notes on how to plant. Make drawings of the leaves and blossoms. TREES (See type lesson on trees under Form I.) In this Form it is better to follow closely the development of one or two selected trees in school or on the home grounds than to attempt to observe many different species. Allow the pupils to choose their own trees for study and, if possible, have them select one at home and another near the school or on the way to school. The following points might receive attention: The name of the species, whence obtained and by whom planted if known; its approximate height, size, and age; its location, and the nature of the soil; its general shape, and whether or not influenced at present or at some time in the past by proximity to other trees; description and arrangement of its branches, leaves, and buds, its bark, flowers, and fruit; time of leafing out and blossoming; colouring and falling of leaves and ripening of seeds; the amount of growth for the year compared with that of previous years as shown by the younger branches; qualities of beauty and usefulness of the tree. Drawing exercises. At least two visits should be made to the woods during the autumn months, one when the leaves of the trees begin to colour and another when the leaves have fallen. Consider the preparation made for winter in the woods and fields, the use of dead leaves in the woods as a protection to forest vegetation and as soil-making material. Bring back samples of leaves and of leaf mould or humus for class-room observation. Note the effect of frost in hastening the falling of leaves--frost does not give the brilliant hues to leaves, as many people think. Consider the relationship of the forest trees to animal life. STORING OF TREE SEEDS Make a collection of nuts and other tree seeds, some of which should be put in the school collection and the rest planted in the garden or stored away for spring planting. The seeds of evergreens should be kept dry and cold, but other seeds, as a rule, are best packed in a box of slightly moist sand set in a cold place or buried in the ground. A FLOWER TYPE: NASTURTIUM I Teacher and pupils visit the nasturtium bed, where the flowers stand up boldly, surrounded by the shield-shaped leaves. A search for the young flower buds and for the very old flowers leads to the discovery that these are snugly sheltered under the shields. The greenish-yellow calyx, which is closely wrapped around the bud, is next examined. Its name is given, and its use as a protector is discussed. The strong seed cases are opened and the seeds are discovered. The pupils are instructed to watch the insects that visit the bright flowers. Name the insects. Describe their movements. Catch a few and find the yellow powder on their furry little bodies and legs. II Each member of the class brings a flower to the school-room. The varieties of colours of the flowers are discussed. The cave-like form of each flower is noted. The velvety feeling of the corolla and the delicate perfume are likewise sensed by the pupils. The pupils nip off the point of the cave and taste the nectar (honey), and thus learn why the insects visit the flowers. They next trace the course of the coloured lines on the corolla and find that they all point into the cave. Continuing their explorations of the mouth of the cave, the pupils will discover the little boxes containing the yellow powder that the flower dusts upon the insects. The names _pollen_ and _pollen boxes_ are given. The fringe on the edges of the leaves of the corolla for the purpose of preventing the insects stealing into the cave without receiving their baptism of pollen, is discovered. The teacher should, at this point, give a brief explanation of the valuable work done by the insects in carrying pollen to cause seeds to grow in the next flower that the insect visits. The position of the tiny brush (stigma, but do not give this name) held up by the seed case for rubbing the pollen off the insect, should also be observed. ~Summary.~--Name and point out the parts of the flower (calyx, corolla, pollen boxes, seed cases). What useful work do insects do for the flower? What reward do they receive for their work? What advertisements do the flowers put out for attracting themselves? (Bright colours, sweet perfumes, and honey) Flowers suitable for lessons in Form II are nasturtium, larkspur, snap-dragon, morning-glory, and sweet-pea. NOTE.--Botanical names should be reduced to a minimum. SOIL STUDIES (See _Soils_ by Fletcher.) Soil should have a place in a Nature Study Course because: 1. It is so closely related to life. 2. It lends itself so admirably to the experimental method. 3. It is so liable to be overlooked and considered as common and valueless. KINDS OF SOIL _Gravel_ is composed of small, rounded stones of various colours, sizes, and shapes. Occurs in beds, generally mixed with sand. Get a sample and examine the constituents. Lead the pupils to see that the pebbles are the result of the breaking up of larger rocks. What has made the corners smooth and rounded? What use is made of gravel? Have the pupils find some gravelly land. _Sand_ is composed of small angular pieces of hard rock. Have a few samples from different places brought to school, note fineness and colours, examine with a lens and note resemblance to pieces of broken stone. Draw a magnet through the sand and note black particles adhering, showing presence of iron in some form. Show the hardness by rubbing against the surface of a piece of glass. Sand is used for mortar, concrete, and glass. The chief sand-forming rocks are quartz and granite. Show pupils how to recognize these. Examine a sample of sand under a lens. _Clay._ Note colour and odour of fresh sample. Dry and pulverize and note extreme fineness of the particles by rubbing between the fingers (an ounce of clay contains about four and one half million particles). Clay is made from crushed rocks, chiefly feldspars. Mix clay with a little water and note sticky character. Compare with sand in this respect. Which makes the best road in wet weather, gravel, sand, or clay? Note how hard the clay bakes after being moistened. Uses of clay--pottery, bricks, tile. Pupils should visit a brick- or tile-yard and watch the process of manufacture. In many parts of the world there are beds of clay of extreme fineness and whiteness, from which beautiful china is made. _Humus_ is decayed vegetable matter. Pupils should gather soil from the forest, bog, or marsh. Note dark colour. Examine carefully and see what you can find in it that is not in sand or clay. Most of our farm land consists of these four soils mixed in various proportions, and it gets its name from the one that preponderates. Thus we have our sandy, gravelly, or clay _loams_. Humus is likely to be present in all fields, because vegetable matter grows, to some extent, everywhere; but freshly broken land, reclaimed swamps, and prairie lands are likely to be especially well supplied. The great value of humus in the soil will appear in later studies. ANIMAL STUDIES BIRD MIGRATION (Consult _Bird Life_ by Frank M. Chapman, and _Bird Studies_ by G. A. Cornish.) In the autumn, direct attention to the flight of wild ducks and geese and to the gathering into flocks of robins, crows, bronze grackles, blue herons, sparrows, and other birds in preparation for migration. Discuss with the pupils the reasons for migration, namely, scarcity of food, the cold, the snow. In the spring, the return is stimulated by the nesting instinct. Note how the birds are guided--some, for example the ducks and geese, by their leaders, while others have no guides but their instincts. In winter, require the pupils to observe the kinds of birds that are to be seen in the gardens, fields, orchards, and woods, having them note the scarcity of birds and the absence of many forms that are with us in the summer. CORRELATIONS Geography: By pointing out on the map the countries into which the birds go, namely, Central America, Brazil, etc. Reading and literature: By interpreting Where did you spend the dreary winter? In a green and sunny land, By the warm sea-breezes fanned, Where orange trees with fruit are bent, There the dreary time I've spent. COMMON WILD ANIMALS GENERAL METHOD FOR FIELD WORK The best method for studying wild animals is to assign to each pupil some animal as his particular subject of study. Begin by finding out from the pupils the wild animals that each one knows to be near his home, and assign to each pupil a number of problems on the animal which is most convenient for him to study. In some cases, only one pupil will be studying a particular kind of animal, while in other cases several pupils may be studying the same kind of animal. The latter method has the advantage of giving opportunity for comparison of results. Differences should serve as stimuli to more careful observation, in order to verify or disprove previous conclusions. The observations and inferences, together with drawings illustrating the animals, their homes, etc., are recorded in the Nature Study note-books. These are discussed in the class, verified or corrected, and supplemented by descriptions of lives and habits of the animals from nature writers or naturalists, such as Charles G. D. Roberts, Ernest Thompson-Seton, etc. When pupils become interested in this form of study, they become nature students in the true meaning of the term. The pupil is brought into contact with the animal in its natural environment and, under these conditions, the natural habits, interests, and activities of the wild creatures are more likely to appeal to the sympathy of child nature than under any other method of study. The method has also the advantage of being one of original discovery, and consequently it trains in self-reliance and independence of thought. Finally, since close and careful observation is necessary, the child learns that it is unwise to alarm the animal, and thus a better relationship between child life and animal life is fostered. It may be objected that this method is slow and that little is accomplished. This may be true from the view-point of matter learned, but from the view-point of child training more can be accomplished from the study of a single living animal than from the study of a score of pictures or stuffed skins. A second method that is recommended is the study of tame animals. By conversations with the boys of the school the teacher will find what tame squirrels, ground-hogs, raccoons, foxes, and other animals are available for class-room work. The possessors of these animals are usually quite willing to bring them to school for the class to study. The movements, habits, food, and other topics, may be studied by direct observations guided by the teacher's questions or problems. A third method and, unfortunately, the one which is in most general use, is the study of animals by means of stuffed specimens and pictures, supplemented by descriptions and stories by the teacher. These lessons may be called information lessons, but they are not worthy of the name Nature Study. Indeed, if conditions are such that it is the only method available for animal study, it is advised that the time be spent on other branches of the subject; but if living animals are made the basis of study, stuffed specimens may be found useful for identification and for confirming observations on minute structural features, colour, etc. THE WOOD-CHUCK The problems outlined below are intended to illustrate the plan of study suggested in the first general method. They are assigned to a boy who has discovered a ground-hog burrow, in order to direct him in his observations on the animal. What is the kind of soil dug out in making the burrow? Why is this soil suitable for the burrow? What size of stones are dug out in burrowing? Are there more entrances than one? By slowly approaching the animal, find out how close it will permit you to come. At what times of day does the ground-hog come out? Give reasons for its coming out at these times rather than at mid-day. Upon what does the animal feed? Describe the colour of the animal and find out any advantages in this colour. Observe the following actions: running, hiding, keeping sentry, and scouting. Do more wood-chucks than one live in one burrow? When do the young wood-chucks first come out of the burrow? Describe their size, colour, and habits. Are wood-chucks ever seen during the winter? Do they use the same burrow year after year? Describe the sounds made by the animal. What injury does the animal cause to the fields? Describe the fur, teeth, and claws, and show their relation to the animal's habits of life. Dig out a burrow and draw a plan of it. Make pictures showing the various attitudes of the animal. THE CHIPMUNK FIELD EXERCISES Describe the size, colour, shape, length of tail, and movements of the chipmunk. Compare with the red squirrel. Have all chipmunks the same number of stripes? Discover its home; method of carrying grain, nuts, or other foods; whether it is found most commonly on the ground, in trees, or among logs and stones. Try to tame it by placing food where it can reach it and, finally, try to have it feed from your hand. Find out why there is no loose soil around the entrance to its burrow, whether more families than one live in one burrow, whether the chipmunk comes out during winter, or how early in the spring. Learn to distinguish the sounds of the animal, as expressing alarm, surprise, anger, playfulness. _To the teacher._--Chipmunks carry grain, etc., in their cheeks. Frequently these are so full that they must be emptied to permit them to enter their burrows. It is not uncommon for several to spend the winter in the same burrow, having a common storehouse connected by passages to the main burrow. These little animals are easily tamed and soon learn to take food from the hand. They are not hibernating animals, for they store food for winter, and though they are not asleep all winter, yet they rarely come out of their burrows while there is snow on the ground. EASTERN SWALLOW-TAIL BUTTERFLY No butterfly is more suitable for study by the Junior Forms than the Eastern Swallow-tail. It is one of the most beautiful and attractive of our butterflies and lays its eggs so accommodatingly on every carrot or parsnip bed that it gives ample opportunity for observation. If possible, have the pupils observe the insect in the act of placing the eggs, one here and one there, on the under surface of the leaves of the plants, noting the busy movements; discuss the advantage of scattering the eggs, and also that of placing them on the under surface of the leaves. If the egg placing cannot be observed, there will be little difficulty in finding the large yellow and green larva with a head shaped like that of a miniature sea-horse. If the larva itself is not easily found, the leaves stripped bare of green blade and the droppings on the ground will reveal its presence. Why was it difficult to see such a large, and now that it is seen, conspicuous object? Lead the pupils to notice that the yellow and green bands harmonize in colour with the green leaves and alternate streaks of golden sunlight. Does the larva feed by biting or by sucking? How many legs has the larva? Cover the plant and larva with a paper bag, or inverted bottle, or a lamp chimney with a gauze top until the larva is full grown; or place the larva in a vivarium, feed it on carrot leaves, and observe its growth. When full grown, the larva builds for itself a snail-shaped, fairly firm case, fastened by a slender girdle of silk to a piece of wood or other support. Keep this over winter, and in March, or early April, the black-and-blue-and-gold insect emerges. Observe the movements of the wings in flight, the long tube with which it sucks honey from flowers, the three pairs of legs, the position of the wings when at rest; compare the structure with that of the larva. Make drawings of the butterfly and paint its colours. CHAPTER VII FORM II WINTER CARE OF PLANTS IN THE HOME The care of flowering bulbs, which was begun in Form I, will be continued in Form II. The growing of new plants from cuttings will now be taken up. In those schools which are kept continuously heated, potted plants may be kept throughout the year. The pupils will come to appreciate the plants' needs and learn how to meet them in the supply of good soil, water, and sunlight. The following points should be observed: 1. Good potting soil can be made by building up alternating layers of sods and stable manure and allowing this compost to stand until thoroughly rotted. A little sharp sand mixed with this forms an excellent soil for most house plants. 2. Thorough watering twice a week is better than adding a little water every day. 3. The leaves should be showered with water once a week to free them from dust. 4. An ounce of whale-oil soap dissolved in a quart of water may be used to destroy plant-lice. Common soap-suds may also be used for this purpose, but care should be taken to rinse the plants in clean water after using a soap wash. 5. Most plants need some direct sunlight every day if possible, although most of the ferns grow without it. 6. Plants usually need re-potting once a year. Many kinds may be set out-of-doors in flower beds in May and left until September, when they may be taken up and placed in pots, or cuttings may be made from them for potting. 7. A flower exhibition at the school once or twice a year, or at a local exhibition, adds to the interest. 8. The pupils should report to the teacher, from time to time, the progress of their plants and make many drawings showing their development. TREES In November or December make a study of Canadian evergreens, choosing spruce, balsam, and cedar if available. The pupils should learn to distinguish the different species by an examination of the leaves, buds, arrangement of branches, bark, seeds, and cones. The age of young trees can be determined by noting the successive whorls of branches. In this way also the age of the leaves may be determined. On some trees the leaves persist for seven or eight years. Evergreens are frequently used as Christmas trees and their branches for house decorations. On which species do the leaves persist longest? How do they compare with the pines? The leaves are always as old as the wood upon which they grow. Have the pupils notice how the small leaves and horizontal branches resist the clinging of snow in winter. Each branch bends down enough to cause the snow to slide off on to the one next below, and so on, until it reaches the ground. The conical shape of the tree also facilitates this action of dislodging the snow. They will also notice that these trees are well adapted to withstand wind, as the top part, which is most exposed to the wind, is much smaller and more pliable than the part next the bottom. The gum, or resinous covering, of the buds protects them from injury by rain or snow. Some kinds of pine, such as the pitch pine, have a great abundance of gum and turpentine. Resin and pine tar are made chiefly from this species. Heat a piece of pine wood--a knot or root is best. The gum will be seen oozing out of the wood. Pine torches were much used in the early days of settlement in Canada. Examine the gum "blisters" in the bark of the balsam tree. From this source the "Canada Balsam" gum of commerce is taken. The gum and resin in the wood and bark help to preserve the wood from decay. COLLECTION OF WOOD SPECIMENS During the winter months the boys may prepare specimens of wood for the school collection. These specimens should be cut green and dried. They should be uniform in length--not more than six inches--and should show the bark at one side. The side showing the bark should be two inches wide at most, six inches long, and running in a V-shaped, radial section toward the pith. A tangential section also shows well the annual layers. A piece of slab as cut lengthwise off a round stick is tangential. Also visit wood-working factories for specimens of rare or foreign woods. In securing these specimens, care should be taken not to mutilate trees. RELATED READING Winter is nature's quiescent period. Continuous active observation out-of-doors among the plants of the forest and garden gives place for a time to indoor work and reflection. Pupils need time for reading and reflection, and no time is so opportune as the quiet winter season. During these months some time should be devoted to the reading of nature stories and extracts from magazines and books dealing with plant as well as animal life. Pupils should review their gardening experiences and discuss plans of improvement for the approaching spring and summer. Let them write letters to the Form II pupils of other schools where similar work has been carried on, giving some of their experiences in gardening and plant and animal studies. A certain Friday afternoon might be appointed for hearing the letters read which have been received in reply. Suitable short poems that have a direct bearing upon their outdoor studies should be read from time to time. Good pictures come in here also as an aid in helping the children to appreciate written descriptions. The first-hand observations made by the pupils will form a basis for the better and more appreciative interpretation of these literature selections. THE DOG CLASS-ROOM LESSON Use the conversation method, since this is an animal that is well known to all the pupils. By natural, easy conversation with the pupils, encourage them to tell what they know about the usefulness and the other qualities of their canine friends. The pupils know that some dogs are useful for hunting wild animals, others for driving or herding cattle and sheep, others for guarding their master's property, others for hauling sleighs and wagons, while others are of use as pets or playfellows. Discuss with the pupils the qualities that make the dog so generally useful to us. In this discussion, guide the thoughts of the pupils to the qualities of faithfulness, loyalty to his friends, and docility--few animals are so easily taught. Note his strength and swiftness--he can continue in a race until he catches almost any other animal. Note also his bravery--for he does not hesitate to attack an animal many times larger than himself. Short stories of the following type may be told, to illustrate the chief qualities of the dog: A dog was trained to guard any article that his master placed under his charge, and not to permit any one to touch it until his master gave his consent. One day, when returning from the mill, the master placed a sack of flour inside the gate for a neighbour who had asked him to do so, and then continued on his way without noticing that his dog had taken charge of the sack. All through the afternoon of that day and through the long, cold night that followed, the faithful animal remained at his post. When the owner of the sack came next morning to get it, the dog, although numb with cold and famished with hunger, would not permit him to take the flour. Nor could the stout-hearted creature be persuaded either by threats or by coaxing, until his master was brought, when, at his first word of command, the dog bounded joyfully toward him. Conclude the lesson by a short discussion of the proper care and treatment that should be given to dogs. The dog requires a fairly warm but dry kennel, with a soft bed of straw or rugs. The food should consist chiefly of porridge, milk, bread, biscuit, and a little meat. Only dogs that are running a great deal out of doors should be given much meat. The dog should be given bones to pick; picking bones is as good for a dog's teeth as a tooth-brush is for a boy's. OBSERVATION EXERCISES By making observations upon your dog at home, find answers to these problems: 1. How does a dog hold a bone while he is picking it, and how does he get the meat off the bone? 2. Examine the dog's feet and find out: (1) Why he does not slip while running. (2) What protects the soles of his feet from injury as he bounds over rough ground. 3. Which is the sharper, a dog's eye or his nose? Watch how he finds his master in a crowd or finds an object that you have hidden. CORRELATIONS Language: 1. Require oral or written reproduction of the stories used in illustration in the lesson on The Dog. 2. Require the pupils to relate incidents from dog life that have come within their own experiences. Art and Modelling: 1. A sleeping dog. 2. A dog waiting for his master. LESSONS INVOLVING COMPARISON It will be found helpful, both for increasing interest in the observations and for fixing the facts in memory, to study an animal by comparing its habits, qualities, and physical peculiarities with those of another animal which is somewhat similar. Where differences are discovered, explanations of the differences should be developed in such a way that a tendency may be cultivated for interpreting the adaptation of structure to use and of life habits to surrounding conditions. CAT AND DOG Compare the movement of a cat when approaching its prey with the movement of the dog when chasing a squirrel. Account for the difference. The natural habit of the cat is to hunt alone and rely upon stealth, while dogs hunt in packs and tire their prey by running and by terrifying noises. Other differences and their explanations, which the pupils should be led to discover are: The dog is a more useful animal to man than is the cat. The cat's body is longer and more slender, and this gives it greater suppleness in crawling and leaping. The cat's eye is larger and the pupil is especially large at night, to enable it to see. The cat's whiskers are longer; they help in guiding it at night. The cat's tongue is rougher; it uses it for cleaning bones. The pads on the cat's feet are softer, so that it can move more silently in stealing upon its prey. The cat's claws are sharper, because it uses them for seizing its prey, while the dog seizes its prey with its teeth. The dog is more faithful to its master because it is a more sociable animal. In its natural state every dog is faithful to the pack and to the leader; the cat is not a social animal, but is by nature solitary and independent. The dog's sense of smell is keener than that of the cat, but its sense of hearing is less acute. Account for these differences from the animals' habits of hunting. Why does the cat bring home living animals to her kittens, while the dog buries dead animals? The cat trains the kittens to approach by stealth and then to pounce on the right spot. Wild animals related to the dog bury the "kill" which is too large to be eaten at one meal. EXPERIMENTS FOR ASSISTING IN THE STUDY OF THE CAT 1. Gently scratch with a pin at some distance from where a cat is lying. What do the movements of the cat indicate? 2. Put a fish in water and watch a cat trying to get it. 3. Sprinkle water on a cat's fur and find out why she dislikes being wetted. 4. Attach a ball to a string and move it near a cat. Describe the movements, as stalking, springing, seizing, retreating. 5. Put some catnip in a room out of reach of the cat and observe the movements of the animal. Nearly all children make pets of the house cat, and although the cat is a domestic animal of thieving propensities and an enemy of birds, yet it would be unwise to teach the younger children any enmity toward her. The establishment of sympathy with animal life, the humanizing effect upon child nature of having a kitty for a playfellow, will offset many times over the amount of depredation of which she may be guilty. COMPARISON OF THE HORSE AND COW Assign problems for the pupils to solve by observations made upon the animals in the field or farmyard. 1. What features of build give to the horse greater speed than the cow? 2. Compare the movements of the heads of the horse and cow while cropping grass. Account for the difference. 3. How has nature fitted the cow and the horse respectively, for defence? 4. Which end of the body does the horse raise first when it is getting up? Which end of its body does the cow raise first? Account for the difference. _To the teacher._--The horse is the swifter and more graceful runner because the body is less bulky and the legs are longer and straighter. In cropping grass the cow pushes its nose forward and breaks the grass off, a process which is made necessary because the cow has no upper front teeth. The strong, sharp horns, short, powerful neck, and heavy shoulders are an efficient equipment for the cow's method of defence, while the long, strong legs and powerful hindquarters of the horse enable it to deal terrific blows with its hard hoofs. The horse rises upon its forelegs before raising the rear of its body, while the cow raises its hindquarters first. THE SQUIRREL FIELD EXERCISES ~Problems~: Is it true that squirrels have little roads along the ground? Does the squirrel come down a tree head foremost, or tail foremost? Are a squirrel's feet close together or wide apart when it is climbing? How many kinds of feeling can a squirrel express by its voice? How does a squirrel open a nut? Examine a squirrel's tracks in the snow; which foot-prints are in front? Try to gain the confidence of a squirrel by never chasing it and by placing some favourite food for it. CLASS-ROOM LESSON A tame squirrel is very desirable for concrete study. Describe the shape, size, and colour. Find out how the legs and feet are fitted for climbing and leaping. Compare the length of the tail with that of the body. Of what use is the tail in cold weather? Of what use is the tail in leaping? Examine the teeth and find out how they are fitted for opening nuts; gnawing wood. _To the teacher._--The legs of the squirrel are short so that it can press its body close to the tree when climbing. The claws are strong and sharp and the hindquarters are very strong, and are, in consequence, well fitted for leaping. The tail of the squirrel is very long and bushy and serves as a fur for keeping the squirrel's nose warm in winter. The tail is also used for balancing the body when the animal is leaping from bough to bough. The front teeth of the squirrel are very large and strong and are shaped like chisels. WINTER BIRDS In the class lesson on winter birds, take up the birds that the pupils have seen, such as chickadee, blue jay, quail, ruffed grouse, hairy woodpecker, downy woodpecker, great horned owl, house-sparrow, snow bunting (snow bird), pine grosbeak, snowy owl, and purple finch. The four latter are to be noted as winter visitors. Use pictures for illustrating these birds. The habits and winter food of the birds should also be described from the view-point of how these adapt the birds for spending the winter in a cold climate. Direct the children to look for grosbeaks in the pine and rowan trees, where they may be seen feeding on the seeds. The ruffed grouse (commonly called partridge) feeds on the buds of trees in winter; its legs and feet are thickly covered with feathers in winter but are bare in summer. FIELD EXERCISES Arouse the interest of the pupils by a conversation of about three minutes on birds that they have seen during the winter, and assign the following exercise: Take a walk through the orchards and woods on a bright winter day. What birds do you see? What are these birds doing? Are they found singly or in flocks? What bird sounds do you hear? CLASS-ROOM LESSON The method is conversational and based upon the observations made by the pupils during the field exercises. The discussion would involve the winter habits of some of the more common birds, as, for example, the ruffed grouse (commonly though incorrectly called the partridge). This bird takes shelter from the winter storms in the centre of a dense evergreen or burrows deep into a snow bank. The close covering of feathers upon its feet serves not only to keep the feet warm, but also as snow-shoes. In the evenings these birds may frequently be seen in the tops of such trees as maple, birch, cherry, and poplar, the buds of which form the greater part of their winter food. The snow bird, or snow bunting, is another bird commonly seen in winter. Flocks of these hardy little winter visitors frequent the roads and fields during winter. Its summer home is in the far north. Another visitor from the sub-arctic regions is the pine grosbeak, which is often mistaken for the robin, for these two birds are nearly equal in size. The carmine colour of the upper surface of the male grosbeak distinguishes it from the grays and blacks of the upper part of the robin. The grosbeak frequents the rowan trees. The bird sounds which attract attention during the winter are the cheerful notes of the chickadee, the bold clarion call of the blue jay, and the sharp tap, tap, tap, of the downy woodpecker. The downy woodpecker and the chickadee have snug winter homes within hollow trees, but, when the weather is favourable, they go about searching industriously for the eggs and larvæ of insects that infest forest and orchard trees. CORRELATIONS Literature: Do you know the chickadee, In his brownish ashen coat, With a cap so black and jaunty, And a black patch on his throat? Language: Write a story about the winter experiences of a downy woodpecker. Geography: Describe the summer home of the snow bird. ANIMALS OF THE ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS Pupils who have an opportunity to visit museums or zoological gardens will observe more intelligently if the visit is preceded by such a discussion in the class-room as will arouse their curiosity respecting the habits, movements, and adaptive features of the animals about to be studied. CLASS-ROOM LESSON Name the kinds of bears you have seen or have read about. What kind was the largest? Are all bears wholly flesh-eating animals? Find out what food the keepers give these animals. What features give to the bear his great strength? Observe the length of his "arms", teeth, claws. Does the bear climb a pole in the same way that a boy does? Read: Rogers. Wild Animals Every Child Should Know. McClelland, Goodchild, & Stewart. 50 cents. Thompson-Seton. Wild Animals I Have Known. Briggs. $1.50. Roberts. Children of the Wild. Macmillan. $1.35. CHAPTER VIII FORM II SPRING GARDEN WORK The pupils have now arrived at an age when they are able to do most of the work of preparing and planting their own plots. The seeds have been selected and placed in readiness for planting long before the ground is ready. The plans for the garden and the varieties to be sown in the different plots have likewise been arranged. Fertilizers, lines, tools, and labels are made ready for use. With such thorough preparation the making and planting of the garden becomes a pleasure and a delight to both teacher and pupils. The garden diary should begin as soon as the snow disappears from the garden and be continued until all the work is completed in the autumn, and the garden again blanketed in snow. The main points to be safeguarded are: 1. Thorough cultivation and fertilization. 2. The best available seed carefully planted. Guard against thick sowing and deep covering. 3. Frequent cultivation and careful thinning while the plants are quite small. 4. Vigilance in detecting the appearance of cutworms or other injurious insects and promptness in combating them. 5. Protection of the garden against injury from dogs, pigs, poultry, and English sparrows. 6. Failure of some plots, through the owner's absence from school for long periods. COMBATING GARDEN PESTS CUTWORMS In gardens where the soil is light or sandy, cutworms are most likely to be troublesome. Watch for them about the time that the plants are nicely above ground. They come up at night and cut the young plants off just above the ground. They are about an inch long, gray and brown, fat and greasy-looking. To protect the plants put one quarter of a pound of paris-green with twenty-five pounds of slightly moistened bran, using a little sugar in the water and stirring the paris-green into the bran very thoroughly. If too wet, add more dry bran. It should crumble through the fingers. Sprinkle a little of this mixture with the fingers along the row close to the plants. The cutworms eat this poisoned bran quite readily. Care must be exercised in using this poison lest poultry should get at it. On the other hand, poultry should not be allowed to get into the garden. Wrapping a piece of paper around the stem when transplanting young plants will help to save them from cutworms. ROOT MAGGOTS Root maggots of cabbage, radish, and onions are the larvæ of flies similar in appearance to house-flies but a little smaller. When the plants are young, the flies lay their white eggs on the stem close to the ground. When the eggs hatch, the larvæ crawl down under the ground and cause the plants to decay. The wilting of the leaves is the first sign of the trouble. Prevention is better than cure in this case. Dust some dry white hellebore along the rows of onions or radishes and around the cabbage plants; or, for radishes, make a decoction of insect powder (Pyrethrum), four ounces to one gallon of water, and pour around the root, using half a teacupful to each plant. FLEA-BEETLES The turnip flea-beetle quickly destroys young plants of the cruciferæ family by eating their leaves. Paris-green, one part to twenty parts of pulverized gypsum (land plaster) dusted on the plants while damp, helps to destroy these insects. _To the teacher._--When pupils who are absent find it impossible to give the necessary attention to their garden plots at school, they should turn them over to other pupils or to the teacher, who may at his own discretion use the produce for purposes of general garden revenue. SEED GERMINATION The seeds for the garden should be purchased quite early in the spring. As the planting of poor seed is often the cause of much disappointment, it is well to test the germinating power of the different varieties to be planted. The pupils of this Form should test especially those varieties which they have chosen. To do this, place about twenty-five seeds in a germinating dish, which may be made as follows: Take a deep plate, such as a soup plate, fill it about half full of moist sand, and spread over this a piece of moist cloth. Put the seeds upon this cloth and cover them with a second piece of damp cloth or moss. To prevent drying out invert over it another plate and set all in a warm dry place (about 70 to 80 degrees F.). After a few days count the number of seeds that have germinated. This will be a guide in planting as to how thick the seed should be sown. The pupils should watch the development of germinating grains, such as corn and beans, germinated in the same way as in the last exercise. The following points may be observed: 1. The first change noticed. (Swelling of the seed) 2. The appearance of a growing shoot and its direction. (Root) 3. The second shoot and its direction. (Stem) 4. The appearance of the first pair of leaves. 5. The appearance of root-hairs and rootlets. 6. What becomes of the main body of the seed. 7. How the second pair of leaves differs from the first pair. 8. Length of time required to produce the first pair of leaves. Pupils may be taught the conditions that are necessary for the germination of seeds by means of a few simple experiments which can be carried on in the school-room. 1. In February, plant a few seeds of the pea, or oat, or wheat, in a box of soil, and place the box outside the school window. 2. In April, plant a few seeds similar to those used in No. 1, in a box of perfectly dry soil, and set the box inside the school window. 3. Plant a few seeds similar to those used in No. 1, in a jar containing soil that is kept very wet, and set the jar in the school window. 4. Plant a few seeds, similar to those used in No. 1. in a box containing soil that is moist but not wet, and set the box in the school window. 5. Plant seeds as in No. 4, except that the box is kept in a dark cupboard. Compare the results of the above with reference to: 1. The number of seeds that germinate. 2. The growth and condition of the plants. Form conclusions with reference to: 1. The conditions that are required for seed germination. 2. The benefits of well-drained soil. Pupils make drawings showing the boxes and plants. PLANTS FOR INDIVIDUAL PLOTS The pupils of this Form should not attempt to grow more than two varieties of flowers and two of vegetables. Of flowers, mixed asters and Shirley poppy are to be recommended, the poppy being an early blooming flower and the aster late blooming. Carrots and radishes are desirable vegetables, as the carrot matures late and the radish early. Two or three crops of radishes may be grown on the same ground in one season. Besides these, a few others should be chosen for special study, such as the potato, onion, corn, and sunflower. STUDIES BASED ON OBSERVATIONS OF GROWING PLANTS Attention should be given to the growing habits of plants, the size and rate of development, the method of multiplying and propagation, and the part used for food. The potato is a tuber which is nothing more than the swollen end of an underground stem; the onion a bulb composed of the bases of thickened leaves; the corn an example of a jointed stem or grass having two kinds of flowers, the tassels being the staminate flowers and the cob with its silk the pistillate ones; the sunflower an example of a compound flower made up of many little flowers each of which produces a single seed. Observations should also be made upon the progress in germination of the nuts and other tree seeds collected in the fall. When the seeds fall from the elms and soft maples in the spring, some of them should be collected and planted in the forestry plot, or nursery. PLANTING AND CARE OF SWEET-PEAS 1. Sow as early as possible in spring. 2. Sow on well-drained land and never in the shade or near grass. Grass roots rob the sweet-pea roots of water. 3. Use a small amount of fertilizer--well-rotted manure spaded deeply into the soil. This is best done in the autumn. 4. Make the trench in the fall about five or six inches deep. 5. Plant in a trench in April from half an inch to an inch apart. 6. Cover from three inches to four inches deep. 7. Water thoroughly once or twice a week, and have the soil lower along the row than farther out, so as to hold the water. 8. Put a mulch of lawn clippings along the row on each side to prevent drying out. WILD FLOWERS Arrange an excursion to the woods when the spring flowers are in bloom. Keep a flower calendar, showing: 1. The date when a plant was first found in bloom 2. The name of the plant 3. Place where found 4. Name of the pupil who found it. When in the woods discuss the following points: 1. Why these wild flowers come into bloom so early in spring. They have a large supply of food stored up from the previous summer. 2. Dig down with a trowel or heavy knife and find this storehouse of food. It may be in the form of bulb, corm, or rhizome. 3. The blooming of the spring flowers in the woods before the leaves of the trees reach their full development, thus taking advantage of the sunlight. 4. Mark a few clumps or individual plants and visit them again after a month. Look for the growing fruit with its seeds. 5. The leaves of the hepatica seen at the time when the blossoms appear are leaves which grew the previous season. Dig up a plant and notice the new leaves starting. 6. The kind of soil each seems to grow best in and the amount of light it receives. 7. Have the pupils examine the flowers and leave them growing. They should gather a few for the school-room. 8. Have the pupils write a short account of their visit to the woods. Have them make drawings of the different flowers collected. Dig up a few specimens of wild flowers and transplant in a shady corner in the grounds or school garden. The following varieties are suggested for special observation and study: hepatica, violet, anemone, columbine, Indian turnip, marsh marigold. Teach one or two lessons on wild flowers, similar to the lessons illustrated for the nasturtium. WEEDS Pupils in this Form should learn to identify most of the weeds that are found in the garden plots and a few of those commonly found in fields and along roadsides. The large bulletin _Farm Weeds_, published by the Dominion Department of Agriculture, will be of great value in helping to identify the weeds and also in gaining useful information regarding them and the best means of eradicating them. The following species are recommended for special study during the season: mustard (such varieties as are found in the vicinity), Canada thistle, purslane, lamb's quarter, pink-rooted pigweed, and quack grass. The pupils should be familiar with the general appearance of the plant; its appearance when coming up in the spring; whether annual, biennial, or perennial; nature of the root, and whether hard to pull up; if hard to eradicate, why so; its rate of growth compared with the garden plants; the number of seeds produced by a single plant; how the seeds are scattered. THE APPLE TREE (When the buds are beginning to open) FIELD EXERCISE The pupils, during an excursion that is conducted by the teacher or while making individual observations, obtain answers to problems of the following type: What is the shape of the top of the apple tree? Are all apple trees of the same shape? What is the height of the trunk? Measure the girth of the trunk of the largest? Are the leaf buds and flower buds more numerous near the inside of the tree top or more numerous at the outer part of the top? _To the teacher._--When discussing the answers to the above problems, develop the conception of the convenience of the low stature of the tree for gathering the apples, of the wide-spreading branches for bearing a large crop, of the stoutness of the trunk for supporting the weight, and also of the position of the buds as adapting them for securing sunshine. CLASS-ROOM LESSON ON THE APPLE TREE ~Materials.~--Twigs bearing flower and leaf buds. These are gathered by the pupils from the apple trees that were studied during the field exercises. Each pupil finds on his twig the objects and markings, etc., as in the following outline: Describe the shape of the twig. Where were the apples that grew last year attached? Describe the positions of the buds on the twigs. Which buds are the larger, those at the end or those on the side of the twig? Describe the condition of the bud scales. Open the buds and find what they contain. Of what use are the bud scales? How many blossoms are in one bud? Of what use to the young leaves is the downy covering? FIELD EXERCISE FOLLOWING CLASS-ROOM LESSON (Just after the blossoms are fully open) What is the colour of the apple blossom? Find the little green cup on which the petals rest. Describe the cup. Find the other things that are on the rim of, or that are within, the cup. What are they? What insects visit the flowers? Does the cup fall off when the petals fall? Does the cup close up as soon as the petals fall? What does the green cup grow to be? _To the teacher._--Apple trees have somewhat round or pyramid-shaped tops, varying in detail with the variety of apple tree. The twigs are short and usually crooked. The fruit twigs are called spurs. The buds at the ends of the twigs and spurs are the largest and contain both leaves and blossoms, and there are usually several blossoms in each bud. The bud scales burst apart and drop off as the leaves and blossoms develop. The side buds produce leaves only. The petals and pollen boxes are borne on the rim of the green cup, and inside the cup are found the five tips of the seed cases. When the petals drop off, the rim of the cup remains spread out for a short time. This is the proper time for spraying, so that the cup may hold a drop of poison to kill the tiny worms which cause apples to be wormy. It is the green cup that grows and forms the flesh of the apple. Orchard trees suitable for lessons for Form II are apple, plum, pear, peach, and cherry. BIRD STUDY A valuable exercise in bird study, suitable for the pupils of Form II, is the study of a pair of birds and the history of their home through the entire season. A record, with dates, should be kept, and the following topics are suggested for observation: Where the nest is located, protection of the nest, part of building done by each bird; eggs, number, colour, size, time required for hatching; young birds, number, description, how fed and upon what foods, time required before ready to leave the nest; history for a time after leaving the nest. Birds suitable for study by the pupils of Form II are the crow, flicker, downy woodpecker, blue-bird, chipping-sparrow, phoebe, wren. Correlate with art, by requiring drawings and models of the nest and its surroundings, and with language, by having pupils write the history of the nest and family. THE TOAD FIELD EXERCISES Direct the pupils to watch for toads under the street lamps and on the lawns in the evenings, and to observe what they are doing. Find out, by turning over boards, logs of wood, stones, and old stumps, where toads spend the daytime. If there is a sandy beach near by, an interesting nature lesson is to trace a toad to its daytime retreat under a log or stone. Its wanderings and adventures during the night can be traced from the record that its trail makes in the sand. Are toads that live in light-coloured sand of the same colour as those that live in black clay? Of what value to the toad are these differences in colour? The pupils are thus led to see that although the toad is not a handsome animal, yet its rough, dark skin is of great value to it for concealment among the lumps of soil with which it harmonizes. Can a dog be induced to seize a toad? Will he seize it as readily a second time as he did the first? The secretion from the glands of the toad have a biting, acid effect on the dog's mouth. This secretion will not injure a person's hands unless the skin is broken, and even then it does not "cause warts". How many toads can you find on your lawn in one evening? How many in the vegetable garden? How many in the flower beds? Place a toad on loose soil among some weeds and observe how it proceeds to get out of sight. Is it true that a toad is attracted by music? Give reasons for your answer. CLASS-ROOM LESSON Secure a few living toads and keep them in a box covered with a pane of glass. Be sure to put moist soil and damp moss in the bottom of the box in which toads, frogs, newts, or snakes are kept. This enables these animals to live in comfort, and they soon become sufficiently accustomed to their surroundings to act in a normal way. ~Observation.~--By flicking in front of a toad a small feather or a bit of meat attached to a thread, the darting out of the tongue for catching prey on its adhesive surface may be observed. The children, by bringing slugs, caterpillars, grubs, and various insects for the toads, may learn what composes the food of the animal. It is to be observed that the toad does not snap at an object until it moves. DETAILED STUDY ~Observation.~--General shape; division into head, trunk, and limbs; size of head and mouth; position and structure of eyes and ears; difference in the size of the fore and hind limbs, and explanation of this difference by references to the use of the limbs; the hind foot, uses of the web; the glands on the surface of the body and their uses for protection. Why is a large mouth useful? How are the ears fitted for life in water? In conclusion, the teacher should make sure that the pupils appreciate the usefulness of the toad and also the beauty represented in its adaptations to its conditions of life. In these particulars the toad is a good illustration of the adage "Handsome is that handsome does". LIFE HISTORY OF THE TOAD In early spring look for the toads on the surface of the water in ponds. The music of the toads at this time of year has been described by one naturalist as "one of the sweetest sounds of nature". The eggs may be found in these ponds at this time. They are attached to long strings of jelly which entwine among grasses and other objects in the ponds. (Frogs' eggs are in masses of jelly, not in strings.) Place some of the eggs in a jar of water and set the jar in the window of the school-room. A great mass of eggs is too much to put in a jar, a few dozen eggs in a pint of water will be more likely to develop. The water in the jar should be changed twice a week. ~Observations.~--The light and dark areas of the eggs, the dark area gradually increasing in size; the increase in the length of the egg; the gradual change of the dark area into the general shape of a tadpole with head and tail, the first appearance of the gills, the separation from the jelly, the movement by means of the tail, the disappearance of the gills, the growth of the hind legs and, later, of the forelegs, and the disappearance of the tail. ~Questions and Observations.~--What is the use of the dark colour of the area from which the tadpole is formed? Explain the uses of the strings of jelly. Describe how the tadpole swims. Upon what does the young tadpole feed? What is the advantage of external gills at this stage in the tadpole's life? ~Later Observations.~--The disappearance of the gills, the budding out of the hind legs and, later, the forelegs. While the legs are growing out, the tail gradually becomes smaller, at the same time the shape changes to that of the adult toad with a broad body and large mouth and eyes. ~Questions.~--What movements has the toad which the tadpole did not have? What makes these movements possible? Why is the mouth of the toad better suited to its manner of life than the small mouth of the tadpole would be? Of what advantage to the tadpole was the smooth outline of its body, and why is the rougher outline of the toad's body better suited for the life of the latter? Why would gills be unsuitable for the life of the toad? _To the teacher._--From the dark area of the egg the tadpole develops, the dark colour absorbs the sunlight, and this causes growth. The jelly holds the eggs up so that the sun can reach them and it also keeps them from being swept away by the water. The tadpole is very small, and external gills are needed to keep it in very close contact with the water. The tail does not drop off, the substance in it is absorbed into the body of the growing toad to serve as nutriment. Since all the changes in the development of the toad from egg to adult form take place in about one month, this comparatively rapid development makes the life history of the toad particularly suitable for observation work. The development of the eggs of the frog or newt may be studied from preparations made in precisely the same way as those for the study of the development of the toad. If observations on the developments of two forms are carried on at one time, interesting comparisons can be made on such points as, shape and size of the eggs, time required for development, shapes and colours of the tadpoles, activity of the tadpoles, etc. THE EARTHWORM ~Time.~--May or June, in connection with gardening, when the working of the worms in the moist soil of the garden is quite noticeable. Outdoor studies may be assigned, as: Observe the loose soil at the entrance to the burrows. Insert a straw in the burrow and, following it, dig downward with a garden trowel and learn the nature of the earthworm's home. Are earthworms ever found out of their burrows during the day? If so, on what kind of days? Why do earthworms burrow deep in dry weather? Earthworms can breathe only when the surfaces of their bodies are in moist conditions. Go out at night with a lantern to where earthworms are known to have burrows, observe the worms stretched out with the rear ends of their bodies attached to the burrows, and note how quickly they draw back when they are touched. Do they draw back if the ground is jarred near them? Do they draw back when the light falls upon them? State the facts which are taught by the observations which were made on the above topics. CLASS-ROOM LESSON Put two or three earthworms into a jar of rich, damp soil, on top of which there is a layer of sand a quarter of an inch thick. Put bits of cabbage, onion, grass, and other plants on the surface and cover the jar with a glass slip or cardboard. After a few days, examine the jar, noting the number of burrows, the foods selected, the castings, the food dragged into the burrows. Pour water into the jar and observe the actions of the worms. Can an earthworm live in water? Place an earthworm on a moist plate or board and direct the pupils to study it, as follows: Distinguish the head from the rear end, the upper from the lower surface. Observe the means of living. To assist in the latter observation, stroke the worm from rear to head and find the four double rows of bristles. Why is it difficult to pull an earthworm out of its burrow? Find the mouth. Has the earthworm any eyes, ears, or nose? Place a pin in the path of a moving worm and try to explain why it turns aside before touching the obstacle. Test the sensitiveness to feeling. Why is it cruel to put an earthworm on a fishhook? From the soil castings found in the jar, infer the value of earthworms for enriching and pulverizing soil. (See "Soil Studies", p. 269.) REFERENCES Bailey and Coleman: _First Course in Biology._ Macmillan Co. $1.25. Crawford: _Guide to Nature Study._ The Copp, Clark Co. 90 cents. Kellogg: _Elementary Zoology._ Holt & Co. $1.35. THE AQUARIUM A large glass aquarium may be purchased from any School Supply Company at a cost of a few dollars, but a small globe-shaped aquarium such as is used for gold-fishes will be found suitable for school purposes. If it is not possible to secure either of these, a large glass jar, such as a battery jar or large fruit jar, will be found to answer quite well. To set up the aquarium, put into the jar about two inches of clean shore sand (sand from a sand pit, washed until the water comes away clear, will do). Secure from a pond some water-plants, place these in the jar with their roots covered with sand and secured in position by small stones. Pour in water until the jar is nearly full, taking care not to wash the roots out of place, and then put in a freshwater clam and a few water snails. These are scavengers, for the clam feeds upon organisms that float in the water, while the snails eat the green scum that grows on the glass. The other aquarium specimens may now be put in. One fish about three inches long to a gallon of water is about the right proportion. When there is a sufficient quantity of plant life to keep the water properly oxygenated and enough animal life to supply the carbon dioxide necessary to keep the plants growing well, the aquarium is said to be _balanced_. The balanced aquarium does not require that the water be changed more often than once in two months. Too much direct sunlight causes too rapid growth of green slime, hence the aquarium should not be set in a window. Close to a window through which the sun shines upon it for an hour or longer each day is the best position. Do not supply more food to the animals in the aquarium than they can eat up clean. Crayfish, perch, trout, and other freshwater fishes are destructive of insect larvæ and other aquarium specimens, hence care must be taken in selecting the specimens that are put together into an aquarium. Suitable animals for the aquarium: mosquito larvæ, dragon-fly larvæ, caddice-fly larvæ, crayfish, clam, water snails, tadpoles, fish, frog, turtle. AQUARIUM SPECIMENS MOSQUITO Time.--May or June. ~Questions and Observations.~--At what time of the year are mosquitoes most plentiful? In what localities are they most plentiful? Why are they most plentiful in these places? Are mosquitoes ever seen during fall or winter? How do you account for their rapid increase in number early in summer? How do mosquitoes find their victims? Observe the humming noise and try to discover how it is made. Watch a mosquito as it draws blood from your hand. Does the point of the beak pierce the skin? Capture a number of mosquitoes and place them in a jar containing some water and a few straws or sticks standing upright out of the water. Cover the mouth of the jar with a glass plate or fine gauze. Watch for the rafts of mosquitoes' eggs on the surface of the water. The eggs may also be found on the surface of ponds or open rain barrels, and may be transferred to water in a jar in the laboratory. STUDY OF THE ADULT FORM Note the shape, colour, sucking tube, wings, and legs. Compare with the house-fly. Distinguish the male insect from the female; the former has feathery feelers, and has mouth parts unsuited for biting. How many kinds of mosquitoes have you seen? Direct attention to the kind which causes the spread of malaria. It is recognized by its habit of standing with its body pointing at right angles to the surface on which its feet are placed or, in other words, it appears to stand on its head. THE DEVELOPMENT Describe the egg raft. Observe the wigglers (hatched in about a day); the divisions of the body of the wigglers; position of the wigglers when at rest. Observe that the tail end is upward. Lead the pupils to perceive that this is the means of getting air. Observe the rapid movement toward the bottom when disturbed; the means of causing this movement; the change into the large-headed pupæ--a change which takes place about ten days after hatching; the almost motionless character of the pupæ; the change from the pupæ forms into the adult--a change which takes place at about the fourth day of pupæ life. Put some mosquito larvæ (wigglers) into the fish aquarium. Are mosquitoes of any use? The wigglers are the food on which some young fishes live. Young bass and trout feed upon them. Put some kerosene on the surface of a jar in which there are mosquito larvæ. Describe a method of destroying mosquitoes. The teacher tells about the mosquito as the cause of the spread of malaria. From the fact that the eggs hatch on stagnant water, deduce a benefit arising from the draining of land. REFERENCES Silcox and Stevenson: _Modern Nature Study_ Hodge: _Nature Study and Life_ CADDICE-FLY Time: May. The caddice-flies are very interesting insects, owing to the habits of the larvæ of building little cases of wood, stones, or shells, in which they pass their development stages under water. These larvæ are easily found during the month of May in little streams of water everywhere throughout the Province. Look for what at first sight appears to be a bit of twig or a cylinder of stone about an inch long moving along the bottom as though carried by currents. Closer observation will result in the discovery that this is a little case composed of grains, of bits of stick, or of sand and tiny shells, and the head of the occupant may be seen projecting from one end. Collect some of these larvæ in a jar of water and transfer them to the aquarium. Direct the pupils to look for others in the streams, so that they may observe their appearances and movements in their natural environment. If kept in jars, the water must be changed every day, and the top should be covered to prevent the escape of the adults. ~Observe.~--The shape of the various kinds of cases; the materials, and how fastened together (chiefly by silk); the part of the larva that protrudes from the case; the movement, and how caused; the fitness of the case as a protection. Note hardness, colour, and shape as protective features. The pupils will be fortunate if they observe the sudden rise of the larva to the surface of the water and the almost instantaneous change into the four-winged fly. INSECTS SUITABLE FOR LESSONS IN FORM II Walking-stick insect, katydid, cricket, mole-cricket, clothes-moth, giant water-bug, potato beetle, click-beetle, luna moth, and swallow-tail butterfly. CHAPTER IX FORM III AUTUMN GARDEN WORK The pupils in this Form should be able to do all of the work required of them in the garden without assistance. They should aim at intensive and thorough cultivation and, in the autumn, when the plants of their gardens ripen, these should be removed and the soil carefully spaded. They should continue the work of selecting the seed from the best flowers, as indicated in the work for Form II, and should grow some seed from vegetables and perennials seen to be particularly good. Boys in this Form may also wish to do some gardening for profit. In some cases where there is plenty of space, this may be carried on in a part of the school garden set aside for that purpose. Usually, however, it will be found most convenient to carry it on in the home garden. Best varieties for local markets should then be grown and attention given to the proper time and manner of marketing or storing for a later market. Cool, well-ventilated cellars are best for most fruits and vegetables. TREATMENT OF FUNGI During the summer and early autumn months attention should be given to the spraying of plants for blight and for injurious insects. The potato is commonly affected by a fungous disease which causes the stalks to blacken and die before the tubers have matured. This disease may be prevented in large measure by the use of a fungicide known as Bordeaux mixture. This may be prepared as follows: Take one pound of copper sulphate (blue vitriol); make it fine by pounding it in a bag or cloth and then dissolve it in water, using a wooden pail. It dissolves rapidly if put in a little cheese-cloth sack, which is suspended near the top of the pail by putting a stick across the pail and tying the sack of copper sulphate to it. Dilute this solution to five gallons. Take also a pound of unslaked or quick-lime and add a cupful of water to it. When it begins to swell up and get hot, add more water slowly, and, when the action ceases, dilute to five gallons. Mix these two solutions together in a tub or barrel, and churn them up, or stir them together vigorously. They give a deep robin's-egg-blue mixture, which is slightly alkaline and should be used at once. The solutions can be kept separate as stock solutions throughout the summer and then diluted and mixed whenever needed. Care should be observed in not mixing the solutions before each has been diluted to the strength, one pound to five gallons. A piece of blue litmus paper will be convenient to prove that the mixture is alkaline. If alkaline, as it should be, the paper remains blue when dipped in it. If the mixture turns the litmus paper red, it must have more lime-water added to make it alkaline. The potato tops should be thoroughly sprayed with this mixture when about ten inches high and then once every two weeks, until they have been treated three or four times. This is to prevent blight and not to kill bugs. If the potato-beetle is troubling the potatoes, add paris-green to the Bordeaux mixture--a teaspoonful to every two gallons. To prove the value of this treatment have a trial plot of potatoes which receive all attention save spraying with Bordeaux mixture. If a heavy rain should follow the spraying, it should be repeated. Potato-scab may be prevented to a large degree by soaking the tubers before cutting for planting in a solution of formalin (a 40-per cent. solution of formaldehyde) one-half pint to fifteen gallons of water. Seed grain is frequently treated this way before sowing, to destroy smut spores. A pound of formalin is put in forty gallons of water in a large barrel. A bag full of the grain to be treated is set in the barrel of formalin mixture for about two hours and then taken and dried on a floor that has been previously washed with water containing formalin. A solution of copper sulphate (bluestone), one pound in twenty gallons of water is sometimes used. The grain is left in this solution for twelve hours and then dried for sowing. All bags and utensils should also be disinfected with this formalin solution. TREATMENT OF INSECTS In order to poison insects successfully, it is necessary to determine how the insect feeds. If it is a biting insect, that is one that eats the leaf, such as the potato beetle, paris-green should be used. Paris-green sometimes burns the tender leaves. This may be prevented by adding a tablespoonful of lime to each pail of water used. It may also be used dry with flour or dust. If the insect feeds by sucking the juices from the leaf, as is the case with plant-lice, then a solution that kills by contact must be used, such as whale-oil soap, one ounce to a quart of water. Tobacco-water is sometimes mixed with the soap solution as follows: Four pounds of tobacco-waste is steeped in nine gallons of hot water for five hours; this is then strained, and to the tobacco-water one pound of whale-oil soap dissolved in one gallon of hot water is added and mixed thoroughly. Kerosene emulsion, which is made as follows, is very destructive to plant-lice and scale insects: Dissolve a quarter of a pound of common laundry soap in half a gallon of rain-water and, while hot, mix with one gallon of coal-oil and churn vigorously for five minutes to get a smooth, creamy mixture. On cooling, it thickens and is diluted before using by adding nine quarts of warm water to one quart of the emulsion. Use smaller quantities in correct proportions when only a few plants are to be treated. CABBAGE-WORM The larvæ of the cabbage-butterfly sometimes do a great deal of harm by eating the cabbage leaves. It will not do to use paris-green on cabbage, as the leaves are for eating. Instead, use pyrethrum or insect powder, which may be diluted by mixing with cheap flour--one ounce of insect powder to five of flour. Mix thoroughly and leave in a closed tin over night. Dust the mixture on the leaves from a cheese-cloth bag by tapping with a small stick or from a dusting-pan. If used while the dew is on the leaves, it sticks better. Insect powder is not poisonous to man as is paris-green, and so may be used freely on cabbage or other similar plants. PLANTS ANNUALS, BIENNIALS, AND PERENNIALS CLASS-ROOM LESSON By means of questions based upon the pupils' knowledge of a few common annuals, such as the oat, sweet-pea, and garden aster, develop the following points: 1. These plants are always grown from seeds. 2. These plants produce flowers and ripe seeds during one season's growth. 3. These plants wither and die in the autumn. Plants having these characteristics are called _annuals_. The teacher explains the meaning of the word and requires the pupils to name a few other annuals. In a similar way, discuss a few common types of _biennials_, such as turnip, cabbage, hollyhock, and develop the following points: 1. These plants produce no flowers and seeds during the first year of their life. 2. These plants, during the first year, lay up a store of food in roots, leaves, or stems. 3. The food is used in the second year of the plant's life to nourish the flowers and seeds. A biennial should be grown for two years in the school garden to furnish material for concrete study. In a similar way discuss a few common types of _perennials_, such as rhubarb, dahlia, apple tree, and develop the following points: 1. These plants may or may not produce seeds during the first year's growth. 2. Some of these plants are herbs, but most of them are trees and shrubs. 3. Food is stored in roots or stems to provide for early spring growth. 4. These plants live on from year to year. GARDEN STUDIES ANNUALS ~Observations.~--Some plants, such as poppy and candy-tuft, are early blooming, while others, such as aster and cosmos, bloom in late summer, hence a selection should be made that will yield a succession of bloom throughout the season. Some are hardy annuals which can be grown from open planting, even when the weather is cold. These often seed themselves; for example, sweet-pea, morning-glory, phlox, poppy, sweet-alyssum. Some are half-hardy annuals, such as asters, balsams, stocks, and nasturtiums. These must be started indoors or in hotbeds, or if in plots, not until the soil is quite warm. The heights of annuals vary, and consequently they must be arranged in the bed in such a way that tall plants will not shade the short ones. BIENNIALS ~Observations.~--During the first year food is stored in the root of the turnip, carrot, parsnip, and beet, in the leaves of the cabbage, and in the stem of the hollyhock. Flowers and seeds are produced during the second year, and the storehouse becomes empty, dry, and woody. Preparation for winter is therefore, in the case of biennials, preparation for a renewal of growth the following spring. PERENNIALS ~Observations.~--The highest forms of plant life are found in this class; namely, the strong, large, hardy trees and shrubs. The herbaceous perennials are equipped with underground parts that act as storehouses of food to ensure the growth of the plant through successive seasons. Examples: the roots of dahlia, rhubarb, dandelion, and chicory; the underground stems of potato, onion, tulip, scutch-grass, Canada thistle, etc. Many of the wild flowers that bloom in early spring belong to this class, and their rapid growth then is made possible by the store of food in the underground parts. Examples: trillium, bloodroot, squirrel-corn, Indian turnip, Solomon's seal, etc. SPECIAL STUDY OF GARDEN PLANTS A few plants should be selected for special study, and the following are recommended: annuals--sweet-pea, pumpkin, and corn; biennials--cabbage, parsnip, and carrot; perennials--dahlia, rhubarb, and couch-grass. It is desirable that the observations be made upon the plants in the garden, but they may be conducted in the class-room upon specimens brought into the room by the pupils. SWEET-PEA Examine the stem of the sweet-pea and describe its form, its uniform slender structure, and the fact that it climbs. Find out just how it climbs. The pupils will observe the tendrils, which are extensions of the midribs of the leaves. Describe the leaves, noting what is meant by calling them _compound_. Observe the position of the flower, its colours, odour, size, and form. What insect does it resemble in shape? What different features of the flower enable it to attract attention? The names and uses of the floral organs may be taught to this class. For example: Pupils find the green blanket that protects the bud. This is the _calyx_. The beautiful, attractive part is the _corolla_. The parts that produce the pollen are called _stamens_. The case that holds the seeds is the _pistil_. Examine flowers of different ages and trace the change from the minute pistil to the pod. Study, comparatively, the flowers of the field-pea, bean, or wild vetch. Select a few of the finest blossoms of the sweet-pea and put tags on them while they are still in bloom. When they ripen, collect the seeds and preserve them for spring planting. Conduct observation lessons on the pumpkin and corn, in which the pupils will discover such facts as those given below. PUMPKIN Notice the method of growth--the stem no stronger than that of the sweet-pea, but lying flat on the ground. Notice the little roots sent out here and there where the stem touches the ground. This gives extra nourishment. The leaves are not numerous and grow only in one direction, but are very large--entirely too large to be borne upon an upright stem. Notice the large funnel-like flowers and that not all of them set fruit. Examine the flowers. Some of them have stamens for producing pollen, but no pistil. These never produce fruit, for pumpkins are simply enlarged and ripened pistils. Look for insects and examine them to find out whether they are carrying pollen. Notice younger pumpkins and even blossoms toward the end of the vine. Pick all the blossoms and small pumpkins off a vine, leaving only one of the best growing pumpkins. See whether this one grows larger than one of equal age on a vine having young pumpkins developing on it. Notice the arrangement of the seeds inside a ripe pumpkin. Collect some seeds, wash clean, and dry for spring planting. It is desirable to plant pumpkins late in May, so that they will have flowers on their vines as late as September. Study the flowers of the cucumber and compare them with those of the pumpkin. CORN This plant is native to America, was greatly prized by the aborigines, and even worshipped by some of them. Note the upright character of the plant and how the stalk is divided into sections by the joints, or nodes. Count these joints and also the leaves, and note the relationship of leaves and joints in the stalk, and how the leaves come off in different directions so as not to shade each other. Note the strong, stringy threads in the leaf, which give strength to the leaf as well as circulation of sap. They are strong and elastic, allowing of movement. The same strengthening fibres are seen in the stalk when it is broken across. In the stalk these fibres are arranged in a tubular form, as this gives greatest strength, the centre being soft and weak. The stalks are largest near the base, where the greatest stiffness is required. The nodes are also closer together here for strength. The stem is made much stronger by the bases of the leaves being wrapped so firmly around for a distance above the point of attachment at the node. Notice the close-fitting sheath or rain-guard, where the blade of the leaf leaves the stalk. This prevents rain soaking down inside the leaf sheath, but lets it run down the outside to the root where it is needed. As the plant gets older and taller, new roots come out from the node next above the root and sometimes from the second node above. These prop-roots are needed for support as the stalk lengthens, and they also reinforce the feeding capacity. Note the appearance of little cobs in the axils of the leaves. As soon as the silk appears, take a cob off and open it carefully. The little cob, which corresponds to the pistil in other plants, is covered with small and undeveloped kernels, and to each kernel one of the strands of so-called silk is attached. Whilst this little cob is forming, a bunch, or tassel, of flowers is forming on the top of the corn plant. Open one of these flowers and find the stamens with pollen-grains inside. This pollen, when shed, falls upon the silk, and each grain sends a tiny tube down inside the silk to the delicate ovules on the cob, fertilizing them and starting them to develop. The silk then withers. The wind carries this pollen. Find out how the silk is fitted for catching the pollen. What is the need for the great quantity of pollen that the plant produces? Strip off the husks and compare the tough, hard husks that are found on the outside with the soft paper-like husks found close to the cob. Show how each kind is fitted for its particular work. Pupils make experiments in the corn plot to find: 1. Whether the corn grows faster: (1) When the soil is kept mellow or when the soil is hard; (2) When the days are warm or when they are cool; (3) When the nights are cool or when they are warm. 2. The effect of growing black corn and golden corn in the same or in adjoining plots. Account for the result. CORRELATIONS Art: Clay-modelling and drawing exercises on the whole plant, and also upon the ear. Literature: Interpretation and reading of "Blessing the Corn-fields", from _Hiawatha_. History: The name Indian corn originated in the early colonial days of the Eastern and Central States, when the pioneers obtained corn from the Indians. The Indians showed the settlers how to kill the trees by girdling and how to plant the corn among the standing trunks, and thus have corn ready for roasting by August, and for grinding into meal or for boiling to make hominy by September. SEED DISPERSAL The lessons on seed dispersal which were begun in Form I should be continued in this Form. I. LESSON Select a few weeds belonging to species which produce large numbers of seeds, such as wild mustard, white cockle, false-flax, etc. Distribute the seed pods among the pupils of the class and require them to estimate the number of seeds produced by each plant. By references to observations made in the garden, help the pupils to recall the bad results, both to parent plants and to young seedlings, of improper scattering of seeds, namely: 1. The excessive crowding and shading, which causes the plants to become weak. 2. Insufficient food and moisture for the large number of plants, which causes the plants to be small and worthless. Discuss how the crowding of cultivated plants is prevented and, in a general way, how nature provides for the scattering of seeds. The great work of the plant is the production and dispersal of its seeds. Ask the pupils to be on the alert to find examples of plants in which provision is made for the dispersal of the seeds, and to bring these plants to the class for the next lesson. DETAILED STUDY OF SEED DISPERSAL II. CLASS-ROOM LESSON Make use of the specimens gathered by the pupils and by the teacher for observing and classifying as follows: 1. Seeds that steal rides. Examples--burdock, blue burr, pitch-fork weed, barley, stick-tight, hound's tongue. 2. Seeds that are carried in edible fruits which have attractive colours, tastes, etc. Examples--apple, grape, cherry, rowan, hawthorn. 3. Seeds that are carried by the wind. Examples--dandelion, thistle, milkweed, maple, pine, elm. 4. Seeds that are scattered by being shot from bursting pods. Examples--violet, jewel-weed (touch-me-not), sweet-pea, witch-hazel. 5. Seeds that are scattered by plants which are rolled along by the wind. Examples--Russian thistle, tumble-mustard, tumble-grass. 6. Seeds that float. Very many seeds float, although not specially fitted for floating, and some, such as the cocoa-nut and water-lily, are especially adapted for dispersal by water. _To the teacher._--Require the pupils to observe the special structure that facilitates the dispersal of the seed. As an illustration, ask the pupils to find the seeds of the burdock and to describe what the burr is really like. They find that the burr is a little basket filled with seeds. The basket has many little hooks which catch on the hair of animals and, since these hooks turn inwards, they serve to hold the basket in such a position that all the seeds are not likely to drop out at one time. The pupils should also observe that these baskets are quite firmly attached to the parent plant until the seeds are ripe; after that the baskets break off the plant at the slightest pull. SEED COLLECTIONS During late summer and in the autumn the seeds of the weeds that have been identified by the pupils should be collected. Instruct the pupils to rub the ripened seed pods between the hands until the seeds are thrashed out, at the same time blowing away the chaff. The seeds are now placed in small phials or in small envelopes and these are carefully labelled. If possible, fill each phial so that there may be sufficient seed for use by all the members of the class in the lessons on seed description and identification which are to be taken during the winter months, when Nature Study material is less plentiful than it is in the summer and autumn. The phials or envelopes may be stored in a shallow box, or the phials may be mounted on a stout card. They may be attached to this card either by stout thread sewed through the card and passing around the phial, or by brass cleats, which may be obtained with the phials from dealers in Nature Study supplies. MAN AS A DISPERSER OF SEEDS Man as an agent in the dispersal of seeds should be made a topic for discussion. Obtain, through the pupils, samples of seed-grain, clover seed, timothy seed, turnip seed, etc. Ask the pupils to examine these and count the number of weed seeds found in each. The results will reveal a very common way in which the seeds of noxious weeds are introduced. Describe the introduction from Europe to the wheat-fields of the Prairie Provinces of such weeds as Russian thistle, false-flax, French-weed. The seeds of these weeds were carried in seed-grain, fodder for animals, and also in the hay and straw used by the immigrants as packing for their household goods. Careful farmers will not allow thrashing-machines, seed drills, fanning-mills, etc., to come from farms infested with noxious weeds to do work upon their farms, nor will they buy manure, straw, or hay that was produced on dirty farms. THE SUGAR MAPLE FIELD EXERCISES Select a convenient sugar maple as a type. Ask the pupils to observe and to describe the height of the tree, the height of the trunk below the branches, the shape and size of the crown, the diameter of the trunk, the colour of the bark, the markings on the bark, the number and direction of the branches, and the density of the foliage. Compare the density of the foliage with that of other kinds of trees. Require the pupils to make a crayon drawing of the tree. Examine the crop of grain produced near a shade tree. Compare the crop on the north side of the tree with that on the south side. Account for the difference. Is the crop around the tree inferior to that in the rest of the field? Find out how long the various sugar maple shade trees in the locality have been planted. Is it a tree of rapid or slow growth? Are these sugar maples infested with insects or attacked by fungi? Do these trees yield sap that is suitable for making maple syrup? Examine trees that have been tapped and find whether the old wounds become overgrown or cause decay. Find out all you can about the uses that are made of maple wood. _To the teacher._--The sugar maple is the most highly prized of our native trees for ornament and shade. It grows fairly rapidly and becomes a goodly-sized tree within twenty years after it is planted. The symmetrical dome-shaped crown and the dense foliage of restful dark green give to it a fine appearance. It is hardy and has few insect pests, and its value is enhanced by the abundant yield of rich sap. As a commercial tree it has few superiors; the wood is hard and durable and takes a high polish. It is used for flooring, furniture, boat building, for the wooden parts of machinery and tools, and for making shoe-pegs and shoe lasts. As fuel maple wood is surpassed only by hickory. MAPLE LEAVES CLASS-ROOM LESSON The pupils bring to the class leaves of the sugar maple. Each pupil is provided with a leaf and makes direct observations under the guidance of the teacher. ~Observations.~--Colour, dark green on the upper surface, lighter green on the lower surface. Surface smooth and shiny. Shape: star-shaped, broader than long. Lobes: usually five, often three; each lobe has usually two large teeth. Base has a heart-shaped notch; petiole long and slender, usually red. Veins are stiff and run out to the points of the teeth. Distribute leaves of the _red_ maple and ask the pupils to note the general resemblance. Next ask them to compare the leaves as to shape, texture, and teeth on the margin. Ask the pupils to find red maple trees and also to find maples with leaves that are different from those of the red maple and those of the sugar maple. Make a collection of maple leaves when they are in autumn colours. (See Collections, page 33, in General Method.) _To the teacher._--The leaves of the red maple are longer than broad, and are not so smooth and shiny as the leaves of the sugar maple. There are numerous "saw teeth" on the margins of the lobes. The silver maple, with leaves having silver-white under surfaces, is another common species. A lesson similar to that on leaf studies may be based on the fruits (keys) of the maples. The oak, ash, elm, beech, or birch may be taken up in lessons similar to those outlined for the study of the maple. CORRELATIONS With literature and reading: By interpreting "The Maple", _The Ontario Readers, Third Book_, page 179; With art: By sketching the tree and reproducing the autumn leaves in colour work. WEED STUDIES In every locality there are about a dozen weeds that are particularly troublesome, and the pupils of Form III should be taught to identify these and to understand the characteristics which make each weed persistent. To produce these results it will be necessary to have exercises such as the following: 1. The teacher exhibits a weed to the pupils and directs their attention to a few of the outstanding features of the plant. 2. The pupils are required, as a field exercise, to observe where the weed is abundant; and whether in hay field, pasture, hoe crop, or in grain. The pupils will bring specimens to the class. 3. Detailed study in the class of specimens of the weed brought by the pupils to find offensive odours and prickles, also the character of the leaves, flowers, seed pods, and seeds, including the means of dispersal; the underground parts, whether underground stem, tap-root, or fibrous root, and the value of the underground parts as a means of persistence. 4. The pupils make a collection of the weeds that have been studied. (See Plant Collection, page 39, in General Method.) 5. The pupils make collections of the seeds of the weeds that have been studied. OBSERVATION LESSON ON WEED SEEDS The seed of a weed should always be exhibited and studied in association with a fresh or a mounted specimen of the weed. Each pupil should use a hand lens in examining the seed. The pupils examine the seed of each species and describe it according to the following scheme: NAME OF SEED _Colour:_ _Size:_ (in fractions of an inch) _Shape:_ _Details:_ _Occurrence:_ The results of the pupils' study of the ox-eye daisy would then appear in the following form: SEED OF OX-EYE DAISY _Colour:_ Black and greenish-white in stripes, _Size:_ One sixteenth of an inch, _Shape:_ Club-shaped, _Details_: Grooved lengthwise, yellow peg in large end, _Occurrence:_ A common impurity in grass seed. GRASSHOPPER (Consult the Manual on _Suggestions for Teachers of Science_: Zoology, First year.) The ease with which this insect may be obtained in August or September, together with its fairly large size, makes it a suitable specimen for insect study. It is also a typical insect, so that a careful study serves as a basis for a knowledge of the class _insecta_. FIELD EXERCISES Problems to be assigned for outdoor observation: Locomotion by flying, leaping, walking; protective coloration and habit of "lying low"; its behaviour when caught; in what kinds of fields it is most plentiful; in what kinds of weather it is most active; its position on the grass or grain when feeding; the nature and extent of the damage done by it. Use a class period for discussion of the above. Confirm, correct, or incite to more careful observation. CLASS-ROOM LESSON (Studied as a typical insect) ~Observations.~--The three divisions of the body--head, thorax, abdomen; the segmental division of the two latter parts; the hard, protecting covering; the movements of the abdomen; the two large compound eyes and three small eyes; the feelers; the two pairs of mouth feelers; the cutting mandibles; the three pairs of legs (one pair for leaping) and two pairs of wings on the thorax; the breathing pores, the ears, ovipositors of the female. The young grasshoppers may be found in spring or early summer, and a few even in late summer, among the grass of old meadows and pastures. They are easily recognized because of their general resemblance to the adult and are in the stage of development called the _nymph_ phase. Note the hairy body and the absence of wings. _To the teacher._--The moulting of the nymph is a very interesting process to observe and so is the laying of the eggs by the female in a burrow that she prepares in the soil. If females secured in July are kept in a jar having two inches of soil in the bottom, they will lay their eggs in the soil; the nests and eggs may then be taken up and examined. In order that we may not destroy our friends and helpers, it is expedient to know what creatures help to hold pests in check. The enemies of grasshoppers are birds and insect parasites. Under the wings of grasshoppers may frequently be found little red mites; these kill the grasshoppers to which they are attached. The blister-beetles lay their eggs in the grasshoppers' nests, and the larvæ of the beetles feed upon and destroy the eggs. The birds that are especially useful in destroying grasshoppers are the meadow-lark, crow, bobolink, quail, grasshopper sparrow. The curious hairlike worms known to the school boys as "hair snakes" because of the belief that they are parts of horse hairs turned into snakes, are worms that pass the early part of their life within the bodies of grasshoppers and, when the insects die, the worms escape and are washed by rains into troughs and ponds where their movements attract attention. Study the cricket and house-fly and compare the cricket with the grasshopper. APHIDES In September obtain leaves of sweet-pea, apple, rose bush, maple, oak, turnip, etc., on which the insects are feeding; also provide specimens of woolly aphides on the bark of apple trees or stems of goldenrod or alder. Observe the nature of the injury to the leaves and plants on which these insects feed. Do the insects bite the leaves or suck the juices? Give evidence in support of your answer. Sprinkle paris-green on the leaves; does this kill the insects? Why does it not? Spray the insects with a little oil, such as kerosene, or with water in which the stub of a cigar has been soaked; what is the effect? Insects that suck juices from inside the leaf escape the poisoning from solutions in the leaf surfaces; such insects are killed by oils which enter the breathing pores and cause poisoning. Search in the garden, orchard, and forest for plants attacked by aphides. Carefully observe the lady-birds that are frequently found where there are aphides. Lady-birds (also called lady-bugs), are small, spotted beetles, broad oval in form, of bright colours, red and black, or yellow and black, or black and white. They are of great service to the farmer and gardener because their foods consists largely of plant-lice (aphides). Watch the action of ants which are found among the aphides. The ants may be observed stroking the aphides with their feelers, causing the aphides to excrete a sweet fluid on which the ant feeds. Aphides are sometimes called ant-cows. Direct the attention of the pupils to the difference between the male and female aphides; the males have wings, but the females are wingless. TOMATO WORM THE ADULT The adult moth may be captured on spring evenings when the lilacs are in bloom, as it buzzes about among the lilac blossoms sucking their honey. It is frequently mistaken for the humming-bird when thus engaged. It may also be observed during the summer evenings laying its eggs on the leaves of tomato vines. Observe the worms that hatch from these eggs and note their rapid growth. Keep the larvæ in a box in the school-room and feed them on tomato leaves. Note their size and colour, the oblique stripes on the sides, the horn which is used for terrifying assailants, the habit of remaining rigid for hours--hence the name sphinx moth. The larvæ burrow into the ground in September to form the chrysalides, hence there should be soil in the vivarium in which they are kept. THE CHRYSALIS ~Observations.~--The shape, colour, nature of the covering, the long handle, the wing impressions, the segmental part, the emergence of the adult in May or early June. What organ of the insect was contained in the "handle" of the chrysalis? The adult is one of the handsomest of moths, because of its graceful, clear-cut shape and the variegated grays and yellows of its dress. Look on poplar, cotton-wood, plum, and pine trees, and on tobacco plants for relatives of the tomato worm, the large green larvæ whose chrysalis and adult forms resemble those of the tomato worm. THE CROW Crows are so plentiful that there will be no difficulty in making observations on the living birds in the free state in spring or summer. (As the crow is a bird that is easily tamed, it may be possible to have a tame crow in the class-room for more careful study of the details of structure.) ~Observations.~--Describe its attitude when perched, movements of the wings in flight, speed of flight. Why does the crow perch high up in trees? What gives to the crow its swift flight? Study the various calls of the crow and note the alarm, threat, summons, and expression of fear. Find the nest and note its position, size, build, materials, eggs, and young. How is the nest concealed? What makes it strong? Are crows often seen on the ground? Do they walk or hop? Observe and report on the crow's habits of feeding. It eats corn, potatoes, oats, beetles, crickets, grasshoppers, cutworms, and occasionally birds' eggs or young birds. Why do king-birds chase and thrash the crow? Are scarecrows effective in keeping crows off the grain fields? Note the sentinels that are on the watch to warn other crows of danger. Give reasons for the belief that the crow is a wise bird. Give reasons for regarding the crow as a neighbour of doubtful character. Give reasons why crows should be protected. NOTE.--Crows will not pull up corn and seed that has been covered with coal-tar before it is planted. In addition to the animals already named, the musk-rat, raccoon, fox, flying-squirrel, robin, wren, and king-bird will be found convenient for study in many localities. The swimming of the musk-rat, and how its shape, fur, feet, and tail fit it for a life in water are topics suitable for observational exercises, as are also its food, its winter home, and the burrows leading from the water into the banks. In the case of the winter home, the location, the structure, the submerged entrance, the living-room, and the surrounding moat, are topics of interest. CORRELATIONS With literature: By reading animal stories, such as, _The Kindred of the Wild_ and "Red Fox," by Charles G. D. Roberts; and _Wild Animals I Have Known_, by Ernest Thompson-Seton. With language: By oral and written descriptions of the animals that have been observed. CHAPTER X FORM III WINTER CARE OF PLANTS IN THE HOME The care of flowering bulbs which was begun in Form I will be continued in Form II. The growing of new plants from cuttings will now be taken up. In those schools which are kept continuously heated, potted plants may be kept throughout the year. The pupils will come to appreciate the plant's needs and learn how to meet them in the supply of good soil, water, and sunlight. The following points should be observed: 1. Good potting soil can be made by building up alternating layers of sods and stable manure and allowing this compost to stand until thoroughly rotted. A little sharp sand mixed with this forms an excellent soil for most house plants. 2. Thorough watering twice a week is better than adding a little water every day. 3. The leaves should be showered with water once a week to cleanse them from dust. 4. An ounce of whale-oil soap dissolved in a quart of water may be used to destroy plant-lice. Common soap-suds may also be used for this purpose, but care should be taken to rinse the plants in clean water after using a soap wash. 5. Most plants need some direct sunlight every day if possible, although most of the ferns grow without it. 6. Plants usually need re-potting once a year. Many kinds may be set out-of-doors in flower beds in May and left until September, when they may be taken up and placed in pots, or cuttings made from them for potting. 7. A flower exhibition at the school once or twice a year, or at a local exhibition, adds to the interest. 8. The pupils should report to the teacher from time to time the progress of their plants and make many drawings showing their development. PLANT CUTTINGS The pupils will be interested to know that it is possible to produce new plants without waiting for them to grow up from the seed. It will indeed be quite a surprise to them to see a new plant complete in all its parts grow up from a small piece of stem, root, or even leaf. With a little care even children may propagate plants in this way. SELECTION OF CUTTINGS Begin with some of the common herbaceous bedding-plants, such as geranium, coleus, or fuschia. These are such common bedding-plants that they are easily obtained in the autumn. Only well-matured stems of the season's growth, such as will break with a slight snap when bent, should be used. Let the pupils provide themselves with sharp knives for the lesson, with small boxes or pots, and with some moist, clean sand--not potting soil. A few holes should be bored in the bottom of the box, then a layer of fine gravel put in to provide for good drainage, and over it layers of moist sand. Take a slip or growing end of a stem about three inches in length, always cutting it at or just below a node, or joint, and leaving only a couple of small leaves on the top of the slip. Insert it to about half its depth in the box of moist sand. These cuttings may be placed a few inches apart in the box, which should then be placed in a warm, light room for a few weeks until the roots develop. The cuttings should be partly shaded by papers from the strong sunlight, and the sand kept slightly moist but not wet. Bottom heat and a moist, warm atmosphere hasten their development. Another very convenient and very successful method of starting cuttings is to take a six-inch flower-pot, put two inches of fine gravel in the bottom, set a four-inch unglazed flower-pot in the centre, and fill up the space around it with sand and garden-loam, mixed. Put a cork in the hole in the bottom of the small flower-pot, and then fill it with water. Put the cuttings around in the space between the two pots and set in a fairly warm room in moderate light. POTTING OF ROOTED CUTTINGS When the cuttings are well rooted, which requires from three to six weeks according to the variety and growth conditions furnished, they should be carefully lifted with a trowel and each set in a small pot or can. First put in the bottom a few small stones to secure drainage, and then a little good potting soil. Set the plant in place and fill in around with more soil and pack this firmly around the roots. Keep room in the top of the pot for water. When the new plant has made some growth, it may be shifted to a larger pot. Geraniums and coleus (foliage plants) should not be kept more than two seasons. Take cuttings off the old plants and then throw the latter away. EVERGREENS In December make a study of Canadian evergreens, choosing spruce, balsam, and cedar, if available, or substitute hemlock for any one of these. Compare the general features of these trees, such as shape, direction of branches, colour, persistence of leaves through the winter. Have the pupils notice how nature fits these trees to endure the snows and storms of winter by: 1. The tapering cone which causes the snow to slide off the tree. 2. The fine, needle-shaped leaves to which only very sticky snow will adhere. 3. The very tough, flexible, and elastic branches, which bend in the wind and under the weight of snow, but spring back to their old positions. 4. The resin in leaves, stems, and buds, which enables the trees to resist frost and rain. Teach the pupils to distinguish these trees by their differences in colour and form and also by the differences in their leaves and cones. CLASS-ROOM LESSON Distribute small twigs of balsam and require the pupils to observe and describe the length, shape, and colour of the leaves. Next distribute small twigs of spruce and require the pupils to compare the spruce leaves with those of the balsam in length, shape, and colour. Next distribute twigs of cedar and proceed similarly. The cones may be dealt with in a similar manner. Require the pupils to make a census of the evergreens of the locality, recording the class of evergreen, the size, and the use of each kind for shade, ornament, or for commercial purposes. _To the teacher._--The balsam, spruce, and hemlock are difficult for the beginner to distinguish, but this may be done by noting the following points of difference in their leaves: The leaf of the hemlock is the only one that has a distinct leaf-stalk. Look for this tiny stalk. The leaf of the hemlock, like that of the balsam, is flat, but the hemlock leaf is much the shorter. The leaf of the spruce is not flat, but is three-sided or nearly so. Its colour is uniform, while the under surface of the hemlock leaf, and also of the balsam leaf, is of a decidedly lighter colour than the upper surface. Note that the spruce _type_ is studied; no attempt is made at this stage to differentiate the several species of spruce. COLLECTION OF WOOD SPECIMENS During the winter months the boys may prepare specimens of wood for the school collection. These specimens should be cut when green, and dried afterwards. They should be uniform in length--not more than six inches--and should show the bark on one side. The side showing the bark should be two inches wide at most, six inches long, and running in a V-shaped, radial section toward the pith. A tangential section also shows well the rounded layers. A piece of slab as cut lengthwise off a round stick is tangential. Care should be taken not to mutilate trees in taking these specimens. Specimens of rare or foreign woods may be obtained at wood-working factories. RELATED READING Winter is Nature's quiescent period. Continuous active observation in the out-of-doors among the plants of the forest and garden gives place for a time to indoor work and reflection. Pupils need time for reading and reflection, and no time is so opportune as the quiet winter season. During these months some time should be devoted to the reading of nature stories and extracts from magazines and books dealing with plant as well as with animal life. Pupils should review their gardening experiences and discuss plans of improvement for the approaching spring and summer. Let them write letters to the Form II pupils of other schools where similar work has been carried on, and give some of their experiences in gardening and other plant studies, and also in animal studies. A certain Friday afternoon might be appointed for hearing the letters read which were received in reply. Suitable short poems that have a direct bearing upon the outdoor studies should be read from time to time. Good pictures also come in here as an aid in helping the pupils to appreciate written descriptions. The first-hand observations made by them will form a basis for the better and more appreciative interpretation of these literature selections. For Observation Lesson on Weed Seeds, see page 171. HOW ANIMALS PREPARE FOR WINTER ~Introduction.~--Discuss the preparations that people make for winter, such as the storing of food and the providing of warmer clothes and homes. ~Method.~--The teacher questions the pupils and encourages them to tell what they have learned through their own observation of animals. The knowledge of the pupils is supplemented by information given by the teacher, but the pupils are left to find out more facts by further observations. Thus: Do you ever see ground-hogs out during winter? What do they feed upon during the winter? What is the condition of ground-hogs in late summer and in autumn? What is the use of the great store of fat that they have in their bodies? Examine the snow near the burrows of ground-hogs and find whether they ever come out in mid-winter. _To the teacher._--The hibernating animals prepare a home or nest and lay up a store of food in the form of fat within their bodies. To hibernate does not mean the same as to sleep. The hibernating animals have much less active organs than the sleeping animals. The heart-beat and the respiratory movements are very slow and feeble, consequently a very little nourishment suffices to sustain life. SUMMARY OF LESSONS (Two lessons of twenty minutes) 1. Some animals migrate: Examples--many birds, butterflies, and some bats; the cariboo, and buffalo. 2. Some animals hibernate: Examples--bear, ground-hog, raccoon, frogs, toads, snakes, and some bats. NOTE.--Flies, mosquitoes, and some other insects crawl into crevices and remain at rest during winter, but their bodies are not stored with food. 3. Some animals build houses and store foods: Examples--beaver, squirrel, chipmunk, honey-bee, deer-mouse. 4. Some animals build homes convenient to food: Examples--musk-rat, field-mouse. 5. Some animals put on warmer clothing: Examples--fox, mink, otter, rabbit, horse, cow, partridge, chickadee. The rabbit and weasel turn white, a colour protection. 6. Many insect larvæ form cocoons or pupæ cases: Examples--emperor-moth, codling moth, tomato worm. CORRELATIONS With literature, reading, and language. With geography: By a lesson on "The influence of climate upon animal and plant life." CHICKENS (Consult _Principles and Practice of Poultry Culture_ by Robinson. Ginn & Co., $2.00.) CONVERSATION LESSON How many of you keep chickens at your homes? Why do many kinds of people keep chickens? What breeds of chickens do you keep? How many other breeds do you know? Describe the appearance of a few of the commoner breeds. Why are there so many different breeds? Name those that are good laying breeds. Name breeds that are not usually considered good laying breeds. _To the teacher._--Chickens are kept by all classes of people. Many keep them for the profit in eggs and meat, others keep them as a fad, and others to gratify a craving for animal companionship. There are one hundred and seventy-five recognized breeds, varying in size from that of the Japanese bantam weighing ten ounces to that of the huge Brahma which weighs fourteen pounds. The shapes and colours present as great a variation as the sizes. The breeds that are usually regarded as good layers are White Leghorn, Barred Bock, and Rhode Island Red, while the Game breeds are usually regarded as poor layers. Careful tests prove, however, that there are good laying and poor laying strains in every breed, and care must be taken to select from good strains, since the breed is not a sufficient guide. At the close of the first lesson, assign to the pupils the task of making a chicken census of the district as follows: 1. Request each pupil to count the number of hens under two years old at his home and also to count the hens that are more than two years old. 2. Request each pupil to find out, if possible, the number of eggs obtained at his home during the whole year. ARITHMETIC LESSON BASED ON THE CHICKEN CENSUS 1. Using the data collected by the pupils, calculate the total number of chickens under two years old in the district. Calculate the number over two years old. (The latter are classed as unprofitable.) 2. Using the data obtained by the pupils (provided sufficient data was obtained to make it reasonably reliable), calculate the average number of eggs laid a year by each hen. 3. If the data collected by the pupils as to the number of eggs is thought to be unreliable, make use of the following: The average number of eggs laid each year by each hen in Ontario is seven dozen. Use this average number, and: (1) Calculate the value of the eggs produced in this district in a year, the average price of eggs being twenty cents a dozen. (2) If the average production of eggs were increased to ten dozen (a number that is easily possible under improved management), find the value of the eggs that would be produced in a year, and find the gain that would result from this better management. 4. If it costs ninety cents a year to feed a hen, find the net annual profit to this district from the egg production. CARE OF CHICKENS The method of developing conceptions of how to take proper care of chickens is based partly upon the pupils' experiences and partly upon a knowledge of the history of the original wild hens. Information can be gathered from the pupils as to the date of hatching of the earliest chickens and the date at which the pullets begin to lay. Chickens that are hatched in April begin to lay in November or December and lay throughout the winter when eggs bring the highest price. The original wild hens lived in the dry, grassy, and shrubby jungles of India. They were free to move about in the open air, and at night they perched in the trees, which sheltered them from rain. Hence may be inferred what kind of quarters should be provided for chickens. CARE AND FOOD OF CHICKENS Points developed Chickens must have plenty of fresh air without draughts. Heat is not necessary. Their quarters must be dry, clean, and well lighted. They require exercise. Their food must have in it the materials that are needed to make the substance of the egg. Breakfast: Wheat or corn scattered among straw--the scratching affords exercise. Dinner: Meat scraps, slaughter-house refuse, vegetables, sour milk, and rolled oats. Supper: As at breakfast. PHYSICAL SCIENCE PHASE OF NATURE STUDY The teacher is advised to read carefully the instructions and General Method of Experimental Science, Chapter I, before beginning the lessons in Physical Science. SOLIDS, LIQUIDS, AND GASES Arrange a collection of objects of various shapes, sizes, colours, and weights, as cork, glass, lead, iron, copper, stone, coal, chalk. Show that these are alike in one respect, namely, that they have a shape not easily changed, that is, they are _solids_. Compare these solids with such substances as water, alcohol, oil, molasses, mercury, milk, tar, honey, glycerine, gasolene. These latter will pour, and depend for their shape on the containing vessel. They are _liquids_. Compare air with solids and liquids. Such a material as air is called a _gas_. Other examples of illuminating gas, and dentists' "gas"; others will be studied in future lessons. Pupils may think all gases are invisible. To show that some are not, put a few pieces of copper in a test-tube or tumbler and add a little nitric acid. Watch the brown gas fall through the air; note how it spreads in all directions. Some gases fall because they are heavier than air; others rise because lighter. All gases spread out as soon as liberated and try to fill all the available space. Spill a little ammonia and note how soon the odour of the gas is smelled in all parts of the room. CHANGE OF STATE Heat some lead or solder in a spoon till liquid. Let it cool. Do the same with wax. Heat some water in a flask till it becomes steam. Steam is a gas. Cool the steam and form water again. (See distillation.) Refer to lava (melted rock), moulding iron, melting ice and snow, softening of butter. All solids may be changed to liquids and even to gases if sufficiently heated. Likewise all gases may be changed into liquids and then to solids. EXPANSION OF SOLIDS In winter pupils may find that the ink is frozen. The teacher directs attention to this and inquires why it has occurred. It may be that in a lesson on rocks the teacher will ask the pupils to account for all the little stones. The following _experiments_ will aim at solving the foregoing problems: 1. A brass ball and ring are shown. Pupils handle these and note that both are cold and that the ball just passes through the ring. They are asked to compare the size of the ball with that of the ring. 2. The spirit-lamp is lighted and examined. Pupils hold their hands over the flame to note the heat. 3. The ball is heated in the flame for a short time by one of the pupils, and felt cautiously. An attempt is made to pass it through the ring. How has the ball changed in feeling? In size? How does one know it is larger? What has caused these changes? 4. Cool the ball. Feel it. Try to pass it through the ring now. How has it changed in feeling? In size? What caused these changes? How does heat affect the ball? How does cold affect it? The teacher may now give the words _expand_ and _contract_, writing them on the black-board and explaining their use. Pupils may then state their conclusions: _A brass ball expands when heated and contracts when cooled._ A blacksmith can make the following very serviceable apparatus: A scrap of iron about eleven inches long, one inch wide, and one-eighth inch thick, has one inch bent up at each end. A rod one-eighth inch in diameter is made just long enough to pass between the upturned ends of the first piece when both are cold. The rod is heated and the experiment conducted as in the case of the ball. Two additional facts are learned: (1) Iron expands as well as brass; (2) solids expand in length as well as in volume. The pupils may now be told that other solids have been tried and expansion has invariably followed heating. The conclusion may then be made general. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS 1. When your ink-bottle was placed on the stove, which end became warmer? Which expanded the more. Why then did it crack? 2. What other examples like this have you noticed? (Lamp chimneys, fruit jars, stove plates) 3. The earth was once very hot and is now cooling. How is the size of the earth changing? Does it ever crack? What causes earthquakes? 4. Find out by observation how a blacksmith sets tires. 5. Invent a way to loosen a glass stopper stuck in the neck of a bottle. 6. What does your mother do if the metal rim refuses to come off the fruit jar? 7. Next time you cross a railway, notice whether the ends of the rails touch. Explain. 8. What allowance is made for contraction in a wire fence? A railway bridge? Why? 9. Why do the stove-pipes crack when the fire is first started? 10. Why does the house go "thump" on a very cold night? 11. Draw the ball, ring, and spirit-lamp in position. 12. Describe in writing the experiments we have made. QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER INVESTIGATION You have seen that iron and brass both expand. Do they expand equally? Let pupils have a few days to invent a way of answering the question. The experiment may then be tried with the compound bar. See _The Ontario High School Physics_, pages 217-218, also _First Course in Physics_, Milliken and Gale, page 144. If the equipment of the school is limited, it may be necessary to dispense with the ball and ring and generalize from one experiment. Another easily made apparatus consists of two iron rings with handles. One ring will just pass through the other when both are cold. The stove may take the place of the spirit-lamp. A still simpler plan consists in driving two nails into a block at such a distance apart that an iron rod (six-inch nail, poker, bolt, etc.) will just pass between. On heating the rod the increase in length becomes evident. EXPANSION OF LIQUIDS Fill a common bottle with coloured water; insert a rubber stopper through which passes a glass tube about sixteen inches long. Set the bottle in a pan of water and gradually warm the water. The rise of the liquid in the tube will indicate expansion. On setting the bottle in cold water the fall of the column of coloured water shows contraction. See _The Ontario High School Physics_, page 218, also _Science of Common Life_, page 48. Macmillan Co., 60 cents. Set the flask or bottle in a mixture of ice and salt and note that the extreme cold causes contraction for a while, then expansion. Note that when expansion begins, the water has not begun to freeze, but that it does so soon after. The night before this experiment the children should set out in the cold air, tightly corked bottles of water. In the morning they will be found burst by the expansion. APPLICATIONS 1. Why did some of the ink-bottles burst in the cold room? 2. Find large stones split up into two or more fragments. Explain. 3. Why is fall-ploughed land so mellow in spring? 4. Why does ice float? Think what would happen if it did not. 5. Explain the heaving of oats, clover, wheat. 6. Do all liquids expand on freezing? Try melted paraffin. THE THERMOMETER Besides the ordinary thermometer the school should possess a chemical thermometer graduated from 0° Fahrenheit to 212°. 1. Our sensations vary so much under different circumstances and in different individuals that they cannot be depended on. Find examples of this and show the need of a measuring instrument. 2. The pupils can learn, by examination of the common wall instrument, the parts of the thermometer--tube, bulb, liquid (alcohol or mercury), and scale. 3. Repeat the experiment for expansion of liquids, showing wherein the apparatus resembles the thermometer, warm the thermometer bulb and watch the column rise; cool it and note the fall. 4. Set the bulb of the chemical thermometer in boiling water. The mercury comes to rest near 212°. Bury the bulb in melting snow and notice that the column falls to 32°. Give names for these points. Explain that a degree is one of the 180 equal parts which lie between boiling point and freezing-point. Show that 32° below freezing must be 0°, or zero. 5. The uses of thermometers for indoors and outdoors; for dairy, sick room, incubator, and soils; maximum and minimum. Dairy thermometers registering 212° Fahrenheit may be obtained; they are cheaper than chemical thermometers. EXPANSION OF AIR Half fill a flask with water and invert it uncorked over water in a plate. Apply a cloth soaked in boiling water to the part that contains air. Why does the water leave the flask? Apply cold water. Why does the water return? Any ordinary bottle may be used in place of the flask, but it is more liable to crack. Make an air thermometer. See _The Ontario High School Physics_, page 223, also _Science of Common Life_, page 41. Try to graduate it from the mercurial thermometer. Have the boys make a stand for it. _Inferences._--Heated gases rise because they expand. Hot-air balloons, winds, and heating with hot-air furnaces, all depend on this principle. SOURCES OF HEAT AND LIGHT NOTES FOR A SERIES OF LESSONS 1. THE SUN.--Our dependence on it. Valuable results of its heat. Simple notions as to its size, distance, and nature. Our earth catches a very small fraction of the sun's heat; our sun is but one of millions--the fixed stars. Show the burning effect of a lens. 2. FUELS.--Wood, oil, coal, alcohol, gas, peat, straw: where obtained; special uses of each under varying conditions; need of economy. (This is closely related to geography.) 3. ELECTRICITY.--In urban schools use the electric light or some heating device for illustration. In rural schools a battery of two or three cells (see "Apparatus") will melt a fine strand drawn from a picture wire. Applications: ironing, toasting, cooking; advantages or disadvantages compared with gas or wood. 4. FRICTION.--Pupils rub hands together; rub a button on a cloth; saw a string across the edge of a board or across the hand; bore a hole through a hardwood plank, then feel the auger-bit. Applications: restoring circulation; "hot-boxes" in machinery; lubricants and their uses; lighting matches. 5. POUNDING.--Hammer a nail flat on an anvil or stone; feel it. Bullets fired against an iron or stone surface may be picked up very hot. Note sparks that can be struck from a stone; percussion caps, flint-lock muskets. 6. PRESSURE.--After using a bicycle pump for some time, feel the bottom, also the top. If possible, examine an air-compressor and find out the means used for cooling the air. 7. SOURCES OF LIGHT.--Sun, moon, oil, tallow, gas, electricity, wax, acetylene; advantages of each; relative cost. PRIMITIVE METHODS OF OBTAINING FIRE: Most savages obtain fire by friction; rubbing two pieces of wood together till hot enough to set fire to some dry, light material. The natives of Australia placed a flat piece of wood on the ground and pressed against this the end of a round piece, which they twirled rapidly with their hands till fire was produced. The North American Indians did the twirling with their bow strings; the Eskimo's plan is somewhat similar. It is impossible to say when flint and steel were first used, but we know they continued to be the chief means of producing fire till about 1834, when matches were invented. Let pupils try to produce fire by these means. The earliest lamps consisted of shells, skulls of animals, and cup-shaped stones filled with fat or fish oils which burned on a wick of cloth or the pith of rushes. The Tibetans burn butter, the Eskimos whale- or seal-oil, the Arabians palm- or olive-oil. For outdoor lighting, torches carried in the hand were used till gas came into general use about 1792. CONDUCTION Give to four boys strips of copper, aluminium, wood, and glass, respectively. They hold these by one end and heat the other end till one or more are forced to drop the piece on account of the heat. The boys with the metals will soon find them hot throughout, but the other two will be able to hold on indefinitely. The teacher gives the terms "good conductor" and "poor conductor". PROBLEMS 1. Are metals generally good conductors? Try with strips of zinc, lead, iron, a silver spoon. 2. Are all good conductors equally good? Devise a means of ascertaining. See _Science of Common Life_, Chapter VI; also _The Ontario High School Physics_, page 274. 3. Is water a good conductor? Lists of good and poor conductors may then be made, the teacher adding to the list. Good: metals; poor: wood, horn, bone, cloth, leather, air, water, hair, asbestos, ashes, rock, earth. PROBLEMS 1. If the interior of the earth is very hot, why do we not feel it? 2. How can the cold snow keep the earth warm? 3. Why does your hand freeze to metals but not to wood? 4. Let the children try to find other instances: wools or furs for clothing, fur coats on northern animals, feathers on birds, down quilts, tea cosies, sawdust for packing ice, double windows, wooden handles for hot irons, asbestos coating for steam pipes. THE MINERS' SAFETY-LAMP: This is a most important application of conduction. Get from the tinsmith a piece of brass gauze six inches square. Raise the wick of the spirit-lamp causing it to give a high flame and bring the gauze down upon the flame till it touches the wick. Note that the flame does not rise above the gauze. Hold a piece of paper above the gauze near the flame and note that it does not take fire. Note also that the gauze soon becomes hot. The brass wires conduct the heat of the flame rapidly away so that there is not heat enough above the gauze to cause combustion. Now roll the gauze into a hollow cylinder, pin the edges together, insert a cork at each end, and have a short candle fastened to the lower one. Try to light the candle with the lamp through the gauze. It is not easily done. The miner carries a lamp made like this, so that if he should be in the presence of the explosive gas, "fire damp", it would not explode because of the wire gauze shield. CONVECTION Water is not a conductor, how then is it heated? Drop a few pieces of solid colouring matter, (analine blue, blueing, or potassium permanganate) into a beaker of cold water. Place the beaker over a heater and observe the coloured portion rise. Wet sawdust will make a good substitute for the colouring matter. A sealing jar or even a tin cup will do instead of the beaker. The stove or a dish of hot water will take the place of the lamp. PROBLEMS 1. Using a thermometer, see whether the water at the bottom is warmer than that at the top while the beaker is being heated. 2. Heat some oil and pour it over the surface of some cold water. Lower a thermometer into this. Does the water at the bottom soon become warm? 3. If your kitchen is provided with a hot-water tank, find out what part of the tank first becomes warm after the fire is lighted. 4. In bathing, where do you find the coldest water of a pond or still river? See _Science of Common Life_, Chapter VI; also _The Ontario High School Physics_, page 280. CONVECTION IN GASES A good apparatus may be made by cutting two holes one inch in diameter in one side of a chalk box, replace the lid with a piece of glass, place a lamp chimney over each hole and a lighted candle under one of the chimneys. Hold a piece of smoking touch-paper at each chimney in turn and note direction of air current. APPLICATIONS 1. Winds are caused by the rising of air over heated areas, allowing cooler currents to take its place. (Geography) 2. Rooms are ventilated by heating some of the air more than the rest, thus producing a current. (Hygiene) Winds are nature's means of ventilating the earth. RADIATION OF HEAT This should be taken up as an introduction to dew, frost, winds, climate, etc. 1. Make an iron ball hot (the end of a poker will answer). Hold the hand a few inches below the iron. Does the heat reach the hand by convection? By conduction? By means of suitable questions, lead the pupil to see that it is not by convection, for the hand is below the hot object while heated air rises; it is not by conduction, for air is one of the very poorest conductors; moreover, the heat is felt instantly from the poker, but it takes an appreciable time for it to come by conduction and convection. We say this heat is _radiated_ from the iron. The velocity of radiated heat is about 186,000 miles a second. 2. The above experiment may be varied by bringing the hot iron gradually toward the bulb of the air thermometer and noting the greatest distance at which it will affect the thermometer. It is by radiation that the sun's heat and light reach us. We get much of the heat of stoves, fire-places, and radiators by the same means. Why does the earth cool off at night? Why does dew form? Why can no dew form on a cloudy night? Why is a mountain top or a desert so cold, especially at night? 3. Take two tin cans (baking powder boxes will answer) and make holes in the lids large enough to admit a thermometer. Blacken one box in the flame of an oil lamp. Fill both with boiling water and put in a cool place. Test with a thermometer from time to time. Which cools most rapidly? 4. Fill the tin cans with cold water, find the temperature, and then place them near a hot stove. Which warms faster? Usually dark or rough surfaces radiate heat and absorb heat faster than bright or smooth ones. An excellent way of testing this is to lay a black cloth and a white one side by side on the snow where the sun is shining brightly. The snow will melt more rapidly under the black cloth. Painted shingles may be substituted for the cloths. Try different colours. The day chosen should not be extremely cold. PROBLEMS 1. Why should we have the outside of a tea-kettle, teapot, or hot-air shaft of a bright colour? Why should we have stoves and stove-pipes dull black? 2. Why does a coat of snow keep the earth warm? 3. Which is the warmest colour to wear in winter? Does this account for the colour of Arctic animals? 4. Which is the coolest colour to wear in the hot sun? 5. Gardeners sometimes strew the ground with coal-dust to help ripen their melons. Show the value of this. 6. Suggest a method of protecting a wall from the heat of a stove. CHAPTER XI FORM III SPRING WINDOW BOXES Many garden plants should be started in a box of earth in a warm, sunny window. In some schools this can be done with a little care in heating on cold nights. Small boxes or grape baskets full of rich sandy loam with an inch of gravel in the bottom for drainage may be used. Sow the seeds in rows or broadcast. To prevent the soil from drying out too quickly, cover the box with a pane of glass. When the plants are up, give them plenty of light and not too much warmth. On very mild days set them in a warm, sheltered place out-of-doors and bring them in again early in the evening. This tends to make them hardy. When about three inches high, pick the young plants out and set them in other boxes a few inches apart. This moving causes the formation of numerous fibrous roots and makes stronger plants. WINDOW GARDENS Window boxes may be used for a whole season on the inside of the building in cold weather, and on the outside in warm weather. There is almost no limit to the kinds of plants that can be grown in them, but they are most suitable for flowers. Good boxes may be made of dressed lumber so as to fit on the window-sill. They should be six inches deep, ten inches wide, and the required length. They should have a few small holes in the bottom to allow excess water to drain off and should be painted dark green or some quiet colour. There should be an inch of gravel in the bottom, some rotted sods covering this, and then the box filled with rich sandy loam. SUITABLE PLANTS Some flowers suitable for growing in window boxes outside in summer are those of drooping habit: lobelia, Kenilworth ivy, verbena, tropeolum, petunia, and sweet-alyssum toward the front, and behind, more erect plants, such as geranium, heliotrope, begonia, phlox, and nasturtium. The box must not be too much crowded. For inside and in shady situations the following are suitable: tradescantia, parlour ivy, moneywort, vinca smilax, climbing fern, asparagus fern, dracæna, coleus, centaurea, sword fern, and Boston fern. For indoor boxes in winter, the following may be used: abutilon, calceolaria, cyclamen, violets, primroses, petunias, geraniums, freesia, and such foliage plants as dracæna, cannas, dusty miller, and coleus. The following climbing plants may be trained up the window cases: asparagus plumosus fern, cobea scandens, smilax, maurandia, and English ivy. If drooping or trailing plants are desired, the following may be used: oxalis, sweet-alyssum, lobelia, ivy, geranium, Kenilworth ivy, and Wandering Jew. FERTILIZER As the amount of soil is limited and the number of plants that it has to support is great, the soil should be made quite rich and should be further fertilized from time to time with a little liquid manure. This can be best obtained by taking a strong barrel or large keg and filling it about half full of water. Then fill an ordinary coarse potato sack with cow-stable manure and set the sack in the barrel for a few days. A tap in the bottom of the barrel is most convenient for drawing off the liquid manure. A little of this will also be found valuable for watering dahlias, roses, and other garden plants during the summer. SOIL STUDIES The classes of soil should be reviewed. Pupils should gather examples from many places. The samples may be kept in bottles of uniform size and should include not only the four types but varieties of each, also various kinds of loam. EXERCISES AND EXPERIMENTS SOIL CONSTITUENTS 1. With a sharp spade, cut a piece about twelve inches deep from (1) the forest floor, (2) an old pasture field. Note character and order of the layers of soil in (1) leaves, humus, loam, sand, or clay; in (2) grass, dead grass, humus, loam, sand, or clay. Observe soils shown in railway cuttings, freshly dug wells, post holes. 2. Note the effect produced on the soil of a field by (1) leaving it a few years in pasture, (2) ploughing in heavy crops, (3) applying barn-yard manure. In all these cases vegetable matter is mixed with the soil. 3. Dry some good leaf-mould. Throw a handful on the surface of some water. The mineral matter sinks, while the vegetable portion remains suspended for some time. Try this experiment with gravel, sand, and clay. Note that the gravel sinks rapidly, the sand less rapidly, and that the clay takes a long time to settle. If the water be kept in rapid motion, the finer soils will all remain suspended till motion becomes slower. Apply this in geography. The bed of a stream will consist of stones if it be swift, of sand if less swift, and of clay if very slow. How are alluvial plains formed? 4. Place half an ounce of dry humus on an iron plate or fire-shovel and heat strongly in a stove. Note that it begins to smoke and a large part smoulders away to ashes; the mineral portion remains. Weigh the part left and find what fraction of the humus consisted of vegetable material. Try to find the proportion of vegetable matter in each of the following: loams from various sources, sand, clay, gravel. The last three will show scarcely any change. This experiment will give rise to some good arithmetical problems in fractions. WATER IN SOILS 5. Compare a handful of fresh garden soil with the same soil dried. Note the glistening of the fresh soil, also its weight and darker colour. The fresh soil admits of packing though no water can be squeezed from it. In its best condition, the water of the soil adheres as a film of moisture about every particle. Free water is to be avoided since it excludes the air from the soil. 6. Equal weights of soils of different kinds and degrees of fineness are placed in funnels or in inverted bottles with bottoms removed. Water is then slowly added to each until it begins to drop from the lower end. From this is seen (1) the great value of humus as a water holder, (2) the advantage of fine soil over coarse. For retention of water by absorption, consult _Nature Study and Life_, Hodge, page 382. 7. Take two wooden boxes (chalk boxes will do), fill one box with moist sand and the other with moist leaf-mould. Weigh the boxes separately and leave them for three or four days in a warm room. Weigh again and note decrease from evaporation. The sand dries out much faster than the humus. Test with clay, gravel, and loam, also with mixtures of these and leaf-mould. 8. Take three paint cans; punch holes in the bottoms. Fill each with good soil well shaken down. Stand the cans in water till the tops are moist, then place them in a warm, dry place. Loosen the soil on the top of No. 1 to a depth of one inch; on No. 2 to a depth of two inches; leave No. 3 untouched. Find out after a few days which is drying out fastest. How may soil be treated so as to lessen evaporation of water? DRAINAGE 9. Gravel and sand allow water to run away rapidly, but where the soil is fine or closely packed as in clay soils, under-drains are necessary (1) to carry off the surplus water, (2) to allow air to enter the soil, (3) to warm the soil (wet soil is colder than dry). Take two equal-sized tin cans, make several holes in the bottom of one, place therein a layer of broken pottery or stones, and fill with good soil. Fill the other with similar soil but make no holes for drainage. Plant in each can a healthy plant of the same size and kind. Water both till the soil is saturated and continue watering every two or three days for six weeks. Note (1) the progress of the plants, (2) the temperature of the soils, (3) which plant has the largest and deepest roots. (See _Bulletin 174_, Ontario Department of Agriculture.) 10. Take five equal-sized boxes, provide for drainage, and fill No. 1 with wood, earth, or humus, No. 2 with clay, No. 3 with sand, No. 4 with a mixture of clay and humus, No. 5 with a mixture of sand and humus. Plant corn in each box, set in a warm room, and keep watered for two or three weeks. Note in which case growth is most rapid. Set boxes in a dry place and cease watering. Which suffers most from the drought? Which bakes hardest in the sun? Test the temperature of each after watering and standing in the sun for an hour. Sand is warmer than clay, also the presence of humus raises the temperature. This item is important, since most seeds decay instead of sprouting if the temperature is below 45° Fahrenheit. 11. Enumerate the services rendered to the soil by humus. 12. In Experiment 10, let the corn grow for some time and determine whether the very rich humus is the best in the end. Sand and clay are almost altogether mineral; leaf-mould almost entirely organic; neither alone is good, but a mixture gives the best results. GARDEN WORK The boys of this Form should attend to the fertilizing and spading of the plots belonging to the girls of their Form. The girls themselves can do all the rest of the work, and they should try to keep the plots level, uniform in size, and in a straight line. If the corner posts are kept in line and the plots made up the exact size, the appearance of the garden will be greatly improved. The pupils are now old enough to make their own choice of flowers and vegetables. Very tall growing plants, such as corn and sunflowers, are not desirable in individual plots as they shade other plants near them. Corn is best grown in a large plot about twenty feet square. The same may be said of vines, such as cucumbers, melons, squash, etc. If the plots are small, it is better to plant but a single variety, but in large plots from two to four varieties may be arranged to advantage. Usually rows of vegetables, such as carrots and beets, may be placed a foot apart, cabbage about twice that distance, and tomatoes a little farther apart than cabbage. Generally speaking, plants should be placed so that when full grown they will just touch, cover the ground completely, and thus prevent the growth of weeds. As soon as the young plants appear above the ground, light cultivation with rakes and claw-hand weeders should be started, so as to keep weeds from growing and at the same time to provide a loose surface or earth mulch for conserving the moisture and aerating the soil. Thinning should also be begun when the plants are quite small, but it should not all be done at once. As the plants increase in size, the best ones should be left and the poor ones taken out. In some cases plants thus removed may be re-set to fill vacant places. TREE SEEDS Tree seeds that have been stored over winter should now be planted in rows in a small plot. The rows should be a foot apart and the seeds quite close together in the row. A cheese-cloth or slat shade should be used on this plot, as the hot sun is too strong for tree seedlings when they first come up. They should have cultivation every week and watering in dry weather. Always water in the evening after school, or even later when possible. TRANSPLANTING Pupils in this Form should have practice in transplanting, as well as in sowing seed. For this purpose seeds should be started about the first of April in hotbeds or window boxes, seedlings transplanted into cold frames when two or three inches high, and then set out in the garden in the latter part of May when danger of frost is past. TRANSPLANTING FLOWERS AND VEGETABLES Choose, if possible, a cool cloudy day. Water the plants thoroughly in the hotbed or cold frame a few hours before lifting them. Lift them with a trowel or small spade, and keep as much earth on their roots as possible. With a transplanting trowel, make holes deep enough so that the plant will be a little deeper in the soil than before transplanting. Unless the soil is moist, a little water put in the hole with the plant is beneficial. The evening is considered best for transplanting if the weather is clear. If the sun is very hot, the plants should be shaded for a few days until the roots become established and begin their work. Shingles slanting over the plants from the south side and driven into the ground to hold them in position are best. Papers held by means of two stones also give good results. The practice of covering them with inverted cans is not a good one, as the light is almost completely cut off. A few holes in the can would help considerably. Care must be taken to pack the earth firmly about the roots. Watering again twenty-four hours after transplanting is often necessary. If the plant has a leafy top, it is best to take off some of the leaves, as they tend to give off water more rapidly than the roots can at first take it in. TRANSPLANTING TREE SEEDLINGS Nuts and other tree seeds collected the previous autumn should now be planted in the forestry plots in rows a foot apart. As the seeds may not all grow, they may be planted close together in the row and thinned out the following spring if necessary. They need some shelter from the sun the first summer. In large plots this is provided by means of a slat covering, but in a small plot cheese-cloth tacked on strips and fastened on corner posts is satisfactory. When a shower comes, this cheese-cloth screen should be removed so that the rain may moisten the plot evenly. Seedlings may be transplanted from the woods or from the forestry rows before the leaves open out. BUDDING In budding, a slit like the letter T is made in the side of the young seedling close to the ground. The bark is raised a little at the point where the vertical slit meets the horizontal one, and a bud of desired variety with a shield-shaped bit of bark (and perhaps a little wood) attached to it is shoved in and the sides of the slit bound down upon it. After the bud, or scion, has started to grow, the stock is cut off an inch above the point where the bud was inserted. The bud then makes rapid growth, and in two years the resulting tree is large enough to set in its permanent place in the orchard. CUTTINGS Pupils in this Form should try to grow such woody plants as roses and grapes from cuttings. Roses are frequently propagated by budding, as in the case of apples and peaches. They may also be grown upon their own roots or from stem cuttings. Such cuttings should be from well-matured wood of the present year taken in the autumn and packed in moist sand over the winter. Make the cuttings about three inches in length. The top end should be cut off immediately above a bud and the bottom end just below a bud, as roots seem to start more readily from a node, or bud. Such a cutting may have three or four buds of which only the upper two need be left. If both of these grow, the poorer one may afterwards be removed. These rose cuttings should then be inserted in a box of clean, moist sand to a depth of two inches, kept in a warm room, and shaded with a sheet of newspaper when the sun is very bright. Keep the sand moist but not wet, and when possible have gentle bottom heat. When roots have made some growth, transplant carefully into small flower-pots, using fairly rich, clay loam. In a few weeks they will be ready to plant out in the garden. Grape cuttings should be taken late in the fall when the vines are well matured. Such a cutting includes only two joints, the upper one being the growing end and the lower the rooting end. They must be stored over winter in cold, moist sand, but should not be permitted to freeze. As soon as the ground can be prepared in the spring, set them out. They should be placed on a slant of about forty-five degrees and covered all but the top bud. LEAF CUTTINGS Some plants with large and vigorous leaves, such as many of the begonias, may be propagated by means of leaf cuttings. Buds readily develop from cuts made in the large veins. Take a full-grown healthy leaf and remove the stem all but about half an inch. Make a few cuts across the larger veins on the under side of the leaves at points where main veins branch. Press the leaf firmly down on the top of a box of moist sand with the under side next the sand. Keep the leaf in this position, using small stones or little pegs pushed through the leaf into the sand. Put the box in a warm room and do not let the sand become dry. When roots strike into the sand and buds develop from the points where the veins were wounded, take a sharp knife and cut out the new plant from the old leaf and transplant it into a small flower-pot in good soil. Sink the pot in a box of moist sand to prevent its drying out. ROOT CUTTINGS Such plants as "sprout from the roots" may be propagated by root cuttings. Sections of underground stems may also come under this heading, as in the case of horseradish cuttings. But real roots may be used for cuttings, as in the case of the blackberry and raspberry. The roots should be cut in pieces three or four inches long, planted in a horizontal position, and entirely covered with two or three inches of soil. LAYERING Bush fruits, such as currants and gooseberries, are frequently propagated by stem cuttings, as in the case of roses. Another method, which is known as layering, consists in bending one or more of the lowest branches down against the ground, fastening it there by means of a forked stick, and then covering it with two or three inches of earth. The part in contact with the moist earth will send out roots, while one or more shoots will come up. When roots and shoots have developed, the branch is severed from the parent bush and the new plant set in its permanent place. Strawberries exhibit a sort of natural layering. PLANTING AND CARE OF HERBACEOUS PERENNIALS Perennials grown from seed the previous summer should now be set in clumps two or three feet apart in the perennial border or here and there beside the fences or walks. The soil should be made fine and fertilized with well-rotted manure from the compost heap before setting out the young perennials. Dahlias and gladioli which were taken in in the autumn should now be set out. The dahlias should be divided and only the best roots used. Other perennials that have grown into large clumps should be dug up, divided, and re-set in well-fertilized soil. GARDEN STUDIES Pupils in this Form have now had enough experience in the growing of vegetables and flowers to allow them to make intelligent variety tests. They should grow some of the less familiar varieties and report on the merits of each variety tested. This, however, should not be carried on to the exclusion of the well-known standard varieties. Let the pupils consult the best seed catalogues available and choose for themselves some varieties not already known to them. They should keep a systematic record of all varieties grown and the methods used in cultivating, fertilizing, etc. The knowledge thus gained will be of value in after years, and the homes will also benefit by it. BIENNIALS The pupils should observe the second year's growth of biennials. A special plot in the school garden should be set apart for this purpose. Have them plant in it a turnip, a carrot, a beet, a cabbage, or any other garden biennial saved over winter for the purpose. If desired, the pupils might grow their own seed of these varieties. Notice (1) what part of the plant has become enlarged with stored up food and how big it is when planted, (2) how this part changes in size and texture as the flowers and seeds develop, (3) in what way this extra food seems to have been used. WILD FLOWERS STUDY OF THE TRILLIUM The pupils bring the plants for the lesson. There should be a few purple trilliums among the white, and some of the plants should have the underground parts intact. Discuss with the collectors their observations on where the trilliums grow, the kind of soil, the depth of the root-stocks below the surface, the uses of the root-stocks, insect visitors. CLASS-ROOM LESSON The pupils are directed to examine the plant and flowers and find out all the means for attracting insects. Find out why the purple trillium attracts flies and beetles, while the white trillium attracts bees and butterflies. Look into the top of the flower; what figure do the tips of the six flower leaves form? Using the names calyx and corolla, describe the circle of flower leaves as to number, colour, and relative position. Find the stamens and describe as to number and position; find out how the stamens are fitted to ensure that the pollen will get upon the visiting insects. Find the pistil and describe its shape. How is the stigma fitted for receiving the pollen that is carried by the insect visitors. _To the teacher._--The trilliums attract insects by their large white and purple flowers, which are held up by their long stalks high above the three broad leaves. The strong carrion-like odour of the purple trillium is attractive to flies and beetles, while bees and butterflies find the fragrance of the white trillium more to their liking. The root-stock serves as a buried store of food to tide the plant over the drought of late summer and the severe cold of winter. The well-stocked cellar also explains the flourishing condition of the plant in early spring. The six stamens stand on close guard around the pistil, and insects forcing their way to the nectaries are well peppered with pollen. Continue the observation work by means of field exercises such as the following: What change takes place in the colour of the white trillium as it grows old? Find the ripened seed pods of the trillium, open them, count the number of chambers, and examine the seeds. Do trilliums grow from the same root-stock year after year? As correlations, represent the trillium in colour and design an embroidery pattern based on it. Lessons similar to that on the trillium may be based on adder's tongue, Indian turnip, Dutchman's breeches, violet, and clover. ADAPTATIONS OF ANIMALS It is not considered necessary to go outside the list of ordinary animals to find sufficient illustrations of adaptations, and it is recommended that attention be given to these during the study of animals prescribed for the regular Course. This may be supplemented by an occasional review of adaptive features for the purpose of emphasizing the general fitness of animals for their varied habits and surroundings. Care must be taken lest the attempt to explain structures by adaptation be carried to an extreme, for it is impossible to account for all the variations in animal forms. The following list contains a few of the many examples of adaptations to be met with in the Course prescribed for Forms II and III. The horse walks and runs on the tips of its toes; this gives greater speed. Wild animals of the cow and deer kind can swallow their food hastily so that they may retire to a safe retreat; there they regurgitate the food and chew it. The domesticated animal retains this habit, though there is no longer a need for it. The wood-hare's fur is brown in summer, hence its enemies cannot see it against the brown grass and moss; in winter its colour is white, which, against the snow, is a protective colour. The porcupine is very slow, but its colour and shape make it almost impossible to distinguish from a knot on a log. Its quills form an effective protection when it is discovered. The feet of the squirrel are adapted for climbing and its teeth for gnawing wood and for opening nuts. The tail serves as a balancing pole for leaping from tree to tree and in winter it acts as a protection from cold. The earthworm's shape and movements are suited to its habits of burrowing through the soil. Its habits of swallowing the soil fit it for burrowing and for obtaining its food at the same time. Many insect larvæ, as the tomato worm and the cabbage-worm, are of the same colour as the plants on which they feed, and this enables them to escape detection by birds. The larvæ of dragon-flies and May-flies breathe in water by means of gills very much as fishes do, but the adult forms are suited for breathing in air. Female birds are usually dull gray or mottled, so that their colours blend with their surroundings while they are nesting, and hence they do not attract the notice of their enemies. Birds that swim have webbed feet, which act as oars for pushing them through the water. Their feathers are compact and soft for warmth, and these properties, together with oil on their surfaces, make them waterproof. The tongue of the woodpecker is long, spear-shaped, and sticky; hence it is adapted for catching insects in the holes pecked into the wood. The tongue of the toad is fastened at the front end, so that a flap can be shot out for more than an inch in front of the animal, thus enabling it to catch insects on its sticky surface. The toes of the frog are webbed to make them more serviceable in swimming. The tail of the musk-rat is strong and broad like the blade of an oar and serves the same purpose as an oar. The tail of the fish is more serviceable for swimming than legs would be. BIRD TYPES WOODPECKERS Woodpeckers are easily distinguished from other birds by their habit of perching in a vertical position on the trunks of trees with the tips of their tails pressed against the bark. While in this position, they tap upon the tree with their sharp, pointed beaks. THE DOWNY WOODPECKER Learn to recognize the smallest of our woodpeckers, the Downy. Winter or summer it may be found among the apple trees and shade trees, a tiny black and white bird little bigger than a wren. OBSERVATIONS I Why is "checkerboard" a good name for this bird? Are there any distinct lines of white? Are there any patches of red? Do its movements reveal energy or listlessness? How does it move up a tree trunk? How does it move down a tree trunk? Find out how it can hold so firmly to the trunk. Does it use its sharp beak as a drill or as a pick? _To the teacher._--The downy is spotted black and white, with barred wings and a white line down the centre of the back. A bright scarlet crown is the colour distinction of the male. This little bird is the embodiment of energy and perseverance. It hops nimbly up the trunk, tapping here and there with its beak, and then listening for the movements of the disturbed wood-borers. If it wishes to descend, it wastes no time in turning around, but hops backward down the trunk, or jumps off and flies down. II Examine an apple tree upon which a downy has been at work and find out what it was doing there. Do you find the birds in pairs during winter? During summer? Distinguish the male from the female. Tie a beef bone with scraps of meat adhering to it to a tree. What birds come to it? Find the nest of the downy and describe the nest and the eggs. Do the holes made by the downy injure the trees? Why should the downy be welcomed in our orchards? Describe the sounds made by the birds. _To the teacher._--Discuss the pupils' answers to the above problems in the class lesson, using a picture of a woodpecker to illustrate the features of the bird that adapt it for its habits. Examples: the straight, sharp beak suited for drilling; the two backward, projecting toes for perching; the spines on the tips of the tail feathers to act as a prop. The downy woodpecker is very useful in the orchard, because it destroys great numbers of larvæ of the tussock-moth and other insects. The holes made in the bark have never been found to injure the trees. The nest is made in a hollow tree, the entrance to it being almost perfectly round and about one and one-quarter inches in diameter. The downy woodpecker has a very unmusical voice, but fortunately he is aware of this deficiency, and his only attempt at music is drumming with his beak upon a hollow limb or tree. The hairy woodpecker, redheaded woodpecker, flicker, and yellow-bellied woodpecker (sapsucker) are other varieties which visit the orchards and are suitable for lessons similar to these on the downy woodpecker. They are all beneficial birds. FLYCATCHERS Members common to this class are: king-bird; house-phoebe, wood-phoebe, or pewee; whip-poor-will; least fly-catcher; giant fly-catcher. Direct the observations of the pupils to the following type features: Brownish or grayish colours; fringe of long bristles around the mouth (explain their use); whistling notes, varying with the different members of the family; habit of jumping from the perch, catching an insect while on the wing, and returning to the spot from which the flight began; nests, chiefly of mud built in a protected place, as under a bridge, ledge of rock, or projecting log. WRENS The house wren may be studied as a type. Observe its brownish colour, faintly mottled; its small size and energetic movements, its tail turned nearly vertically upward. Observe and report on other wrens, noting any differences. CABBAGE-BUTTERFLY Have a plant of wild mustard or a cabbage growing in a pot. In June, have the pupils, by means of the insect net, catch a number of the white butterflies, the adults of the cabbage-worm. Place the butterflies in jars or bottles and observe them. Make drawings of them. Direct the attention of the pupils to the difference between the wings of the male and those of the female. The former has only one dark spot on the front wing, while the female has two spots on this wing. Release the males and put the females in a vivarium with the potted plant. (A pasteboard box, with a large piece cut out and the opening covered with gauze, makes a good substitute for a vivarium in this case.) Observe the laying of the eggs. How many are placed at one spot? How are the eggs protected? The eggs may be gathered from the cabbage plants in the garden. Observe and record the hatching of the tiny worm, its feeding, growth, forming of chrysalis, development into adult. Frequently little yellow silken cocoons are found in vivaria where cabbage-worms are kept; these are cocoons of a parasite (braconid) that infests the worm. Because of the ease with which the cabbage-butterfly may be obtained and the rapidity of its development in the various stages, it is very suitable as a type for the study of metamorphosis. The sulphur, or puddler (called by the latter name because of its habit of settling in groups around the edges of the water holes), is also a suitable type. The larvæ in this case must be fed on clover. THE TUSSOCK-MOTH Begin the study of this insect in June and July by observing the larvæ feeding on the foliage of the horse-chestnut and other shade trees, and direct attention to their destructiveness. In observing the larvæ, note the size, movements, legs, colour, coral red head, tufts of hair on the back, and the three long plumes. Watch the birds among the trees to discover whether they eat the larvæ. Of what use are the tufts of hair? Do the larvæ feed by biting or by sucking? Describe the damage done by the larvæ. Collect a number of these larvæ and place them in the vivarium with some twigs of horse-chestnut. Observe the spinning of the cocoon and, about two weeks later, look for the emergence of the adult moths. Observe the two kinds of insects. Describe each. Are there any differences in the cocoons from which they emerge? Which form of insect places the egg mass and is therefore the female? Note the number and shape of the eggs and how they are protected. The female moths have no wings and do not move far from the cocoons from which they emerge, while the males have the power of flight. As outdoor work, look for the egg masses on trees and fences and devise means of combating the tussock-moth. Gathering and destroying the egg masses during the winter is found to be fairly effective in checking these insects. Since the cocoons frequently contain parasites that prey upon the larvæ, it is advisable that only the cocoons that have egg masses attached to them should be destroyed; the others are harmless and may contain the useful parasites. The egg masses may be kept over winter in a box in a cool place, and the hatching of the tiny larvæ and their subsequent rapid growth observed. POTATO BEETLE The eggs of this beetle may be found in early summer in clusters on the under surfaces of the leaves of potato plants. EGG.--Observe the size, colour, shape, position, and number in a cluster; appearance of head from outer end after a week. LARVA.--Observe the colour, shape, head, legs, voracious appetite, movements, rapid growth, destructiveness. PUPA.--Observe the larvæ disappear from the plants; a search underground reveals the resting stage, or pupæ. After ten days, the adult beetles emerge. ADULT.--Observe the colour, the hard shell covering the head; the hard outer wings and membraneous inner wings; the hard shell on the under surface of the body; the feelers, and legs. Why will spraying with a poison, such as paris-green, kill these insects? REFERENCES Dearness: _How to Teach the Nature Study Course Stories in Agriculture, Bulletin No. 124._ FISH The Nature Study lessons must be based upon observations of the living fish, preferably in May or June, September or October. The best place for this is on the bank of a clear stream from which it is possible to observe the fish in their natural environment. Here their life activities, their struggles, their conquests, and silent tragedies are enacted before the eyes of the observer. Many observations may be made in this way which will create a life-long interest in these reticent, yet active creatures. Since this method of study is practicable in but few cases, the study of the living fish in the aquarium is the best available substitute. The teacher or the boys of the class can catch a few fish of three or four inches in length and carry them in a jar of water to the aquarium. Minnows, chub, perch, catfish, or other common forms will do. OBSERVATIONS I The general shape, and the suitability of the shape for swimming. The surface of the body and the protection it affords. Note the scales and the slime, the latter a protection against the growth of fungi, etc. The gills--two openings behind the flaps at the rear of the head. The colours, and their value in concealing the fish. The dark upper surface makes it inconspicuous from above; the light under surface blends with the shadow and dims it. The divisions of the body--head, trunk, and tail. Movements of the fish and the part that the various fins play in these movements. Note that the broad tail fin is the most useful fin for locomotion, the others act as balancers or as brakes, or for causing currents of water near the gills. Observe the movements of the pair of fins nearest the gills, the movements of the mouth, and the currents of water entering the mouth and passing through the gill slits. When a fish is kept in a very small quantity of water, observe the effect produced on the movements of the mouth and gill flaps. What are the uses of these movements? The pupils will thus discover the nature of the respiration of the fish. Why do fish die if many are kept in a jar of water? II By supplying various foods learn what kinds are preferred. Find in the actions or habits of the living fish evidences of a sense of smell, of sight, of hearing, and of taste. Nearly all the following points of detailed study can be observed from the living fish: shape; size; tongue; teeth; gill slits leading from the mouth to the gills; nostrils, number and position; eyes, absence of eyelids; fins, size, build; the arrangement of the scales. PROBLEMS Why does the fish require a large mouth? How are the eyes protected? Compare the shape of the eye with the shape of the eye of a land animal. Why are there no openings from the surface directly into the ears? Show the suitability of the fins as organs of locomotion in water. REFERENCES Silcox and Stevenson: _Modern Nature Study_ Nash: _Fishes of Ontario_ (from Department of Education, free) Kellogg: _Elementary Zoology_ CHAPTER XII FORM IV AUTUMN GARDEN WORK The regular work of cultivation of garden and experimental plots should be carefully attended to. Pupils in this Form should be able to do all kinds of garden work with a good deal of proficiency. The work of selecting the best flowers for seed production should be continued. These should be used for planting in the school garden and in home gardens as well. This part of the work might be left to the girls. The boys should be encouraged to take up the systematic selection of seed grain. To get good seed to start with, two methods may be used: 1. Decide upon the kind of grain to be selected and choose from one of the best fields a hundred of the best heads--those that are vigorous, clean, free from rust or smut, and standing up straight. When the heads are dried a little, shell the grain off them and preserve it in a jar in a cold, dry place until spring. 2. Take a quart of oats and pick it carefully, keeping only the largest and most plump kernels. Keep this for spring planting. At the same time, a sample of the poorer grains should be kept for comparison. A regular system of selection should be followed from year to year, taking enough of the largest, brightest, and most compact heads from the plot each autumn to sow a plot of equal size the next spring. After the selection of heads has been made, the remainder of the crop may be harvested, and the grain from this known as general crop from hand-selected seed of the first, second, third year, etc. If the value per acre is required, the plots should be made of a certain size easy to compute, such as one rod square or one rod by two rods. (10-1/2 ft. by 21 ft. is about 1/200 acre.) Samples of each crop should be kept in uniform bottles and labelled; for example--"From selected heads of 1911". The yield per acre in the plot from which the selected heads came should also be noted. These will be interesting for purposes of comparison and for testing duration of vitality later. If the same amount of grain is used in planting a plot each time, the change in bushels per acre may be ascertained and also in pounds per bushel. Some of the boys in this Form may wish to continue this work of improvement by selection and, if so, they should communicate with the Secretary of the Canadian Seed Growers' Association, Canadian Building, Ottawa, and receive full instructions to enable them to carry on their work practically as well as scientifically. HERBACEOUS PERENNIALS FROM SEED The teacher should encourage the growing of herbaceous perennials for the purpose of beautifying the school grounds. Many plants may be started from seed at the school and given to the pupils for home planting. These plants require but little attention and provide excellent bloom in gardens and home grounds from early in spring before annuals are in bloom, on into the autumn. A list of the best varieties will be found in Circular 13, on _Elementary Agriculture and Horticulture_, a copy of which should be in every school. The seed plot should be fertilized and prepared in the usual way, and the seeds planted before the first of September. They may be started in June also, in which case they make more growth before winter. The plot should be well fertilized with thoroughly rotted manure and, if the soil is very dry, the plot should be well watered the day before the seeds are planted. The seeds are usually quite small and should be covered very lightly. The plot should be protected from the hot sun by means of cheese-cloth tacked on a frame. The plants should be watered twice a week in dry weather. In the late autumn, when the ground freezes, the plot should be covered with leaves or straw and some boards, which should be removed when the frost comes out in the spring. DECIDUOUS TREES Before the pupils of this Form leave school they should be able to recognize, by name as well as by sight, all of the species of trees found in their vicinity. To this end the teacher should help them to prepare an inventory of species of trees, shrubs, and vines of the vicinity. They should learn to distinguish the different species of maples, elms, birches, etc. A named collection of leaves helps materially in doing this. The influence of environment upon the growth and shape of trees and how trees adapt themselves to the conditions in which they live is a most interesting and profitable study, demanding careful observation, reflection, and judgment. REFERENCES Muldrew: _Sylvan Ontario._ Briggs. Keeler: _Our Native Trees._ Scribners' Sons. $2.00. TREES IN RELATION TO THEIR ENVIRONMENT Consider the influences at work and their effect under the following heads: 1. CHARACTER OF THE SOIL AND SUBSOIL.--It may be gravelly, pure sand, sandy loam, clay or clay loam, muck or humus, shallow or rocky, and the subsoil may be sand, clay or hard clay with stones (hard-pan). Notice what species are most common in each kind of soil. 2. WATER SUPPLY.--What species are found naturally in moist ravines or along the margins of rivers and lakes, in bogs or swamps, on dry, sandy plains, or rocky hillsides. Consider also the rainfall. 3. EXPOSURE TO SUNLIGHT.--Account for the lack of symmetry in the shapes of trees. Branches grow only where their leaves can get the light. Account for the pith in many tree stems not being in the geometric centre. Account for the rapid growth in height made by young trees in the woods. Their light supply is chiefly from above, and they stretch up toward it as rapidly as possible. Dim light causes rapid growth at the expense, however, of strength of tissue, but as these young trees are protected in the woods from the strain of wind storms, their slimness and lack of toughness is a benefit rather than a hindrance to them. Also, the limbs near the ground die off while the trees are still young and small, giving us the clear timber tree, free from large knots, tall and straight. Make further application of this principle of light in relation to the planting of trees for shade and for wood or lumber. Account for the large size of the leaves of young trees in the dimly lighted woods as compared with the leaves of older trees. The principle of rapid growth in dim light is seen here also. It will be noticed that the large leaves of the young trees are more thin, soft, and flexible. 4. WIND.--Observe the tops of tall trees that have always been exposed to a strong prevailing wind as, for instance, those growing on the tops of hills or the eastern shore of a lake which has a prevailing west wind. The tops lean in the direction in which the prevailing wind blows. Does strong wind help or hinder the growth of a tree? Examples of stunted trees on wind swept hills or shores readily show this. It will be seen also that the higher branches are poorest on the side most exposed to the wind. 5. SUITABILITY OF THE SPECIES TO THE CLIMATE.--Observe that some trees retain their leaves much later in the autumn than do others. The beech, hickory, red oak, and chestnut are good examples. These are on the northern extreme of their territory of growth. The tree best suited to a rigorous climate is the one that finishes its work early in the autumn and has all its tissues well matured before cold weather sets in. Examples: maple, elm, birch, and willow. FRUITS EXCURSION TO A WELL-KEPT ORCHARD If the teacher can arrange to take the pupils to see a well-kept orchard about the time of the apple harvest, it will help to arouse interest in the study of fruits. The trees, as well as the fruit, frequently show distinguishing marks whereby they may be identified. Have the pupils notice the following points: general shape of tree, colour of bark, shape of leaf, method of cultivation, fertilizing, pruning and grafting, spraying and its need, orchard pests, method of picking and packing apples in barrels and boxes for market. SMALL FRUITS Study the method of propagating strawberries and such bush fruits as currants, gooseberries, raspberries, and blackberries. Reports issued from the Fruit Division of the Experimental Farm at Ottawa give information regarding the best varieties suitable for different parts of Ontario and Quebec. Have the pupils try propagating strawberries by taking the stolons or runners; currants and gooseberries, by means of layers or stem cuttings; and raspberries or blackberries, by root cuttings or the detaching of root shoots or suckers. Stem and root cuttings, when taken in the autumn, may be planted at once or may be stored in damp moss or sand in a cold cellar over winter. Stem cuttings should be about the size and length of a lead-pencil and root cuttings about half that size. AUTUMN WILD FLOWERS Observations made with garden flowers should be supplemented by observation lessons on a few selected wild flowers of the woods, fields, and roadsides. Although the spring months afford a much greater variety of wild flowers than do the autumn months, they do not afford quite as good an opportunity for finding and studying them. The woods and fields are drier and more easily reached in the autumn and the fall flowers last much longer. Some of the species seen blooming in spring and early summer are now in fruit and scattering their seed, so that the pupils have a chance to follow out the whole life history of a few chosen species. The pupils in this Form might select for special study the milkweed, worm-seed mustard, wild aster, and goldenrod. These should be observed out-of-doors, preferably, but suitable class-room lessons may be taught by using similar matter. MILKWEED Taking the milkweed as a type, the following points are to be considered: The kind of soil, where found, and whether in sun or shade. Try to pull up a small-sized plant. Dig one up and notice the underground part. Note the size of the largest plant seen, also the size of the leaves, and how they are arranged to prevent overshadowing. Break off a leaf and note the white sticky juice, whence the name "milkweed". Discuss this milk as a protection to the plant. Note time of first and last flowering of the plant and the colour and odour of the flowers. Watch insects gathering honey on a bright day. Note the little sacks of pollen that cling to their feet. They sometimes get their feet caught in little slits in the flower and perish. After the flowers disappear, note the forming of the little boat-shaped pods in pairs. Select one that is ripe and notice that it bursts along one side which is most protected. Open a pod carefully and notice how beautifully the flat, brown seeds are arranged in overlapping rows and how each seed has a large tuft of silky down that serves to carry it far away in the wind. This silk-like down is sometimes used to stuff cushions, and because of it the plant is sometimes called silk weed. One species of butterfly in particular feeds upon this plant--the monarch, or milkweed, butterfly. This is one of the few butterflies that birds do not eat. It is protected by a distasteful fluid. Look on the under side of the leaves of several plants until you find a pretty, pale green cocoon with golden dots, hanging by a thread-like attachment. Early in the season the larvæ may be found feeding on the leaves. This plant is troublesome in some fields and gardens and so is classed as a weed. When the stems come up in the spring, they are soft and tender and are sometimes used as pot herbs. CORRELATIONS Draw a leaf, a flower, a pair of pods, and a seed with its tuft. Write an account of a visit to the woods to study wild flowers. TREES A study of the pines of the locality may be commenced in November, after the deciduous trees have lost their leaves and have entered their quiescent winter period. This is the time when the evergreens stand out prominently on the landscape, in sharp contrast with the other trees that have been stripped of their broad leaves and now look bare and lifeless. If no pines are to be found in the vicinity, cedar or hemlock may be substituted. The lessons should, as far as possible, be observational. The pupils should be encouraged to make observations for themselves out of school. At least one lesson should be conducted out-of-doors, a suitable pine tree having been selected beforehand for the purpose. The following method will serve as a guide in the outdoor study of any species of tree: THE WHITE PINE Have the pupils observe the shape and height of the tree from a distance and trace the outline with the finger. Compare the shape of this tree with others near by of the same species and then with members of other species. Have the pupils describe in what particulars the shapes differ in different trees. They will come to realize that the difference in shape results from differences in length, direction, and arrangement of branches. They may notice that other evergreens resemble the pine in that the stems are all straight and extend as a gradually tapering shaft from the bottom to the top, that all have a more or less conical shape, and that the branches grow straight out from the main stem and not slanting off as in the case of the maples and elms. Coming close to the tree, the pupils may first examine the trunk. By using a string or tape-line, they may find out how big it is around and the length of the diameter. Tell them how big some evergreens are (the giant trees of the Pacific Coast are sometimes over forty feet around). Have them notice where the trunk is largest, and let them find out why a tree needs to be so strong at the ground. Heavy wind puts a great strain on it just at this point. Illustrate by driving a long slat or lath into the ground firmly: then catching it by the top, push it over, and it will break off just at the ground. If a little pine tree could be taken up, the pupils would be interested in seeing what long, strong, fibrous roots the pine has. Let them examine the bark of the trunk and describe its colour and roughness. The fissures in the bark, which are caused by the enlarging of the tree through the formation of new wood under the bark, are deeper at the bottom of the tree than at the top--the tree being younger and the bark thinner, the nearer to the top we go. How old is the very top, down to the first whorl of branches? How old is the stem between the first and second whorls? Between the third and fourth? Let the pupils find out in this way the age of a little pine that is regular and unbroken. The whorls of branches near the ground are usually small and dead in young trees and in old trees have completely disappeared. Relate the size of the trunk to its age, and also relate the size and length of the branches to their age. Where are the youngest branches and how old are they? What branches are oldest? Notice how the branch is noticeably larger just where it joins the trunk, as this is the point of greatest strain. Are the branches the same length on all sides of the trunk? If not, find one where branches are shorter on one side than on the other and try to discover the cause. Usually, if other trees are near enough to shade a certain tree, the branches are shorter and smaller on the shaded side. Let the pupils look up into the tree from beneath and then go a little distance away and look at it. They will notice how bare the branches are on the inside, and the teacher will probably have to explain why this is so. They will discover that the leaves are nearly all out toward the ends of the branches. The leaves get light there while the centre of the tree top is shaded, and the great question that every tree must try to solve is how to get most light for its leaves. The pupils will now see an additional reason why the lower limbs should be longer than the upper ones. The greater length of the lower limbs brings the leaves out into the sunlight. Why this tree is called an evergreen may now be considered. Why it retains its leaves all winter is a problem for more advanced classes, but if the question is asked, the teacher may get over the difficulty by explaining to the class that the leaves are so small and yet so hardy that wind and frost and snow do not injure them. The pupils may each bring a small branch of twig back to the school-room, if the white pine is growing commonly about, otherwise the teacher may provide himself with a branch upon which to base another observation lesson in the class-room. If the tree has cones on it, an effort should be made to get a few, as they will also be considered in a subsequent class-room lesson. If the cones have not yet opened when they are picked, so much the better, as they will soon open in a warm room, and the pupils will be able to examine the seeds and notice how they whirl through the air in falling. If possible, let the pupils have an opportunity of seeing pine trees growing in the woods as well as in the open. OUTLINE OF A CLASS-ROOM LESSON ON THE WHITE PINE ~Inferences.~--If possible, each pupil is supplied with a small branch of the white pine and the teacher with a larger branch which can easily be seen by all the pupils. Before proceeding to examine the specimens, give the pupils a chance to tell what they now know about the white pine, and thus review the lesson taken out-of-doors. Then ask a few questions bearing upon their own observations, such as: What was the soil like where you found the pine tree growing? (They are found most commonly on light, sandy soil.) Did you notice any difference between the shapes of the pines in the deep woods and the pines in the open fields? Did you notice any dead limbs on those in the woods? Why did they die? The pupils may conclude that branches whose leaves cannot get the sunlight must die. Show that this causes knots in the lumber and exhibit samples. This explains also why the trees of the forest have such tall stems without branches for a long distance up from the ground. They get the light only from above and seem to strive with the surrounding trees to reach it. If we want trees to grow tall, how should we plant them? (Close together) What would such trees be good for? (Making timber or lumber) If we want trees to grow low and have thick and bushy tops, how should we plant them? (Far apart) What would such trees be good for? (Their shade and their beauty) Good shade trees should be thirty to forty feet apart. Ask the pupils if they have ever been near a pine tree when a gentle breeze was blowing, and have them tell the cause of the sound that they heard. They may decide that the shape and size of the leaves caused the sound when the wind was blowing through the tree top. Have them examine the branches in order to discover the following points: LEAVES.--These are in bunches of five, two to three inches long, three-cornered, and with little teeth pointing toward the tip, light green near the tip of the bough (young leaves) and darker further down (older leaves); age of a leaf the same as the age of the wood it grows on, therefore some leaves are one year, some two, and a few three years old. No leaves on four-year-old wood, therefore the leaves fall off the white pine the third year. Ask pupils to try to find out by observation when the leaves fall off the pines. Note the fragrance of the leaves, and that they are sometimes put into "pine" cushions, also, how slippery they are to walk on. BUDS.--These are found at the tips of the branches, one large one in the centre and several smaller ones grouped around it. Note their reddish-brown colour and that they are made up of scales overlapping and covered with gum which keeps out the rain, thus protecting the little growing tip inside. When buds grow, they become little twigs with leaves on. Find where the buds were a year ago. Notice the light colour of the twigs that grow during the present season and the darker colour of the twigs of the previous year. Where were the buds two years ago? What did the centre bud become? (A continuation of the stem) What did the other buds, called lateral buds, become? (New branches) Compare the growth made in different years. Notice also how white the wood of the twigs is--the probable reason for calling it "white pine". CONES.--Note the length and shape of the cones and how the seeds are placed in them inside the large scales. Get some of the seeds and note the wing-like attachment. Take the wing off a seed and drop it from a height at the same instant with one that has its wing attached. Note the whirling motion and infer what purpose the wing serves in scattering seed. Taste the kernel of a pine seed and discover why squirrels are fond of them. Burn a pine cone. Find out what birds like to live in this tree. What has been noticed about them and their nests? Have the pupils keep the seeds until the following spring by putting them in a box of dry sand and setting them in a cold place. They should then plant them in a corner where they can be partly shaded when the sun is bright. Plant them about half an inch deep and keep them watered if the weather is dry during the first summer. NOTE.--The cones drop their seeds from high up in the tree so that the wind can carry the seeds long distances. The cones usually stay on the trees for a couple of years after they lose their seeds. CORRELATIONS Draw a pine tree, a bunch of pine needles, a pine cone, and a pine seed. Write a description of a pine tree seen in the woods; also of one found in the open. Write a list of things for which the white pine is useful. _To the teacher._--The winter months, besides affording an opportunity for seeing trees and plants in their dormant or quiescent condition, also afford an opportunity for reading and reflection, for recalling observations and experiences of the past season, and for making plans for work and study in the school garden, woods, and fields when spring returns. The knowledge gained by the pupils through first-hand observation of trees, flowers, and gardens can be greatly extended by pictures and stories descriptive of these, which the teacher may from time to time bring to the school-room. Their personal experiences will be the basis for interpretation of many new things which will come up in the reading lessons, in selections which the teacher reads from week to week, and in books and papers which they themselves read in their homes. Thus the interest that is aroused by the first-hand studies of plants in garden, orchard, or woodland will be carried over from autumn to spring, and the pupils, with the awakening of spring, will take up anew the study of plant life with a keener interest because of the time given to reading and reflection during the winter. Illustrated magazines dealing with gardening and with the study of trees and plants, and such magazines as have a children's department, will prove of great assistance to the teacher who makes any serious attempt to interest pupils in plant studies. Stories of life in the woods and of plant studies suitable to young pupils should be used. REFERENCES Margaret Morley: _Flowers and their Friends._ Ginn & Co. 50 cents. Margaret Morley: _Seed Babies._ Ginn & Co. 25 cents. Margaret Morley: _Little Wanderers._ Ginn & Co. 30 cents. Alice Lounsberry: _The Garden Book for Young People._ Stokes. $1.50. Gertrude Stone: _Trees in Prose and Poetry._ Ginn & Co. 45 cents. COMPARATIVE LESSON ON VARIETIES OF WINTER APPLES KING, BALDWIN, NORTHERN SPY Discuss the names, keeping and cooking qualities of the apples, and bearing qualities of the trees. Provide each member of the class with a typical representative of each of the above varieties of apples. Compare the three apples as to size, form, colour--including marks; hardness, length, and thickness of stem; depth of cavity at the stem end; depth and shape of the cavity at the calyx end. Split each apple from stem to calyx and compare as to the thickness and toughness of the skin, the colour of the flesh, the size of the core, taste and juiciness of the flesh. _To the teacher._--All three are apples of fair size, the Baldwin being on the average the smallest of the three. All three are roundish, but the King is somewhat oval-round, and the Spy, conical-round. The Baldwin has a yellowish skin with crimson and red splashes dotted with russet spots. The King is reddish, shading to dark crimson. The Spy has a yellowish-green skin sprinkled with pink and striped with red. The beautiful colours make all these apples very popular in the markets of American cities and in those of the British Isles; but the soft and easily damaged skin of the Spy makes it the least desirable as an apple for export. All keep well and in cool cellars remain in good condition until April. They may be kept much longer in cold storage chambers, where the temperature is uniformly near the freezing point of the apple. The Baldwin apple tree is reasonably hardy within the ordinary range for apple trees, and its yield is a satisfactory average. The King apple tree is not a hardy tree, nor is it a satisfactory bearer except in the best apple districts. The Spy is a fairly hardy tree and thrives and yields well throughout a wide range; but it does not begin to bear until it is about fifteen years old. A comparative lesson may also be based on selected varieties of autumn apples, such as Fameuse, McIntosh Red, Wealthy, Gravenstein, and St. Lawrence. CODLING MOTH Begin the study of the codling moth in August by examining wormy apples. Find out, by asking the pupils, which orchards of the locality had been sprayed in the spring. Ask the pupils to count out at random one hundred apples and to select from these the number that are wormy. What percentage of the apples are wormy? Compare the percentage of wormy apples in unsprayed, with that in sprayed, orchards. The results will afford evidence of the benefit of spraying. Find out, if possible, the dates on which, and the conditions under which, the spraying of the orchards with the least number of wormy apples was done. Ask the pupils to bring to the school-room a number of wormy apples. Have the pupils cut these open and note the nature and position of the hole, or burrow, and the amount of damage done to the apples. Have the pupils observe the larva and note the size, colour, shape, and number of legs. _To the teacher._--The apple maggot is a less common insect larva and may be distinguished from the larva of the codling moth by the fact that the former has no legs and has the habit of burrowing in all directions through the pulp of the apple, while the larva of the codling moth works almost entirely in the core. The cocoon and pupa phase of this insect may be obtained by keeping the wormy apples in a box containing loose paper on which the cocoons will be placed, or by searching under the bark scales of apple trees in October. Describe the cocoons. Open some of them and describe the contents. Keep the remaining cocoons in a box or vivarium in a cool place during the winter. What birds are seen tapping at the bark scales of the apple trees during winter? Examine the bark scales when a downy woodpecker has been at work and note that the cocoons have been destroyed. Should we encourage the visits of woodpeckers to the orchards? By hanging up a beef bone in the orchard, various birds, including woodpeckers, will be induced to visit and perhaps to make their homes in the orchard. REFERENCES _Common Insects Affecting Fruit Trees, Bulletin No. 158_, Department of Agriculture, Parliament Buildings, Toronto. _Bulletins Nos. 158 and 171_, Ontario Department of Agriculture, deal with many insect pests and their remedies. In May look for the adult moths as they emerge from the cocoons. Observe the colour, size, shape, and the bright copper-coloured horse-shoe on the front wing--the "brand" of the codling moth. Examine the little apples when the blossoms are falling. Note the tiny, flat, oval-shaped egg at various places on the surfaces of the apples and a few days later the tiny worm which emerges from the egg. This soon eats its way into the apple, entering usually at the calyx end. If spraying is done after the petals have fallen and just before the calyx end closes up, a drop of poison is inclosed, and when the larva enters it and begins eating its way into the apple, it gets the poison. SOME COMMON ANIMAL FORMS Brief lessons should be given on some of the lower members of the animal kingdom, for the purpose of broadening the interests of the pupils. The following are suggested as types: snail, spider, freshwater mussel (clam), crayfish (crab), centiped, milliped, salamander, and wood-louse. These are common animal forms, most of which are frequently seen by the pupils, but seldom are their interesting life habits or their places in the animal kingdom recognized. The salamander is to many pupils a lizard of the most poisonous kind; centipeds and millipeds are worms, and they do not recognize that the clam is an animal with sensibilities and instincts. REFERENCES Kellogg: _Elementary Zoology_ Silcox and Stevenson: _Modern Nature Study_ CENTIPEDS AND MILLIPEDS Under stones and sticks in moist soil are to be found two worm-like forms, both having many legs. One of these animals is flat, about an inch long, brown in colour, and provided with a pair of long feelers. On each division of the body is a single pair of legs. This is the _centiped_. The other animal is more cylindrical in shape and has two pairs of legs on each division of the body. Its colour is a darker brown than that of the centiped, and it has a habit of coiling into a spiral shape, when disturbed, so that the soft under surface is concealed. This is the _milliped_. Both of these animals are quite harmless and feed on decaying vegetable matter. They stand midway between worms and insects in forms and habits. A brief observation lesson on each animal, involving their movements and the structural features named above, will enable the pupils to identify them and to appreciate their position in the animal kingdom. SALAMANDERS, OR NEWTS Some forms of these are found in water, as in streams, ponds, and ditches, while other forms are found on land, where they hide under stones and sticks. They are commonly mistaken for lizards, which they closely resemble in shape; but the two animals may be distinguished by the fact that the surface of the body of a salamander is smooth, while that of a lizard is covered with scales. The small red or copper-coloured newts are the most common in Ontario and are frequently found on roads after heavy rains. The tiger salamanders are larger than the red newts and are marked with orange and black spots, hence the name "tiger". Many people believe this species to be especially venomous, while in reality it is quite harmless and, like the other salamanders, is useful for destroying insects and small snails, which form the greater part of its food. _To the teacher._--The superstition of the salamander's power to extinguish a fire into which it is thrown still exists. The early life of the salamander is spent in water, the young form being very much like a tadpole. The salamanders are close relatives of the frogs and toads and may be kept in a jar or vivarium in wet moss or grass. The pupils should learn to recognize the animals and should be instructed as to their habits. SPIDERS ~Problems in observation.~--In how many places can you find spiders' webs? How many forms of spiders' webs can you find? Are the many webs that are found on the meadow grass in the dewy mornings the homes of spiders? If so, describe where the spiders live. (At the bottom of tunnels that run into the ground.) What uses do spiders make of their webs? (Trapping prey, supporting egg cases, protection, and means of moving, as in the case of cobweb spiders.) Drop a fly upon a spider's web and observe the action of the spider. Search under the webs of spiders in attics and sheds and learn, from the skeletons found there, what the spider feeds upon. It will be found that flies, beetles, and other spiders are killed by this monster. Watch a spider spinning its web and find out what parts of the body are used in this work. It will be seen that the threads are produced from little tubes at the rear end of the animal and are placed and fastened by means of the feet. Examine, by the aid of a hand lens, the feet and head of the spider. Note the "brushes and combs" on the former. Note, on the latter, the four, six, or eight eyes (the number and arrangement vary), and the short poison claws at the front of the head. How are the poison claws adapted for seizing and piercing? Note the sharp hooks at the lower ends. BIRD STUDIES Continue the lessons in bird identification and in bird types, using the methods outlined for these studies in Form III. (See pp. 217-24.) CHAPTER XIII FORM IV WINTER FOREST TREES EVERGREENS Several species of evergreens have already been studied. These should be reviewed, and representatives of other species examined. Mid-winter is most suitable for the study of evergreens. The following points should be considered: 1. Description leading to identification 2. Nature of soil and water conditions 3. Common uses of each species of evergreen 4. Collection of wood specimens and cones. WOOD SPECIMENS Specimens should be uniform in size and should show bark on one side and heart wood as well as the outside, or sap wood. They should be about six inches long, two inches wide on the side having the bark, and should gradually come to an edge toward the pith, or centre. When seasoned, one side and one edge should be polished and then oiled or varnished. Specimens of the wood of the deciduous trees may also be prepared during the winter. FRUITS During the winter months, some time should be devoted to reading and discussing articles on general farming and fruit growing. Such articles may be taken from books, magazines, or newspapers, and may be supplied partly by the teacher and partly by the pupils. These articles will be appreciated by the pupils all the more because of their studies of fruit trees during the season. Such topics as the following may be discussed: 1. Best kind of apples, plums, bush fruits, and strawberries. Reports from the Dominion and Provincial Departments of Agriculture. 2. Method of raising fruit trees--from seed, grafting, and budding. 3. Demonstrations in pruning. This may be done in early spring by taking a class to a neighbouring orchard. 4. Methods of planting and cultivation. 5. Packing and storing. 6. Spraying. Much information is to be found in Horticultural Journals and papers, and in Bulletins to be obtained from the Secretary of Agriculture for Ontario. Illustrated articles on gardening and fruit growing should be collected for school use. Views of fine gardens, parks, and home grounds will be of interest to the pupils. Simple artistic methods of ornamental planting with trees, shrubs, vines, and herbaceous perennials can now be introduced, and some scheme for improving the school grounds outlined. Catalogues should be obtained soon after New Year's and, after examining their merits, the best varieties of seed and fruit for the district should be selected. Horticultural societies, as well as Dominion and Provincial Departments of Agriculture, commonly give selected lists with descriptions of the different varieties. WEEDS AND WEED SEEDS The training in the observation and identification of weeds and weed seeds, which was begun in Form III, should be continued in Form IV. For method see Form III. PHYSICAL SCIENCE PHASE OF NATURE STUDY WATER PRESSURE 1. Grasp an empty tin can by the top and push it down into a pail of water. Note the tendency of the can to rise. The water presses upward. Its downward pressure is evident. 2. Tie a large stone to a string, hold it at arm's length, shut the eyes, and lower the stone into water. _Note_ the decrease in weight. This is also due to upward pressure, which we call buoyancy. The actual decrease may be found by means of a spring balance. 3. Try Experiment 2, using a piece of iron the same weight as the stone. Is the decrease in weight as evident? Ships made wholly of iron will sink. Explain. 4. Put an egg into water; it slowly sinks. Add salt to the water; the egg floats. EXERCISES 1. Will the human body sink in water? In which is there less danger of drowning, lake or sea water? 2. When in bathing, immerse nearly the whole body, then take a full inspiration. Note the rise of the body. 3. Why does ice float? (See expansion of water by freezing.) 4. Balloons are bags filled with some light gas, generally hydrogen or hot air. They are pushed up by the buoyancy of the air. The rise of heated air or water (see Convection) is really due to the same force. Clouds, feathers, and thistledown are kept in the air more by the action of winds and small air currents than by buoyancy. STUDY OF AIR (Consult _Science of Common Life_, Chaps. VIII, IX, X.) 1. Air takes up space. Put a cork with one hole into the neck of a flask or bottle. Insert the stem of a funnel and try to pour in water. Try with two holes in the cork. When we call a bottle "empty" what is in it? 2. Air is all around us. Feel it; wave the hands through it; run through it; note that the wind is air; inhale the air and watch the chest. 3. Air has weight. This is not easy to demonstrate without an air-pump and a fairly delicate balance. Fit a large glass flask with a tightly fitting rubber stopper having a short glass tube passing through it. To the glass tube attach a short rubber one and on this put a clamp. Open the clamp and suck out all the air possible. Close the clamp and weigh the flask. When perfectly balanced, open the clamp and let the air enter again. Note the increase in weight. If an air-pump is available, procure a glass globe provided with a stop-cock (see Apparatus). Pump some of the air from the globe, then weigh and, while it is on the balance, admit the air again and note increase in weight. Tie a piece of thin sheet rubber over the large end of a thistle tube; suck the air out of the tube and note how the rubber is pushed in. This is due to the weight or pressure of the air. Turn the tube in various positions to show that the pressure comes from all directions. To show that "suction" is not a force, let a pupil try to suck water out of a flask when there is only one opening through the stopper. If two holes are made, the water may be sucked up, that is, _pushed_ up by the weight of the air. Fill a pickle jar with water. Place a piece of writing paper on the top and then, holding the paper with the palm of the hand, invert the jar. The pressure of the air keeps the water in. A cubic foot of air weighs nearly 1-1/4 oz. Find the weight of the air in your school-room. The atmosphere exerts about fifteen pounds pressure on every square inch of the surface it rests against. Find the weight supported by the top of a desk 18 inches by 24 inches. If the surface of the body is eight square feet, what weight does it have to sustain? Why does this weight not crush us? THE BAROMETER The experiments immediately preceding will have paved the way for a study of the barometer. 1. Fill a jar with water and invert it, keeping its mouth below the surface of the water in another vessel. If the pupils can be led to see that the water is sustained in the jar by the air pressing on the water in the vessel, they can understand the barometer. 2. Fill a tube about 30 inches long, and 1/4 inch inside diameter with water, and invert it over water, as with the jar in the previous experiment. 3. Use the same tube or one similar to that in 2 above, but fill with mercury and allow the pupils to notice the great weight of the mercury. Holding the mercury in with your finger, invert the tube over mercury. This time the fluid falls some distance in the tube as soon as the finger is removed. A tube of this size requires 1 lb. of mercury. Lead the pupils to see that the mercury remaining in the tube is sustained by the air pressure, and that any increase or decrease of the atmospheric pressure will result in the rise or fall of the mercury column. Leave the barometer (made as in 3 above) in the room for a few days and note whether its weight changes. The use of the instrument in predicting weather changes should be emphasized. Compare your barometer with the records in the daily papers. The average height of the barometric column is 30 inches at sea-level. Explain how you could estimate heights of mountains and balloons with a barometer. THE COMMON PUMP This is a valuable application of air pressure. A glass model will prove useful, but a model made by pupils will be much more so. (See _Laboratory Exercises in Physics_ by Newman.) The water rises in the pump because the sucker lifts the air from the water inside, allowing the air outside to push the water up. A common pump will not lift water more than about 30 feet. Why is this? Compare the pump to a barometer. (See _The Ontario High School Physics_.) EXPANSIVE FORCE OF AIR Air and all other gases manifest a pressure in all directions not due to their weight. The power of air to keep tires and footballs inflated and that of steam in driving an engine are examples. It is this force that prevents the pressure of air from crushing in, since there are many air spaces distributed throughout the body. COMPOSITION OF AIR This subject and the three immediately following it have a special bearing on hygiene. 1. Invert a sealing-jar over a lighted candle. Has the candle used up _all_ the air when it goes out? 2. Place a very short candle on a thin piece of cork afloat on water in a plate; light the candle, and again invert the jar over it. Note that the candle goes out and the water rises only a short distance in the jar; therefore _all_ the air has not been used up. 3. Slip the glass top of the jar under the open end and set the jar mouth upward on the table without allowing any water to escape. Now plunge a lighted splinter into the jar. The flame is extinguished. Air, therefore, contains an active part that helps the candle to burn and an inactive part that extinguishes flame. The names _oxygen_ and _nitrogen_ may be given. These gases occur in air in the proportion of about 1:4. (This method is not above criticism. Its advantage for young pupils lies in its simplicity.) OXYGEN Make two or three jars of oxygen, using potassium chlorate and manganese dioxide. (See any Chemistry text-book.) Let the pupils examine the chemicals, learn their names, and know where to obtain them. Perform the following experiments: 1. A glowing splinter relights and burns very brightly if plunged into oxygen. 2. A piece of picture wire tipped with sulphur burns with great brightness. 3. Burn phosphorus or match heads in a spoon. A spoon may be made by attaching to a wire a bit of crayon having a hollow scooped on its upper surface. A clay pipe bowl attached to a wire will answer. From these experiments pupils will learn the value of nitrogen as a diluent of the oxygen. Pure oxygen entering the lungs would be just as destructive as it would be entering the furnace. CARBON DIOXIDE 1. Make a jar of this gas. Washing soda and vinegar will answer if hydrochloric acid and marble are not obtainable. (Consult the _Science of Common Life_, Chap. XIII, and any Chemistry text-book.) 2. Lower a lighted candle first into a jar of air then into the jar of carbon dioxide. 3. Make some lime-water by stirring slaked lime with water and allowing the mixture to settle. Shake up some clear lime-water with a jar of the gas. Pupils will be made to understand that the milky colour will in future be considered the test for carbon dioxide. 4. Have one of the pupils cause his breath to bubble through some clear lime-water for a minute. Using a bicycle pump, cause some fresh air to bubble through lime-water. 5. Hold a clear jar inverted over the candle flame for a few seconds, then test with lime-water. 6. Invert a large jar over a leafy plant for a day. Keep in the dark and test the jar with lime-water. Is this gas likely to be in the air? Set a plate of lime-water in the school-room for a day or two, and then examine it. Try to pour the gas from jar to jar and use a candle as a test. Is the gas heavier than air? On account of its weight, the gas often collects in the bottoms of old wells, mines, and tunnels. It is dangerous there since it will not support life. USES: 1. Add a little water to some baking powder and cause the gas that forms to pass through lime-water. What causes the biscuits to "rise"? 2. Mix flour and water in a jar, add a bit of yeast cake and a little sugar, and let stand in a warm place. Test the gas that forms, for carbon dioxide. What causes bread to rise? 3. Uncork a bottle of ginger ale, shake the bottle, and lead the gas that comes off through lime-water. 4. Most portable fire extinguishers depend on the generation of carbon dioxide. Show the similarity between our bodies and the candle. The candle needs oxygen; it produces heat, and yields water and carbon dioxide. Much of our food is somewhat similar in composition to the wax of a candle; we breathe oxygen, our bodies are warmed by a real burning within, and we exhale water and carbon dioxide. After exercise why do we feel more hungry? Why do we breathe faster? Why do we feel warmer? Why does the fire burn better when the damper is opened? IMPURITIES OF AIR All air contains carbon dioxide. If the amount exceeds 6 parts in 10,000, it becomes an impurity, not so much on its own account as because it indicates a poisoned state of the air in a room, since organic poisons always accompany it when it is emitted from the lungs. Other impurities of the air, dependent on the locality and the season, are smoke, dust, disease germs, sewer gas, coal-gas, pollen dust. SOLUTIONS OF SOLIDS (Consult the _Science of Common Life_, Chap. VII.) Have the pupils weigh out equal quantities of sugar, salt, soda, alum, blue-vitriol. Shake up with equal quantities of water to compare solubilities. Repeat, using hot water. Is it possible to recover the substance dissolved? Set out solutions on the table to evaporate, or evaporate them rapidly over a stove or spirit-lamp. Try to dissolve sand, sulphur, charcoal, in water. Obtain crystals of iodine and show how much better, in some cases, alcohol is as a solvent than is water. APPLICATIONS: 1. Most of our "essences", "tinctures", and "spirits" are alcoholic solutions. 2. Digestion is the effort of the body to dissolve food. 3. The food in the soil enters the plant only after solution. 4. The solvent power of water makes it so valuable for washing. 5. Maple sap is water containing sugar in solution. 6. In the salt region along Lake Huron, holes are drilled to the salt beds, water is poured in, then pumped out and evaporated. Explain. 7. Meat broth is a solution of certain materials in the meat. 8. How could you manufacture salt from sea water? SOLUTION OF LIQUIDS Try to mix oil and water, benzine and water, oil and benzine. Only in the third case do we find a permanent mixture, or solution. Try to dissolve vinegar, glycerine, alcohol, mercury, with water. APPLICATIONS: 1. Paint is mixed with oil so that the rain will not wash it off so easily. 2. Water will not wash grease stains. Benzine is necessary. 3. Why is it necessary to "shake" the bottle before taking medicine? SOLUTION OF GASES Study air dissolved in water, by gently heating water in a test-tube and observing the bubbles of air that gather on the inner surface of the test-tube. Aquatic animals, such as fish, clams, crayfish, crabs, subsist on this dissolved air. LIMESTONE Pieces of this rock may be found in all localities. Teach pupils to recognize it by its gray colour, its effervescence with acid, and the fossils and strata that show in most cases. If exposed limestone rocks are near, visit them with the pupils and note the layers, fossils, and evidences of sea action. Compare lime with limestone as to touch, colour, and action on water and litmus. Try to make lime by putting a lump of limestone in the coals for some time; add water to this. Other forms of limestone are marble, chalk, egg-shells, clam-shells, scales in tea-kettles. Geographically, the study of limestone is of great importance. Grind some limestone very fine, add a very little of this to water, and bubble carbon dioxide through for some time; note the disappearance of the limestone. This explains how limestone rocks are being slowly worn away and why the water of rivers, springs, and wells is so often "hard". Catch some rain-water in the open and test it for hardness. It will be found "soft". Place a few limestone pebbles in a tumbler with this soft water and after a day or two test again. The water will be "hard". Compare, as to hardness, the water from a concrete cistern with that from a wooden one. CARBON Procure specimens of hard and soft coal, coke, charcoal, graphite, peat, and petroleum. Note the distinctive characteristics of each. Discuss the uses. Try to set each on fire. Note which burns with a flame when laid on the coals or placed over the spirit-lamp. Put a bit of soft coal into a small test-tube; heat and light the gas that is produced. This gas, when purified, is one kind of illuminating gas. Note the _coke_ left in the test-tube. Fill the bowl of a clay pipe with soft coal and seal it up with plaster of paris. After this has hardened, place the bowl in hot coals or in the flame of a spirit-lamp and light the coal-gas at the end of the stem. After all the gas has been driven off, look for the coke inside. Heat a bit of wood in a small test-tube and light the gas that is evolved. Note the charcoal left. Cover a piece of wood with sand or earth; heat, and note that charcoal is formed. This illustrates the old method of charcoal-burning. This subject is closely related to industrial geography. HYDROGEN A convenient way to prepare hydrogen is to use zinc and hydrochloric acid with a test-tube for a generator. (Consult any Chemistry text-book.) Make the gas and burn it at the end of a tube, holding a dry, cold tumbler inverted over the flame. Note that water is formed. Conclude what water consists of, namely, oxygen and hydrogen. Water may be decomposed into oxygen and hydrogen, hence a use of hydrogen may be shown by attaching a clay pipe to the generator and filling soap bubbles with the gas. When freed these rise quickly. MAGNETS If bar magnets cannot be obtained, use a child's horse-shoe magnet. Procure small pieces of cork, wood, iron, brass, glass, lead, etc., and let pupils discover which the magnet attracts. Have pupils interpose paper, wood, slate, glass, iron, lead, etc., in sheets between the magnet and the iron and note the effect on the force exerted. Note that when one end of a magnet touches or comes near the end of a nail, the nail becomes a magnet, but not a permanent one. Magnetize a needle by drawing one of the poles of the magnet from end to end of the needle, always in the same direction, about twenty times. Suspend the needle horizontally with a piece of silk thread and note its position when at rest. Get a small compass and show how it is related to the foregoing experiments. Emphasize its use to mariners. If possible, get a piece of lodestone and show its magnetic properties. ELECTRICITY Half fill a tumbler with water and add about a teaspoonful of sulphuric acid. Set in this a piece of copper and a piece of zinc, but do not let them touch. Make a coil by winding insulated wire around a block of wood about ten times. Remove the wood and place a compass in the centre of the coil. Join the ends of the wire to the two metals in the tumbler. The sudden movement of the needle will be taken as the indication of a current. Let pupils try experiments with many pairs of solids, such as lead and silver, carbon and glass, wood and iron, tin and zinc, and liquids such as vinegar and brine. Show pupils how to make a simple battery. See home-made apparatus, page 50, and consult _Laboratory Exercises_ by Newman. Two or three dry cells will be found sufficient for any experiments, but the home-made battery is to be preferred. Show pupils how to make a magnet by winding a piece of insulated wire around a nail and joining the ends of the wire to the battery. Make a horse-shoe magnet by bending the nail and winding the wire about both ends in opposite directions. As an application of the electro-magnet, show pupils how to make a telegraph sounder. (See Manual on _Manual Training_.) If possible, examine the construction of an electric bell. The motor and electric light are other common applications of the current. Take up the uses of the motor in factories, and for running street-cars and automobiles. Show the necessity for a water-wheel or engine to produce the current, and for wires to connect. Explain that batteries are not used to produce large currents, but that machines called dynamos, similar to motors, when driven by steam or water-power, will yield electric currents as batteries do. STEAM The power of steam may be shown by loosely corking a flask and boiling the water in it until the cork is driven out, or by stopping the spout of a boiling tea-kettle, or by letting a stream of steam impinge on a toy paper wheel. Encourage pupils to learn all they can about steam and gasolene engines and their uses. FARM TOOLS This topic should be dealt with only in so far as it can be made a subject for actual observation by the pupils. Children should learn to be thoughtful and observant and to do all kinds of work, manual as well as mental, intelligently. MACHINES (Consult _The Ontario High School Physics_, Chap. IX.) LEVER.--When a _lever_ is used to lift a log, one end is placed under the log, a block called a _fulcrum_ is placed under the lever as close as possible to the log, and then the workman pulls down on the outer end of the lever. For example, if the fulcrum is one foot from the log and ten feet from the man, the latter can raise ten pounds with a pull of one pound, but he has to move his end of the lever ten times as far as the log rises. Try it. See other examples in plough handles, see-saw, balance, scissors, wheel-barrow, pump-handle, handspike, crowbar, canthook, nut-crackers. ROPE AND PULLEY.--In the _rope_ and _pulley_ note that when the pulley is a fixed one, the only advantage is a changed direction of the rope. When the pulley is _movable_, the horse pulling will have only half the weight to draw if the pulley is single, one quarter if double, one sixth if triple, etc. Thus in the case of a common hay-fork the horse draws only half the weight of the hay, but he walks twice as far as the hay moves. COGS.--If one wheel has eighty _cogs_ and the other ten, the latter will turn eight times to the former's once. BELT.--When a _belt_ runs over two wheels, one having, say, one fifth of the diameter of the other, the smaller will revolve five times for one revolution of the other. CRANK.--With a _crank_ two feet long, one may turn a wheel twice as easily as with one one foot long, but the hand will move twice as far. If a wedge is two inches thick at the large end and ten inches long, a man may lift 1000 pounds by striking the wedge a 200-lb. blow. INCLINED PLANE.--If a plank twelve inches long has one end on the ground and the other on a cart four inches high, one man can roll up the plank the same weight that would require three men to lift, but he has to move the object three times as far. PROBLEMS 1. Why is a long-handled spade easier to dig with than a short-handled one? 2. Which is easier, to dig when the spade is thrust full length or half length into the earth? 3. Can a small boy "teeter" on a board against a big boy? How? 4. In helping to move a wagon, why grasp the wheel near its rim? 5. In making a balance, why should the arms be equal? In a balance with unequal arms, compare the weights used with the article weighed. 6. In using shears, is it better to place the object you wish to cut near the handles or near the points? 7. Where is the best place to put the load on a wheel-barrow? 8. Notice how three horses are hitched to a plough or binder. 9. Where would you grasp the pump-handle when you wish to pump (1) easily, (2) quickly? 10. Stretch out your arm and see whether you can hold as heavy a weight on your hand as on your elbow. 11. Count the pulleys used in a hay-fork and determine the use of each. 12. If a ton of hay is unloaded at five equal forkfuls, what weight has the horse to draw at each load? 13. Count the cogs on the wheels of a fanning-mill, washing-machine, apple-parer, or egg-beater, and determine how the direction or rate of the motion is changed thereby. 14. Measure the diameter of the large fly-wheel of a thrashing-machine engine, and of that which turns the cylinder in the separator. Decide how many times the cylinder revolves for one turn of the fly-wheel. 15. Think of all the uses of a wedge. Draw one. Compare the axe, knife, and chisel with the wedge. 16. How are heavy logs loaded on a sleigh or truck? How are barrels of salt and sugar loaded and unloaded? 17. There are two hills of the same height. One has a gradual slope, the other a steep one. Which is easier to climb? In what case is it farthest to the top? 18. Why does a cow or horse take a zigzag path when climbing a steep hill? CHAPTER XIV FORM IV SPRING METHODS OF IMPROVING HOME AND SCHOOL GROUNDS The study of plants should lead to an intelligent appreciation of their beauties and a desire to have them growing about. Many of our native trees, shrubs, vines, and herbaceous plants are quite as beautiful as some that are procured at considerable expense from nurserymen. A great work remains to be done in cultivating and popularizing our best native species. Up to this point the pupils have been getting acquainted with them in their own natural habitat; the next step should be to use them in covering up harsh and offensive views about the school and home grounds, in softening and giving restful relief to barren yards and bare walls, to ugly fences and uninteresting walks and driveways. Begin to plan some simple improvements for the spring. These may be repairing of fences and gates in order to protect the grounds from stray animals, the cleaning up of the yards, the gathering of stones which may be used in making a rockery, the planting of trees along the sides and front of the grounds--a double row of evergreens to overcome a cold northern exposure or to exclude from view disagreeable features, the laying out of a walk or drive with borders, flower beds, or shrubs in little clumps. Plans of grounds well laid out should be examined and discussed in the school-room. Many illustrated magazines give useful suggestions. Plans can be worked out on the black-board with the pupils. It will take years to complete such a plan, but the pupils should have a part in making the plan as well as in carrying it out. The aim should be to encourage the use of simple and inexpensive things obtained in the vicinity, wherewith to produce harmony and pleasing natural effects. Comfort and utility must be considered as well as beauty and natural design. In the school grounds the outdoor games must also be provided for and sufficient room allowed. Such efforts on the part of the teacher and pupils, if wisely directed, are sure to meet with the approval of the parents and must call forth the hearty co-operation of the trustees. It is not well to attempt too much in one year. It is better to do a small amount well than to leave much work in a half-done condition. MAKING AND CARE OF A LAWN The soil must be drained and not too much shaded by trees. At first it should be summer fallowed or cultivated every few weeks throughout the summer, to kill the weeds and make it fine and level. A thick seeding of lawn grass-seed should be sown early the next spring and raked lightly in. All levelling and preparation must have been done the previous season. Coarse grasses, such as timothy, should not be used on a lawn. Red top and Kentucky blue-grass in equal parts are best and, if white clover is desired, add about half as much white Dutch clover seed as red top. If the soil has been prepared as above, there is no need to use a foster crop of oats or barley, as is done in seeding down meadows. Roll the lawn after seeding and also after heavy rains as soon as the surface dries. Shortly after the grass appears, begin to run the lawn-mower over it, so as to cut weeds or native grasses that may be gaining a foothold. Watering is dangerous, unless carefully and regularly done during the summer, the evening being the best time. Merely wetting the surface by sprinkling encourages shallow rooting and therefore rapid drying out. Regular mowing and rolling are more important. REFERENCES Parsons: _How to Plan the Home Grounds._ Doubleday. $1.00 Waugh: _The Landscape Beautiful._ Judd. $2.00 Department of Education: _Improvement of School Grounds._ SOIL STUDIES WEIGHT Using a balance, compare weights of equal-sized boxes of different soils, dried and powdered fine. Note the comparative lightness of humus. Weigh a box of earth taken fresh from the field, from this compute (1) the weight of a cubic foot of such soil, (2) the weight of the soil to the depth of a foot in a ten-acre field. Repeat the experiment, making it an exercise in percentage. Fill two glass tubes (lamp chimneys will do), one with finely powdered clay, the other with sand. Set the tubes in a pan containing water. Note the rise of the water due to capillarity. Through which soil does it rise faster? Farther? Try with other soils. Try with fine soil and also with the same soil in a lumpy condition. From this give a reason (1) for tilling soil, (2) for rolling after seeding. SUBSOILS Procure samples of soil from different depths, four inches, eight inches, twelve inches, sixteen inches, etc. Note how the soil changes in colour and texture. In which do plants succeed best? In most fields the richest part of the soil is contained in the upper nine inches; the portion below this is called subsoil. This extends to the underlying rock and is usually distinguished from the upper portion by its lighter colour, poorer texture, and smaller supply of available plant food. The difference is due largely to the absence of humus. The character of the subsoil has an important bearing on the condition of the upper soil. A layer of sand or gravel a few feet below the surface provides natural drainage, but if it be too deep, it may allow the water to run away rapidly, carrying the plant food down below the roots of the plants. A hard clay subsoil will render the top too wet in rainy weather and too dry in droughts, because of the small amount of water absorbed. Such a soil is benefited by under-draining. A deep and absorptive subsoil returns water to the surface, by capillary action, as it is needed. The subsoil finally contains a large amount of plant food, which becomes gradually changed into a form in which plants can make use of it. Pupils should find out the character of the subsoil in their various fields at home and its effect on the fertility of the field. FERTILIZERS Along with water, the roots take up from the soil various substances that are essential to their healthy growth. Potash, phosphoric acid, nitrogen, calcium, sulphur, magnesium, and iron are needed by plants, but the first three are particularly important. If land is to yield good crops year after year, it must be fertilized, that is, there must be added chemicals containing the above-mentioned plant foods. Land becomes poor from two causes: the plant food in the soil becomes exhausted, and poisonous excretions from the roots of one year's crops act injuriously on those of the next season. Rotating crops will improve both conditions for a while, but eventually the soil will require treatment. Humus contains plant food and is also an excellent absorbent of the poisonous excretions. It is added as barn-yard manure, leaves, or as a green crop ploughed in. The chemicals commonly used comprise nitrate of soda, bone meal, sulphate of potash, chloride of potash, lime, ashes, cotton-seed meal, dried blood, super-phosphate, rock phosphate, and basic clay. EXPERIMENTS: 1. Sow wheat on the same plot year after year and note the result when no fertilizer is used. Sow wheat on another plot, but use good manure. 2. Try the various commercial fertilizers on the school plots, leaving some without treatment. 3. Examine the roots of clover, peas, or beans, and look for nodules. These show the presence of bacteria, which convert the atmospheric nitrogen into a form in which the plants can use it. Scientific farmers have learned the value of inoculating their soil with these germs. A crop of peas or clover may produce the same result. 4. Observe Nature's method of supplying soil with humus. SOIL-FORMING AGENTS There was once a time when the surface of the earth was bare rock. Much of this rock still exists and in many places lies on the surface, but it is usually hidden by a layer of soil. Soil is said to be "rock ground to meal by Nature's millstones". The process is very slow, but it is constantly going on. The pupils should be directed to find evidences of this "grinding". 1. RUNNING WATER.--Brooks, creeks, rain, and the tiny streamlets on the hills all tell us how soil is carried from place to place. Get some muddy water from the river after a heavy rain. Let it settle in a tall jar and observe the fine layer formed. Wash some pebbles clean, place them in a glass jar with some clear water, and roll or shake the jar about for a few minutes. Note that the water becomes turbid with fine material worn from the stones. A process similar to this is constantly going on in rivers, lakes, and seas. Account for the presence of gravel beds now situated far away from any water. 2. ICE GLACIERS.--How do these act on rocks? Show evidences in Ontario as far as these can be illustrated from the surroundings, such as polished rocks, boulders, beds of clay, sand, or gravel, small lakes, grooved stones, etc. 3. FROST AND HEAT.--See "Expansion of Solids", pages 189, 190. Look for splintered or cracked stones. Why do farmers plough in the fall? 4. WIND.--In sections near the lakes the action of the wind in moving the sand may be seen and appreciated. There are other places where this work is going on on a smaller scale. 5. PLANTS.--Our study of humus shows the value of vegetable matter in soil. Besides contributing to the soil, plants break up rocks with their roots and dissolve them with acid excretions. It is interesting to study how a bare rock becomes covered with soil. First come the lichens which need no soil; on the remains of these the mosses grow. The roots of mosses and lichens help to disintegrate the rock with their excretions, so that, with frost, heat, air, and rain to assist, there is a layer of soil gradually formed on which larger plants can live. A forest develops. The trees supply shade from the sun and shelter from the wind, thus retarding evaporation. The roots of the trees hold the soil from being washed away. The dead leaves and fallen stems provide humus, and, on account of the water-holding capacity of humus, the forest floor acts like a sponge, preventing floods in wet seasons and droughts in dry times. 6. ANIMALS.--Pupils should make a list of all burrowing animals and look for examples. The work of the earthworms is especially interesting. By eating the soil, they improve its texture and expose it to the air. Their holes admit air and water to the soil. The worms also drag leaves, sticks, and grass into their holes and thus add to the humus. Darwin estimated that the earthworms in England passed over ten tons of soil an acre through their bodies annually. This is left on the surface and makes a rich top-dressing. TILLING THE SOIL 1. It makes the soil finer, thus increasing the surface for holding film water and enabling it to conduct more water by capillarity. 2. It saves water from evaporation. (See Experiments 7 and 8, Form III.) 3. It aerates the soil, enabling roots to thrive better. 4. It drains (hence warms) the soil, assuring more rapid growth. 5. It kills weeds. A large part of the work with soils may be done in connection with the garden studies, though most of the above mentioned experiments may be tried in the school-room. In ungraded schools any of the experiments may be made instructive to all the Forms. Pupils should be asked to acquaint themselves with the common implements used on the farm. They should ascertain the special service rendered by each. See _Circular 156_, Dominion Department of Agriculture. GARDEN WORK The work in gardening for Form IV should be connected with some definite line of experimental work. The garden should be so planned that a part of it can be used exclusively for experimental work. Co-operation with the Farmer's Experimental Union of the Ontario Agricultural College at Guelph is advisable at this point. The following list of experiments is suggested as suitable for boys especially, but no pupil should attempt more than one experiment each year. EXPERIMENTS IN PLOTS OUT-OF-DOORS Experimental plots may be of different sizes, according to the space available, from a yard square to a rod square or larger. A plot 10 ft. 5 in. by 20 ft. 10 in. is almost 1/200 of an acre, so that the actual yield on such a plot when multiplied by 200 is an approximation of the yield an acre. 1. Testing of varieties of grains, vegetables, or root seeds, including potatoes new to the district. 2. Testing different varieties of clovers and fodder grasses. These plots should be so situated that they can remain for three years. 3. Thick and thin sowing of grain: Use plots not less than four feet square. They may be tried most easily with wheat, oats, or barley, although any species of grain may be used. Use four plots of the same size, equal in fertility and other soil conditions. In No. 1 put grains of wheat or oats, as the case may be, two inches apart each way. In No. 2 put the grains two inches apart in the row and the rows four inches apart. In No. 3 put the grains four inches apart in the row and the rows four inches apart. In No. 4 put the grains four inches apart in the row and the rows eight inches apart. If possible, weigh the straw and grain when cut and the grain alone when dry and shelled out of the heads. 4. Deep and shallow growing of grain: Use four plots similar to those in experiment No. 3. Put the same amount of seed in the different plots. In No. 1, one inch deep; in No. 2. two inches deep; in No. 3, four inches deep, and in No. 4, six inches deep. Note which is up first, and which gives the best yield and best quality. 5. Early and late sowing: Three plots are required. Plant the same amount of seed in each and cover to the same depth. Plant No. 1 as early as the soil can be made ready; No. 2, two weeks later; and No. 3, two weeks later than No. 2. Compare the quality and the yield. 6. Effect of sowing clover with grain the first year: Only two plots are required. Sow the same amount of wheat or oats on each plot. On one plot put a moderate supply of red clover and none on the other. Weigh (or estimate), as in Experiment 3 above, the straw and the grain produced on each. 7. Effect of a clover crop on the grain crop succeeding it the following year: The same two plots must be used as in No. 6. When the grain was cut the previous autumn, the plots should have been left standing without cultivation until spring. When the clover has made some growth, spade it down and prepare the other plot in the same way. Rake them level and sow the same amount of grain in each again. Weigh the crops produced on each. 8. Test quality, yield, and time of maturity of several varieties of the same species. Samples of such varieties of wheat as Red Fife, White Fife, Preston, Turkey Red, Dawson's Golden Chaff, White Russian, etc., may be obtained from the Central Experimental Farm at Ottawa, if not available in the district. 9. Effect of different fertilizers (1) on the same crop, (2) on different crops: This can be done either out-of-doors in small plots or indoors, using pots or boxes. (1) Effect on the same crop: For example, oats on plots four feet square. The following standard fertilizers may be used: stable manure, nitrate of soda, muriate of potash, and bone meal. On plot No. 1, a dressing of stable manure, On plot No. 2, four oz. nitrate of soda, On plot No. 3, four oz. muriate of potash, On plot No. 4, eight oz. bone meal, On plot No. 5, two oz. nitrate of soda, two oz. muriate of potash, and four oz. bone meal. On plot No. 6, use no fertilizer. Record results. (2) Effect on different crops: Try a series of experiments similar to the above, using (a) peas instead of oats, (b) using corn, (c) using cabbage, (d) using potatoes. FUNCTION OF PARTS OF PLANTS This may be introduced in Form III and continued in the next Form. Already the attention of the pupils has been directed to the essential organs of the flower, namely, stamens and pistil. They have noticed the two kinds of flowers on pumpkins, corn, and many trees. They have seen that only the pistillate flowers produce fruit and seeds, and that when the staminate flowers have shed their pollen, they die. They have seen the yellow dust that the stamens contain and have seen bees laden with it as they emerge from the heart of the flower. Have them watch the bee as it enters the flower and notice how it invariably rubs some part of its pollen-covered body against the pistil. When on the moist, sticky top of the pistil, these little pollen-grains soon begin to grow, sending a delicate tube down to the bottom of the pistil to the ovary. Inside the ovary are little bodies called the ovules that are moistened by a fluid that comes from this delicate pollen tube, and at once they begin to enlarge and eventually become the seeds. The coverings surrounding them complete the true fruit. The use of the root in supporting the plant in its normal position is apparent to every pupil. To demonstrate the firm hold it has upon the soil, have the pupils try to pull up some large plants by the roots. They will then notice the branching roots of some plants and the long conical roots of others. Compare the colour and other surface features of the root and stem. To prove its feeding power, try two plants of equal size, taking the root off one and leaving it uninjured in the other. Set them side by side in moist earth and notice which withers. Take all the leaves off a plant and keep them off for a few weeks. The plant dies if its leaves are not allowed to grow. Keep it in the dark for a long time, and it finally dies even when water and soil are supplied. The leaves, therefore, are essential and require sunlight in doing their work. Their complete work will be considered later. HOW THE PLANT GETS ITS FOOD FROM THE SOIL When seeds germinate, the lower end of the caulicle, which becomes the root, bears large numbers of root-hairs. Inside the root-hairs is protoplasm and cell sap. These root-hairs grow among the soil particles which lie covered over with a thin film of moisture. It is this moisture that is taken up by these root-hairs, and in it is a small amount of mineral matter in solution which helps to sustain the plant. The transmission of soil water through the delicate cell walls of these root-hairs is known as _osmosis_. GERMINATION OF SOME OF THE COMMON GRAINS Make a special study of corn, wheat, and buckwheat. Take three plates and put moist sand in each to a depth of about half an inch. Spread over this a piece of damp cloth. Put in No. 1, one hundred grains of corn; in No. 2, the same number of grains of wheat; and in No. 3, the same number of grains of buckwheat, peas, or beans. Cover each plate with another piece of damp cloth and invert another plate over each to prevent drying out. Keep in a warm room and do not allow the cloths to become dry. If one of the cloths be left hanging six or eight inches over the side of the plate and dipping into a dish of water, the whole cloth will be kept moist by capillarity. Note the following points: 1. Changes in the size of the seeds during the first twenty-four hours. 2. In which variety germination seems most rapid. 3. The percentage vitality, that is, the number of seeds which germinate out of one hundred. 4. The nature of the coverings and their use. (Protection to the parts inside) 5. The parts of the seed inside. (Buckwheat, pea, or bean divides into two parts, which become greenish and are called seed leaves. Wheat and corn do not divide thus.) 6. The first signs of growth. A little shoot or tiny plant begins to develop at one end of the seed. Note which end bears this tiny plant. 7. Note the development of this embryo plant and the formation of stem and root. 8. Of what use is the bulky part of the seed? To answer this, let the pupils separate the white part of a kernel of corn, which is attached to the embryo plant, from the pulpy mass surrounding it. Set five such plants in moist sand and also five germinating seeds not so dissected. Pupils will discover that the mass surrounding the embryo is for the nourishing of the embryo plant. It is a little store of food prepared by the mother plant for the little ones that grow from the seeds. Note that it disappears as the plant grows. To further show the great value of this stored plant food, put a large-sized pea in a pot of moist moss or sawdust for a few days. When it has germinated and its root is a couple of inches long, place the pea in a thistle tube or small funnel, with the root projecting down the tube into a glass of water in which the funnel tube rests. Place all in a sunny window and note how much growth the plant is able to make without any food except that which the seed contained. 9. Note the development of the root and root-hairs. It is by means of these root-hairs that the plant absorbs moisture. The branching form of the root gives greater support to the plant and increased area for absorption of water by means of root-hairs. To show the direction taken by the root and also by the shoot, take a glass jar with straight sides like a battery jar (a large fruit jar will do); line it inside with a layer of blotting-paper and then fill it with moist sawdust. Drop seeds of sunflower or squash down between the paper and the glass. The moisture from the blotting-paper will cause them to sprout, the shoot or stem always taking an upward direction and the root turning downward quite regardless of the position in which the seeds were placed. 10. Apply this study to seed planting: Plant seeds of wheat in four pots of soil, No. 1, half an inch deep; No. 2, two inches; No. 3, four inches; No. 4, six inches. Repeat this experiment, using buckwheat. What seeds are up first? What seeds last? Which are best after a week? After three or four weeks? From this experiment could you recommend a certain depth for the planting of wheat and buckwheat? 11. Does the kind of soil make any difference? To answer this have different pupils choose different soils, such as (1) coarse sand, (2) fine sand, (3) wet clay, (4) humus or leaf mould, (5) mixed soil or loam; and let each put in grains of wheat, two inches deep. Allow five other pupils to plant seeds of buckwheat, under similar conditions. Treat all pots alike as to time of watering and quantity of water used on each and give them all equal light and heat. Note which come up first. Which are highest in one week, in two weeks, in four weeks? 12. This study may be continued in the garden by planting one plot each of corn, wheat, and buckwheat. Plots ten feet by twenty feet are large enough. Observe the rate of development in the plots. Which seems to mature most quickly? Which blossoms first? In what respect are the leaves of these plants alike or unlike? How do the stems differ? Examine the blossoming and seed formation. When the grains are ripe, collect a hundred of the best looking and most compact heads of each grain and also a hundred of the smallest heads of each. Dry, shell, and store the two samples of each grain in separate bottles. These samples are for planting the following spring. 13. To show the need of moisture in germination: Fill two flower-pots or cans with dry sand; put seeds of sunflower in each, covering them an inch deep. Put water in one pot and none in the other. Examine both pots after two or three days. 14. To show that heat is needed for germination of seeds: Plant sunflower seeds in two pots as above; place one in a warm room and the other in a cold room or refrigerator; water both and observe result in three days. 15. To show that air is necessary for germination: Fill a pint sealer with hydrogen (the gas collected over water in the usual way, as shown in any Chemistry text-book). Put a few sunflower seeds in a small sponge or wrap them loosely in a piece of soft cloth. Keeping the mouth of the jar which has been inverted over water and filled with hydrogen, under the surface of the water, introduce the sponge containing the seeds, by putting it under the water and pushing it up into the jar. Seal the jar without letting the gas get out. Put some seeds in another jar in a wet sponge and leave the jar uncovered. Compare results after several days. Here is a second experiment to prove this. Boil some water in a beaker in order to drive out all the air, put a few grains of rice in the water, and then add enough oil to make a thin covering on the water. This covering will prevent air from mixing with the water again. Put some rice in a second beaker without boiling or adding the oil. Leave the beakers side by side in a warm room for a week. The seeds will not germinate in the boiled water. It is not always easy to get rice that will germinate, but when it has been procured, the experiment is easy and very interesting. Any other seeds, such as those of pond lily and eel-grass, that germinate readily under water, will do as well as rice. WEEDS Pupils in this Form should learn to identify a large number of weeds and weed seeds. The collecting and mounting of weeds and weed seeds the previous summer and autumn will have helped to prepare them for this work. In the spring, when flower and vegetable seeds are coming up in the garden, it is often difficult for pupils to distinguish the weeds from the useful plants. To help in this work of distinguishing the good from the bad, the teacher should arrange for a plot having, say, ten rows, one row for each variety of weed selected. Each row should be designated by a number instead of a name. The identification of these growing weeds by name may be given as a problem to the pupils. This plot should remain until the pupils have observed the manner of growth of each variety, the blossoming and seed formation, and then the root growth, as they are being uprooted previous to the ripening of the seed. Each pupil should prepare a brief description of each of the ten varieties studied, and make drawings of the plant and its parts, especially the leaf, flower, seed, and root. They should learn the best methods of eradication and add these in their notes. _Farm Weeds_ will be of great value in such weed studies. VINES Suitable garden vines for study are climbing nasturtium, scarlet runner bean, and Japanese hop. Their growth and method of climbing should be compared with that of the sweet-pea and morning-glory already studied. Observe particularly the kind of leaves and their arrangement, also the flowers and fruit. Observe also the gourd family--melon, cucumber, and squash--their tendency to climb, and the nature of their flowers and fruit. WILD FLOWERS In schools where the studies with garden plants, such as have been indicated, can be carried on, there will not be as much time for the study of wild flowers as in those schools where no garden plants are available. A definite list of wild flowers for study should be arranged by the teacher early in spring. The following are common in most parts of Ontario: squirrel-corn, Dutchman's breeches, blue cohosh, dog's-tooth violet, water-parsnip, catnip, and mallow. In each study observe the following points: 1. Description of leaves and flowers for identification. 2. Storing of food in underground parts. 3. Time of flowering. (Pupils of this Form should keep a flower calendar.) 4. Description of fruit and seeds and how these are scattered. 5. Their location, and the character of the soil where found. Encourage the pupils to transplant a specimen of each from the woods to the school or home garden. Moist humus soil and partial shade are the best conditions for the growth of these wild wood flowers. Review the type lessons given already for Primary classes and apply the information thus gained to the observational study of the varieties of flowers named above. PLANTING OF TREES, SHRUBS, AND HERBACEOUS PERENNIALS IN HOME AND SCHOOL GROUNDS This work should be the outcome of the plans made in the winter. If each pupil does a little toward the carrying out of the scheme of planting, the grounds will soon be wonderfully improved. The teacher should guard against over-planting and arrange for the care of the shrubs and flowers during the summer holidays. New varieties of herbaceous perennials, grown from seed planted the previous summer or procured from homes in the vicinity, should be introduced. As most herbaceous perennials become too thick after a few years, it is necessary to keep digging some out year by year, dividing and resetting them, and fertilizing the ground. Native trees and shrubs should be placed so as to obscure undesirable views, such as closets and outbuildings, rough fences, or bare walls. This principle in planting should be observed in the case of trees. Evergreen trees are particularly desirable as screens and shelters from cold winds. No planting should be done, on the other hand, that would shut out a good view of the school or obscure a beautiful landscape. Too frequently unused corners of the school ground are covered with weeds. Prevent this by putting trees there and also shrubs. Keep all centres open, and let the trees, shrubs, and flowering perennials be massed about the corners and along the sides. The informal method of planting is to be preferred to formal planting of designs. The Public School Inspector will provide a copy of a departmental circular on the _Improvement of School Grounds_, which should be carefully studied by every teacher. SHADE TREES Consider suitable varieties to plant for shade and for ornamental effects. White elm, hard and soft maple, white birch, pines, and spruces are among the best. Elms and maples are excellent trees for roadside or street planting, and should be about forty feet apart. Spruces and pines may be planted five or six feet apart along the north and west, to act as a wind break. Otherwise, evergreens are best when planted in triangular clumps. White birch is particularly ornamental against a dark background of evergreens. Specimen trees of horse-chestnut, beech, ash, and hickory are also desirable. TRANSPLANTING The best time for transplanting trees is in the autumn after the leaves have fallen, or in the spring before the buds have opened. In planting a tree, the following points should be observed: 1. Preserve as much of the root system as possible, and trim off all broken or bruised portions. 2. Do not expose the roots to sun or wind while out of the ground. This is especially important in transplanting evergreens. 3. Reduce the top of the tree sufficiently to balance with the reduced root system. 4. Set the tree a few inches deeper than it was before transplanting. 5. Pack the best top soil closely about the roots, so as to exclude all air spaces, since these tend to dry the delicate roots. 6. If the ground is very dry, water should be used in planting; otherwise it is of no advantage. Water the trees thoroughly once a week in dry weather during the first season. 7. After planting, put a mulch or covering of fine straw, grass, or chips for two or three feet around the tree; or establish a soil mulch and keep down the grass by frequent cultivation. Grass roots dry out the soil. 8. In the case of deciduous trees, have the lowest limbs at least seven feet from the ground. Evergreens, however, should never be trimmed, but should have their branches right from the ground up--this uninterrupted pyramid form is one of their chief beauties. ANIMAL STUDIES SCALE INSECTS SAN JOS� SCALE Certain districts in Ontario and especially those bordering on Lake Erie have suffered from the ravages of this scale on apple, peach, pear, and other orchard trees. A hand lens should be used in studying these insects, observations being carried on from May to September. Carefully examine the fruits and twigs of orchard trees for evidences of the presence of the scale, and learn to identify it and to recognize the damages resulting from its attacks. Observe the almost circular flat scale of a grayish colour and having a minute point projecting upward at its centre. The young insects which emerge from underneath these scales in the spring crawl around for a time, then become stationary, and each one secretes a scale under which it matures. The mature males have two wings but the mature females are wingless. Note the withering of fruit and twigs due to the insects' attacks and the minute openings in the skin of the twig, made by the insertion of the sucking mouth parts. Describe to the pupils how the insect was transported from Japan to America and how it is now spread on nursery stock. Give a brief account of its destructiveness in the orchards of Essex and Kent. (Consult _Bulletin No. 153, Common Insects Affecting Fruit Trees and Fungus Diseases Affecting Fruit Trees_. Bethune & Jarvis, Department of Agriculture, Toronto, free.) OYSTER-SHELL BARK-LOUSE This is very common throughout the Province on apple and pear trees. Observe the unhealthy appearance of the leaves of the infested trees, the inferior quality of the fruit, and the gray scales shaped like tiny oyster-shells. The means of destroying these pests should be discussed. The Bulletins named above give detailed information in reference to spraying and fumigation. CUTWORMS (Consult _Bulletin 52_, Department of Agriculture, Ottawa.) Cutworms are the larvæ of medium-sized brown moths that fly at night. There are many species of cutworms, all of which are destructive to some forms of plants or grasses, grains, and vegetables. The larvæ are rather thick, naked, worm-like forms. They burrow into the ground, but emerge at night to feed by cutting through the stems of tender plants or by feeding upon the leaves. For the most effective method of dealing with these refer to what is said on "Combating Garden Pests", Form II. When a field is known to be infested with cutworms, it is a good plan to spread poisoned clover or cabbage leaves over the ground before the seed is planted. WHITE GRUBS White grubs are large, fat, white larvæ of June beetles. These beetles are the well-known large, brown, clumsy beetles that blunder into the house at night in May or June and drop with a thud upon the floor. Three years are spent in the larval form, the grubs living underground and feeding on the roots of plants, especially the roots of grains and grasses. Since they are found chiefly in fields recently ploughed from grass, they may be held in check by rotation of crops and by fall ploughing, which exposes the larvæ to the winter frosts. In May or June, when the adults are feeding on the foliage of fruit and shade trees, spraying the trees with London purple is quite effective for destroying the beetles before they have laid their eggs among the roots of the grass. Hogs destroy many larvæ by rooting in the soil to find them for food. CRAYFISH Search for the crayfish in streams and ponds. Why is the crayfish hard to find? Hard to capture? Obtain a living crayfish from a pond or stream and place it in a jar of water or in an aquarium. The crayfish should not be placed in an aquarium containing insects and small fish which are to be kept, as it is fierce and voracious. The pupils should study the living animal, noting its habit of lurking under stones; the sweeping of the water with the feelers; the backward movement in swimming, produced by bending the tail sharply underneath the body; the walking by means of four pairs of legs, the great claws being used to turn the animal; the use of the great claws in seizing prey and holding food near the mouth; the movements of the small appendages under the front part of the animal and the water currents caused by these; the movements of the small appendages under the abdomen of the animal. FRESHWATER MUSSEL The freshwater mussel--"clam" as it is usually called by school-boys--may be found in almost any stream. Place a mussel in the aquarium, and note the opening and closing of the valves of the shell; the hinge connecting the valves; the foot protruding from the shell; the movements by means of the foot; the mantle lobes lining the shell and visible at the open margins; the two siphons at the rear of the animal--water currents may be observed entering the upper and emerging from the lower of these. Infer uses for these currents. Touch the edge of the upper siphon and observe how quickly the shell is closed. Compare the mussel with the snail as to movements and shell. Compare also with the oyster and sea clam. Examine empty shells and notice the pearly layer of the shell, the action of the hinge, and the marks on the shell to which the muscles for closing the shell were attached. State all the means of protection that you have discovered the animal to possess. BIRD STUDY (Consult _Bulletin 218. Birds of Ontario in Relation to Agriculture_, Nash. Department of Agriculture, free.) If the lessons in bird study which are prescribed for Forms I, II, and III have been successful, the pupils of Form IV should have a fair acquaintance with the habits of the common birds. A very interesting exercise is to hold a trial upon those birds which are viewed with suspicion or which are openly condemned as objectionable neighbours. A pupil is appointed to act as judge and other pupils give evidence. The evidence must be based upon the pupil's personal observations on the habits of the bird. The following birds are named, and brief descriptions of their habits are given as suggestions for materials for bird trials: ROBIN.--He steals small fruits, such as cherries, currants, etc. He is a cheerful, jolly neighbour, who sings sweetly. He eats great numbers of cutworms and white grubs. CROW.--He robs the nests of other birds, and steals chickens, corn, and potatoes. He helps the farmer by killing cutworms, white grubs, grasshoppers, and other insects. WOODPECKER.--The members of this family are grievously persecuted because they are believed to injure orchard and shade trees by pecking holes in the bark from which to suck the sap. Careful observations tend to show that the trees are benefited rather than injured by this treatment. Woodpeckers are undoubtedly beneficial as destroyers of wood-borers and other obnoxious insects. CROW-BLACKBIRD (bronzed grackle).--His habits are similar to those of the crow. OWLS.--All the owls are held in ill repute because of the crimes of a few members of the family. Very seldom does an owl steal a chicken; their food consists chiefly of mice, rats, squirrels, grasshoppers, and other field pests. HAWKS.--The hawks are unjustly persecuted for crimes of which they are seldom guilty. As a class they are beneficial, not injurious birds. DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF NATURE STUDY There is a knowledge of Nature which contributes to the earning of a living. This is the _utilitarian_ aspect. There is a knowledge of Nature which may be obtained in such a way as to develop the observing and reasoning powers and give a training in scientific method. This is the _disciplinary_ aspect. There is a knowledge which leads the pupil to perceive the beautiful in Nature, to enjoy it and so add to his happiness. This is the _æsthetic_ aspect. There is a knowledge of Nature which, through the life history of plant and animal, throws light on the pupil's own life, gives him an insight into all life in its unity, and leads him to look up reverently to the author of all life--through Nature up to Nature's God. This is the _spiritual_ aspect. Each of these aspects supplements, interprets, or enforces the others. He who omits or neglects any of these perceives but a part of a complete whole. Nature Study develops in the pupil a sympathetic attitude toward Nature for the purpose of increasing the joy of living. It leads him to see Nature through the eyes of the poet and the moralist as well as through those of the scientist. Nature Study is concerned with plants, birds, insects, stones, clouds, brooks, etc., but it is not botany, ornithology, entomology, geology, meteorology, or geography. In this study, it is the spirit of inquiry developed rather than the number of facts ascertained that is important. Gradually it becomes more systematic as it advances until, in the high school, it passes over into the science group of studies. ILLUSTRATIONS OF THESE ASPECTS The simple observational lessons on The Robin, pages 96-7, form the bases for further study in more advanced classes. This bird as a destroyer of worms, beetles, etc., is a valuable assistant to the farmer as, indeed, are practically all birds in this Province. Birds such as the duck, goose, partridge, etc., are valuable as food, and laws are made to protect them during certain seasons. The training in inference which a pupil receives in studying the parts of a plant or an animal and the adaptation of these parts to function is valuable. He studies the plant and the animal as living organisms with work to do in the world, and learns how what they do and their manner of doing it affect their form and structure. The short, curved, and slightly hooked bill of the hen and her method of breaking open a pea pod or splitting an object too large to swallow shows the bill to be a mallet, a wedge, or a pick as the case may be. A study of the bills of the duck, woodpecker, and hawk will reveal the method by which each gets his food and how the organ is adapted to its purpose. Similar studies of the feet and legs of birds will make the idea of adaptation increasingly clear. Literature is rich with tributes to the songs of the birds. The thoughts and feelings aroused or suggested by these songs are the topics of much of the world's enduring poetry. Longfellow, in his "Birds of Killing-worth" (_Tales of a Wayside Inn_) sings exquisitely of the use and beauty and worth of birds. Shelley, in his "Skylark", describes in glowing verse "the unbodied joy" that "singing still dost soar and soaring ever singest". Wordsworth hears the blithe new comer, the Cuckoo, and rejoices Though babbling only to the vale Of sunshine and of flowers Thou bringest unto me a tale Of visionary hours. The life story of a bird throws light on our own lives, puts us in sympathy with the lives of others, teaches kindness, teaches the duties and responsibilities of the higher to the lower, teaches respect for all life. Observe the helpless bird in its nest, helpless as a baby. See the care given by the mother and father to keep it warm till its down and feathers grow, to feed it till it is able to leave the nest. Watch the parents teaching it to fly by repeated short flights. Olive Thorn Miller in her _Bird Ways_ gives a delightful sketch of the father robin teaching a young robin where to look for worms and how to dig them up. When that task was accomplished, his father began to give him "music lessons", that is, practice in imitating the Robin's song. Thus, the young bird was equipped to make a living and to enjoy life. The social life of birds, as they sing their matins, as they choose their mates, as they gather in flocks preparatory to migration, furnish many opportunities for indirect teaching on many of life's problems. The Ontario Readers contain many poems that may be used in connection with the Nature Study lessons. To supplement the observational studies of birds, read from the Third Reader, "The Robin's Song", "The Red-winged Blackbird", "The Sandpiper", "To the Cuckoo", "Bob White", "The Lark and the Rook", "The Poet's Song". In the Third Reader, the lessons on "The Fountain", "The Brook", "The Tide River", and "A Song of the Sea" form a group that can be used in connection with lessons in geography. "A Song for April", "An Apple Orchard in the Spring", "The Gladness of Nature", "The Orchard", "A Midsummer Song", "Corn-fields", "The Corn Song", "The Death of the Flowers", "The Frost", "The Snow-storm", make another group to accompany a study of the seasons. A similar group may be selected from the Fourth Reader. The pupil who has made a study of a "brook" as a lesson in geography and defined it as "a small natural stream of water flowing from a spring or fountain" will, if he studies the following lines from Tennyson's "The Brook" and perceives by careful observation the descriptive accuracy and aptness of the words in italics, realize that the poet sees much that the geographer has not included in his definition. I _chatter_ over stony ways, In little sharps and trebles, I _bubble_ into eddying bays, I _babble_ on the pebbles. * * * I _slip_, I _slide_, I _gloom_, I _glance_. Among my skimming swallows; * * * I _murmur_ under moon and stars. * * * I _linger_ by my shingly bars. I _loiter_ round my cresses. Correlations such as these add greatly to the pupil's interest in this subject. Given a teacher with a love of out-of-door life, with observant eyes and ears, and the spirit that sympathizes with children's curiosity and stimulates inquiry, Nature Study will be a joy and an inspiration to pupils. 
533	----	The Song of the Cardinal by Gene Stratton-Porter IN LOVING TRIBUTE TO THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER MARK STRATTON "For him every work of God manifested a new and heretofore unappreciated loveliness." CONTENTS 1. "Good cheer! Good cheer!" exulted the Cardinal 2. "Wet year! Wet year!" prophesied the Cardinal 3. "Come here! Come here!" entreated the Cardinal 4. "So dear! So dear!" crooned the Cardinal 5. "See here! See here!" demanded the Cardinal Chapter 1 "Good cheer! Good cheer!" exulted the Cardinal He darted through the orange orchard searching for slugs for his breakfast, and between whiles he rocked on the branches and rang over his message of encouragement to men. The song of the Cardinal was overflowing with joy, for this was his holiday, his playtime. The southern world was filled with brilliant sunshine, gaudy flowers, an abundance of fruit, myriads of insects, and never a thing to do except to bathe, feast, and be happy. No wonder his song was a prophecy of good cheer for the future, for happiness made up the whole of his past. The Cardinal was only a yearling, yet his crest flared high, his beard was crisp and black, and he was a very prodigy in size and colouring. Fathers of his family that had accomplished many migrations appeared small beside him, and coats that had been shed season after season seemed dull compared with his. It was as if a pulsing heart of flame passed by when he came winging through the orchard. Last season the Cardinal had pipped his shell, away to the north, in that paradise of the birds, the Limberlost. There thousands of acres of black marsh-muck stretch under summers' sun and winters' snows. There are darksome pools of murky water, bits of swale, and high morass. Giants of the forest reach skyward, or, coated with velvet slime, lie decaying in sun-flecked pools, while the underbrush is almost impenetrable. The swamp resembles a big dining-table for the birds. Wild grape-vines clamber to the tops of the highest trees, spreading umbrella-wise over the branches, and their festooned floating trailers wave as silken fringe in the play of the wind. The birds loll in the shade, peel bark, gather dried curlers for nest material, and feast on the pungent fruit. They chatter in swarms over the wild-cherry trees, and overload their crops with red haws, wild plums, papaws, blackberries and mandrake. The alders around the edge draw flocks in search of berries, and the marsh grasses and weeds are weighted with seed hunters. The muck is alive with worms; and the whole swamp ablaze with flowers, whose colours and perfumes attract myriads of insects and butterflies. Wild creepers flaunt their red and gold from the treetops, and the bumblebees and humming-birds make common cause in rifling the honey-laden trumpets. The air around the wild-plum and redhaw trees is vibrant with the beating wings of millions of wild bees, and the bee-birds feast to gluttony. The fetid odours of the swamp draw insects in swarms, and fly-catchers tumble and twist in air in pursuit of them. Every hollow tree homes its colony of bats. Snakes sun on the bushes. The water folk leave trails of shining ripples in their wake as they cross the lagoons. Turtles waddle clumsily from the logs. Frogs take graceful leaps from pool to pool. Everything native to that section of the country-underground, creeping, or a-wing--can be found in the Limberlost; but above all the birds. Dainty green warblers nest in its tree-tops, and red-eyed vireos choose a location below. It is the home of bell-birds, finches, and thrushes. There are flocks of blackbirds, grackles, and crows. Jays and catbirds quarrel constantly, and marsh-wrens keep up never-ending chatter. Orioles swing their pendent purses from the branches, and with the tanagers picnic on mulberries and insects. In the evening, night-hawks dart on silent wing; whippoorwills set up a plaintive cry that they continue far into the night; and owls revel in moonlight and rich hunting. At dawn, robins wake the echoes of each new day with the admonition, "Cheer up! Cheer up!" and a little later big black vultures go wheeling through cloudland or hang there, like frozen splashes, searching the Limberlost and the surrounding country for food. The boom of the bittern resounds all day, and above it the rasping scream of the blue heron, as he strikes terror to the hearts of frogdom; while the occasional cries of a lost loon, strayed from its flock in northern migration, fill the swamp with sounds of wailing. Flashing through the tree-tops of the Limberlost there are birds whose colour is more brilliant than that of the gaudiest flower lifting its face to light and air. The lilies of the mire are not so white as the white herons that fish among them. The ripest spray of goldenrod is not so highly coloured as the burnished gold on the breast of the oriole that rocks on it. The jays are bluer than the calamus bed they wrangle above with throaty chatter. The finches are a finer purple than the ironwort. For every clump of foxfire flaming in the Limberlost, there is a cardinal glowing redder on a bush above it. These may not be more numerous than other birds, but their brilliant colouring and the fearless disposition make them seem so. The Cardinal was hatched in a thicket of sweetbrier and blackberry. His father was a tough old widower of many experiences and variable temper. He was the biggest, most aggressive redbird in the Limberlost, and easily reigned king of his kind. Catbirds, king-birds, and shrikes gave him a wide berth, and not even the ever-quarrelsome jays plucked up enough courage to antagonize him. A few days after his latest bereavement, he saw a fine, plump young female; and she so filled his eye that he gave her no rest until she permitted his caresses, and carried the first twig to the wild rose. She was very proud to mate with the king of the Limberlost; and if deep in her heart she felt transient fears of her lordly master, she gave no sign, for she was a bird of goodly proportion and fine feather herself. She chose her location with the eye of an artist, and the judgment of a nest builder of more experience. It would be difficult for snakes and squirrels to penetrate that briery thicket. The white berry blossoms scarcely had ceased to attract a swarm of insects before the sweets of the roses recalled them; by the time they had faded, luscious big berries ripened within reach and drew food hunters. She built with far more than ordinary care. It was a beautiful nest, not nearly so carelessly made as those of her kindred all through the swamp. There was a distinct attempt at a cup shape, and it really was neatly lined with dried blades of sweet marsh grass. But it was in the laying of her first egg that the queen cardinal forever distinguished herself. She was a fine healthy bird, full of love and happiness over her first venture in nest-building, and she so far surpassed herself on that occasion she had difficulty in convincing any one that she was responsible for the result. Indeed, she was compelled to lift beak and wing against her mate in defense of this egg, for it was so unusually large that he could not be persuaded short of force that some sneak of the feathered tribe had not slipped in and deposited it in her absence. The king felt sure there was something wrong with the egg, and wanted to roll it from the nest; but the queen knew her own, and stoutly battled for its protection. She further increased their prospects by laying three others. After that the king made up his mind that she was a most remarkable bird, and went away pleasure-seeking; but the queen settled to brooding, a picture of joyous faith and contentment. Through all the long days, when the heat became intense, and the king was none too thoughtful of her appetite or comfort, she nestled those four eggs against her breast and patiently waited. The big egg was her treasure. She gave it constant care. Many times in a day she turned it; and always against her breast there was the individual pressure that distinguished it from the others. It was the first to hatch, of course, and the queen felt that she had enough if all the others failed her; for this egg pipped with a resounding pip, and before the silky down was really dry on the big terracotta body, the young Cardinal arose and lustily demanded food. The king came to see him and at once acknowledged subjugation. He was the father of many promising cardinals, yet he never had seen one like this. He set the Limberlost echoes rolling with his jubilant rejoicing. He unceasingly hunted for the ripest berries and seed. He stuffed that baby from morning until night, and never came with food that he did not find him standing a-top the others calling for more. The queen was just as proud of him and quite as foolish in her idolatry, but she kept tally and gave the remainder every other worm in turn. They were unusually fine babies, but what chance has merely a fine baby in a family that possesses a prodigy? The Cardinal was as large as any two of the other nestlings, and so red the very down on him seemed tinged with crimson; his skin and even his feet were red. He was the first to climb to the edge of the nest and the first to hop on a limb. He surprised his parents by finding a slug, and winged his first flight to such a distance that his adoring mother almost went into spasms lest his strength might fail, and he would fall into the swamp and become the victim of a hungry old turtle. He returned safely, however; and the king was so pleased he hunted him an unusually ripe berry, and perching before him, gave him his first language lesson. Of course, the Cardinal knew how to cry "Pee" and "Chee" when he burst his shell; but the king taught him to chip with accuracy and expression, and he learned that very day that male birds of the cardinal family always call "Chip," and the females "Chook." In fact, he learned so rapidly and was generally so observant, that before the king thought it wise to give the next lesson, he found him on a limb, his beak closed, his throat swelling, practising his own rendering of the tribal calls, "Wheat! Wheat! Wheat!" "Here! Here! Here!" and "Cheer! Cheer! Cheer!" This so delighted the king that he whistled them over and over and helped the youngster all he could. He was so proud of him that this same night he gave him his first lesson in tucking his head properly and going to sleep alone. In a few more days, when he was sure of his wing strength, he gave him instructions in flying. He taught him how to spread his wings and slowly sail from tree to tree; how to fly in short broken curves, to avoid the aim of a hunter; how to turn abruptly in air and make a quick dash after a bug or an enemy. He taught him the proper angle at which to breast a stiff wind, and that he always should meet a storm head first, so that the water would run as the plumage lay. His first bathing lesson was a pronounced success. The Cardinal enjoyed water like a duck. He bathed, splashed, and romped until his mother was almost crazy for fear he would attract a watersnake or turtle; but the element of fear was not a part of his disposition. He learned to dry, dress, and plume his feathers, and showed such remarkable pride in keeping himself immaculate, that although only a youngster, he was already a bird of such great promise, that many of the feathered inhabitants of the Limberlost came to pay him a call. Next, the king took him on a long trip around the swamp, and taught him to select the proper places to hunt for worms; how to search under leaves for plant-lice and slugs for meat; which berries were good and safe, and the kind of weeds that bore the most and best seeds. He showed him how to find tiny pebbles to grind his food, and how to sharpen and polish his beak. Then he took up the real music lessons, and taught him how to whistle and how to warble and trill. "Good Cheer! Good Cheer!" intoned the king. "Coo Cher! Coo Cher!" imitated the Cardinal. These songs were only studied repetitions, but there was a depth and volume in his voice that gave promise of future greatness, when age should have developed him, and experience awakened his emotions. He was an excellent musician for a youngster. He soon did so well in caring for himself, in finding food and in flight, and grew so big and independent, that he made numerous excursions alone through the Limberlost; and so impressive were his proportions, and so aggressive his manner, that he suffered no molestation. In fact, the reign of the king promised to end speedily; but if he feared it he made no sign, and his pride in his wonderful offspring was always manifest. After the Cardinal had explored the swamp thoroughly, a longing for a wider range grew upon him; and day after day he lingered around the borders, looking across the wide cultivated fields, almost aching to test his wings in one long, high, wild stretch of flight. A day came when the heat of the late summer set the marsh steaming, and the Cardinal, flying close to the borders, caught the breeze from the upland; and the vision of broad fields stretching toward the north so enticed him that he spread his wings, and following the line of trees and fences as much as possible, he made his first journey from home. That day was so delightful it decided his fortunes. It would seem that the swamp, so appreciated by his kindred, should have been sufficient for the Cardinal, but it was not. With every mile he winged his flight, came a greater sense of power and strength, and a keener love for the broad sweep of field and forest. His heart bounded with the zest of rocking on the wind, racing through the sunshine, and sailing over the endless panorama of waving corn fields, and woodlands. The heat and closeness of the Limberlost seemed a prison well escaped, as on and on he flew in straight untiring flight. Crossing a field of half-ripened corn that sloped to the river, the Cardinal saw many birds feeding there, so he alighted on a tall tree to watch them. Soon he decided that he would like to try this new food. He found a place where a crow had left an ear nicely laid open, and clinging to the husk, as he saw the others do, he stretched to his full height and drove his strong sharp beak into the creamy grain. After the stifling swamp hunting, after the long exciting flight, to rock on this swaying corn and drink the rich milk of the grain, was to the Cardinal his first taste of nectar and ambrosia. He lifted his head when he came to the golden kernel, and chipping it in tiny specks, he tasted and approved with all the delight of an epicure in a delicious new dish. Perhaps there were other treats in the next field. He decided to fly even farther. But he had gone only a short distance when he changed his course and turned to the South, for below him was a long, shining, creeping thing, fringed with willows, while towering above them were giant sycamore, maple, tulip, and elm trees that caught and rocked with the wind; and the Cardinal did not know what it was. Filled with wonder he dropped lower and lower. Birds were everywhere, many flying over and dipping into it; but its clear creeping silver was a mystery to the Cardinal. The beautiful river of poetry and song that the Indians first discovered, and later with the French, named Ouabache; the winding shining river that Logan and Me-shin-go-me-sia loved; the only river that could tempt Wa-ca-co-nah from the Salamonie and Mississinewa; the river beneath whose silver sycamores and giant maples Chief Godfrey pitched his campfires, was never more beautiful than on that perfect autumn day. With his feathers pressed closely, the Cardinal alighted on a willow, and leaned to look, quivering with excitement and uttering explosive "chips"; for there he was, face to face with a big redbird that appeared neither peaceful nor timid. He uttered an impudent "Chip" of challenge, which, as it left his beak, was flung back to him. The Cardinal flared his crest and half lifted his wings, stiffening them at the butt; the bird he was facing did the same. In his surprise he arose to his full height with a dexterous little side step, and the other bird straightened and side-stepped exactly with him. This was too insulting for the Cardinal. Straining every muscle, he made a dash at the impudent stranger. He struck the water with such force that it splashed above the willows, and a kingfisher, stationed on a stump opposite him, watching the shoals for minnows, saw it. He spread his beak and rolled forth rattling laughter, until his voice reechoed from point to point down the river. The Cardinal scarcely knew how he got out, but he had learned a new lesson. That beautiful, shining, creeping thing was water; not thick, tepid, black marsh water, but pure, cool, silver water. He shook his plumage, feeling a degree redder from shame, but he would not be laughed into leaving. He found it too delightful. In a short time he ventured down and took a sip, and it was the first real drink of his life. Oh, but it was good! When thirst from the heat and his long flight was quenched, he ventured in for a bath, and that was a new and delightful experience. How he splashed and splashed, and sent the silver drops flying! How he ducked and soaked and cooled in that rippling water, in which he might remain as long as he pleased and splash his fill; for he could see the bottom for a long distance all around, and easily could avoid anything attempting to harm him. He was so wet when his bath was finished he scarcely could reach a bush to dry and dress his plumage. Once again in perfect feather, he remembered the bird of the water, and returned to the willow. There in the depths of the shining river the Cardinal discovered himself, and his heart swelled big with just pride. Was that broad full breast his? Where had he seen any other cardinal with a crest so high it waved in the wind? How big and black his eyes were, and his beard was almost as long and crisp as his father's. He spread his wings and gloated on their sweep, and twisted and flirted his tail. He went over his toilet again and dressed every feather on him. He scoured the back of his neck with the butt of his wings, and tucking his head under them, slowly drew it out time after time to polish his crest. He turned and twisted. He rocked and paraded, and every glimpse he caught of his size and beauty filled him with pride. He strutted like a peacock and chattered like a jay. When he could find no further points to admire, something else caught his attention. When he "chipped" there was an answering "Chip" across the river; certainly there was no cardinal there, so it must be that he was hearing his own voice as well as seeing himself. Selecting a conspicuous perch he sent an incisive "Chip!" across the water, and in kind it came back to him. Then he "chipped" softly and tenderly, as he did in the Limberlost to a favourite little sister who often came and perched beside him in the maple where he slept, and softly and tenderly came the answer. Then the Cardinal understood. "Wheat! Wheat! Wheat!" He whistled it high, and he whistled it low. "Cheer! Cheer! Cheer!" He whistled it tenderly and sharply and imperiously. "Here! Here! Here!" At this ringing command, every bird, as far as the river carried his voice, came to investigate and remained to admire. Over and over he rang every change he could invent. He made a gallant effort at warbling and trilling, and then, with the gladdest heart he ever had known, he burst into ringing song: "Good Cheer! Good Cheer! Good Cheer!" As evening came on he grew restless and uneasy, so he slowly winged his way back to the Limberlost; but that day forever spoiled him for a swamp bird. In the night he restlessly ruffled his feathers, and sniffed for the breeze of the meadows. He tasted the corn and the clear water again. He admired his image in the river, and longed for the sound of his voice, until he began murmuring, "Wheat! Wheat! Wheat!" in his sleep. In the earliest dawn a robin awoke him singing, "Cheer up! Cheer up!" and he answered with a sleepy "Cheer! Cheer! Cheer!" Later the robin sang again with exquisite softness and tenderness: "Cheer up, Dearie! Cheer up, Dearie! Cheer up! Cheer up! Cheer!" The Cardinal, now fully awakened, shouted lustily, "Good Cheer! Good Cheer!" and after that it was only a short time until he was on his way toward the shining river. It was better than before, and every following day found him feasting in the corn field and bathing in the shining water; but he always returned to his family at nightfall. When black frosts began to strip the Limberlost, and food was almost reduced to dry seed, there came a day on which the king marshalled his followers and gave the magic signal. With dusk he led them southward, mile after mile, until their breath fell short, and their wings ached with unaccustomed flight; but because of the trips to the river, the Cardinal was stronger than the others, and he easily kept abreast of the king. In the early morning, even before the robins were awake, the king settled in the Everglades. But the Cardinal had lost all liking for swamp life, so he stubbornly set out alone, and in a short time he had found another river. It was not quite so delightful as the shining river; but still it was beautiful, and on its gently sloping bank was an orange orchard. There the Cardinal rested, and found a winter home after his heart's desire. The following morning, a golden-haired little girl and an old man with snowy locks came hand in hand through the orchard. The child saw the redbird and immediately claimed him, and that same day the edict went forth that a very dreadful time was in store for any one who harmed or even frightened the Cardinal. So in security began a series of days that were pure delight. The orchard was alive with insects, attracted by the heavy odours, and slugs infested the bark. Feasting was almost as good as in the Limberlost, and always there was the river to drink from and to splash in at will. In those days the child and the old man lingered for hours in the orchard, watching the bird that every day seemed to grow bigger and brighter. What a picture his coat, now a bright cardinal red, made against the waxy green leaves! How big and brilliant he seemed as he raced and darted in play among the creamy blossoms! How the little girl stood with clasped hands worshipping him, as with swelling throat he rocked on the highest spray and sang his inspiring chorus over and over: "Good Cheer! Good Cheer!" Every day they came to watch and listen. They scattered crumbs; and the Cardinal grew so friendly that he greeted their coming with a quick "Chip! Chip!" while the delighted child tried to repeat it after him. Soon they became such friends that when he saw them approaching he would call softly "Chip! Chip!" and then with beady eyes and tilted head await her reply. Sometimes a member of his family from the Everglades found his way into the orchard, and the Cardinal, having grown to feel a sense of proprietorship, resented the intrusion and pursued him like a streak of flame. Whenever any straggler had this experience, he returned to the swamp realizing that the Cardinal of the orange orchard was almost twice his size and strength, and so startlingly red as to be a wonder. One day a gentle breeze from the north sprang up and stirred the orange branches, wafting the heavy perfume across the land and out to sea, and spread in its stead a cool, delicate, pungent odour. The Cardinal lifted his head and whistled an inquiring note. He was not certain, and went on searching for slugs, and predicting happiness in full round notes: "Good Cheer! Good Cheer!" Again the odour swept the orchard, so strong that this time there was no mistaking it. The Cardinal darted to the topmost branch, his crest flaring, his tail twitching nervously. "Chip! Chip!" he cried with excited insistence, "Chip! Chip!" The breeze was coming stiffly and steadily now, unlike anything the Cardinal ever had known, for its cool breath told of ice-bound fields breaking up under the sun. Its damp touch was from the spring showers washing the face of the northland. Its subtle odour was the commingling of myriads of unfolding leaves and crisp plants, upspringing; its pungent perfume was the pollen of catkins. Up in the land of the Limberlost, old Mother Nature, with strident muttering, had set about her annual house cleaning. With her efficient broom, the March wind, she was sweeping every nook and cranny clean. With her scrub-bucket overflowing with April showers, she was washing the face of all creation, and if these measures failed to produce cleanliness to her satisfaction, she gave a final polish with storms of hail. The shining river was filled to overflowing; breaking up the ice and carrying a load of refuse, it went rolling to the sea. The ice and snow had not altogether gone; but the long-pregnant earth was mothering her children. She cringed at every step, for the ground was teeming with life. Bug and worm were working to light and warmth. Thrusting aside the mold and leaves above them, spring beauties, hepaticas, and violets lifted tender golden-green heads. The sap was flowing, and leafless trees were covered with swelling buds. Delicate mosses were creeping over every stick of decaying timber. The lichens on stone and fence were freshly painted in unending shades of gray and green. Myriads of flowers and vines were springing up to cover last year's decaying leaves. "The beautiful uncut hair of graves" was creeping over meadow, spreading beside roadways, and blanketing every naked spot. The Limberlost was waking to life even ahead of the fields and the river. Through the winter it had been the barest and dreariest of places; but now the earliest signs of returning spring were in its martial music, for when the green hyla pipes, and the bullfrog drums, the bird voices soon join them. The catkins bloomed first; and then, in an incredibly short time, flags, rushes, and vines were like a sea of waving green, and swelling buds were ready to burst. In the upland the smoke was curling over sugar-camp and clearing; in the forests animals were rousing from their long sleep; the shad were starting anew their never-ending journey up the shining river; peeps of green were mantling hilltop and valley; and the northland was ready for its dearest springtime treasures to come home again. From overhead were ringing those first glad notes, caught nearer the Throne than those of any other bird, "Spring o' year! Spring o' year!"; while stilt-legged little killdeers were scudding around the Limberlost and beside the river, flinging from cloudland their "Kill deer! Kill deer!" call. The robins in the orchards were pulling the long dried blades of last year's grass from beneath the snow to line their mud-walled cups; and the bluebirds were at the hollow apple tree. Flat on the top rail, the doves were gathering their few coarse sticks and twigs together. It was such a splendid place to set their cradle. The weatherbeaten, rotting old rails were the very colour of the busy dove mother. Her red-rimmed eye fitted into the background like a tiny scarlet lichen cup. Surely no one would ever see her! The Limberlost and shining river, the fields and forests, the wayside bushes and fences, the stumps, logs, hollow trees, even the bare brown breast of Mother Earth, were all waiting to cradle their own again; and by one of the untold miracles each would return to its place. There was intoxication in the air. The subtle, pungent, ravishing odours on the wind, of unfolding leaves, ice-water washed plants, and catkin pollen, were an elixir to humanity. The cattle of the field were fairly drunk with it, and herds, dry-fed during the winter, were coming to their first grazing with heads thrown high, romping, bellowing, and racing like wild things. The north wind, sweeping from icy fastnesses, caught this odour of spring, and carried it to the orange orchards and Everglades; and at a breath of it, crazed with excitement, the Cardinal went flaming through the orchard, for with no one to teach him, he knew what it meant. The call had come. Holidays were over. It was time to go home, time to riot in crisp freshness, time to go courting, time to make love, time to possess his own, time for mating and nest-building. All that day he flashed around, nervous with dread of the unknown, and palpitant with delightful expectation; but with the coming of dusk he began his journey northward. When he passed the Everglades, he winged his way slowly, and repeatedly sent down a challenging "Chip," but there was no answer. Then the Cardinal knew that the north wind had carried a true message, for the king and his followers were ahead of him on their way to the Limberlost. Mile after mile, a thing of pulsing fire, he breasted the blue-black night, and it was not so very long until he could discern a flickering patch of darkness sweeping the sky before him. The Cardinal flew steadily in a straight sweep, until with a throb of triumph in his heart, he arose in his course, and from far overhead, flung down a boastful challenge to the king and his followers, as he sailed above them and was lost from sight. It was still dusky with the darkness of night when he crossed the Limberlost, dropping low enough to see its branches laid bare, to catch a gleam of green in its swelling buds, and to hear the wavering chorus of its frogs. But there was no hesitation in his flight. Straight and sure he winged his way toward the shining river; and it was only a few more miles until the rolling waters of its springtime flood caught his eye. Dropping precipitately, he plunged his burning beak into the loved water; then he flew into a fine old stag sumac and tucked his head under his wing for a short rest. He had made the long flight in one unbroken sweep, and he was sleepy. In utter content he ruffled his feathers and closed his eyes, for he was beside the shining river; and it would be another season before the orange orchard would ring again with his "Good Cheer! Good Cheer!" Chapter 2 "Wet year! Wet year!" prophesied the Cardinal The sumac seemed to fill his idea of a perfect location from the very first. He perched on a limb, and between dressing his plumage and pecking at last year's sour dried berries, he sent abroad his prediction. Old Mother Nature verified his wisdom by sending a dashing shower, but he cared not at all for a wetting. He knew how to turn his crimson suit into the most perfect of water-proof coats; so he flattened his crest, sleeked his feathers, and breasting the April downpour, kept on calling for rain. He knew he would appear brighter when it was past, and he seemed to know, too, that every day of sunshine and shower would bring nearer his heart's desire. He was a very Beau Brummel while he waited. From morning until night he bathed, dressed his feathers, sunned himself, fluffed and flirted. He strutted and "chipped" incessantly. He claimed that sumac for his very own, and stoutly battled for possession with many intruders. It grew on a densely wooded slope, and the shining river went singing between grassy banks, whitened with spring beauties, below it. Crowded around it were thickets of papaw, wild grape-vines, thorn, dogwood, and red haw, that attracted bug and insect; and just across the old snake fence was a field of mellow mould sloping to the river, that soon would be plowed for corn, turning out numberless big fat grubs. He was compelled almost hourly to wage battles for his location, for there was something fine about the old stag sumac that attracted homestead seekers. A sober pair of robins began laying their foundations there the morning the Cardinal arrived, and a couple of blackbirds tried to take possession before the day had passed. He had little trouble with the robins. They were easily conquered, and with small protest settled a rod up the bank in a wild-plum tree; but the air was thick with "chips," chatter, and red and black feathers, before the blackbirds acknowledged defeat. They were old-timers, and knew about the grubs and the young corn; but they also knew when they were beaten, so they moved down stream to a scrub oak, trying to assure each other that it was the place they really had wanted from the first. The Cardinal was left boasting and strutting in the sumac, but in his heart he found it lonesome business. Being the son of a king, he was much too dignified to beg for a mate, and besides, it took all his time to guard the sumac; but his eyes were wide open to all that went on around him, and he envied the blackbird his glossy, devoted little sweetheart, with all his might. He almost strained his voice trying to rival the love-song of a skylark that hung among the clouds above a meadow across the river, and poured down to his mate a story of adoring love and sympathy. He screamed a "Chip" of such savage jealousy at a pair of killdeer lovers that he sent them scampering down the river bank without knowing that the crime of which they stood convicted was that of being mated when he was not. As for the doves that were already brooding on the line fence beneath the maples, the Cardinal was torn between two opinions. He was alone, he was love-sick, and he was holding the finest building location beside the shining river for his mate, and her slowness in coming made their devotion difficult to endure when he coveted a true love; but it seemed to the Cardinal that he never could so forget himself as to emulate the example of that dove lover. The dove had no dignity; he was so effusive he was a nuisance. He kept his dignified Quaker mate stuffed to discomfort; he clung to the side of the nest trying to help brood until he almost crowded her from the eggs. He pestered her with caresses and cooed over his love-song until every chipmunk on the line fence was familiar with his story. The Cardinal's temper was worn to such a fine edge that he darted at the dove one day and pulled a big tuft of feathers from his back. When he had returned to the sumac, he was compelled to admit that his anger lay quite as much in that he had no one to love as because the dove was disgustingly devoted. Every morning brought new arrivals--trim young females fresh from their long holiday, and big boastful males appearing their brightest and bravest, each singer almost splitting his throat in the effort to captivate the mate he coveted. They came flashing down the river bank, like rockets of scarlet, gold, blue, and black; rocking on the willows, splashing in the water, bursting into jets of melody, making every possible display of their beauty and music; and at times fighting fiercely when they discovered that the females they were wooing favoured their rivals and desired only to be friendly with them. The heart of the Cardinal sank as he watched. There was not a member of his immediate family among them. He pitied himself as he wondered if fate had in store for him the trials he saw others suffering. Those dreadful feathered females! How they coquetted! How they flirted! How they sleeked and flattened their plumage, and with half-open beaks and sparkling eyes, hopped closer and closer as if charmed. The eager singers, with swelling throats, sang and sang in a very frenzy of extravagant pleading, but just when they felt sure their little loves were on the point of surrender, a rod distant above the bushes would go streaks of feathers, and there was nothing left but to endure the bitter disappointment, follow them, and begin all over. For the last three days the Cardinal had been watching his cousin, rose-breasted Grosbeak, make violent love to the most exquisite little female, who apparently encouraged his advances, only to see him left sitting as blue and disconsolate as any human lover, when he discovers that the maid who has coquetted with him for a season belongs to another man. The Cardinal flew to the very top of the highest sycamore and looked across country toward the Limberlost. Should he go there seeking a swamp mate among his kindred? It was not an endurable thought. To be sure, matters were becoming serious. No bird beside the shining river had plumed, paraded, or made more music than he. Was it all to be wasted? By this time he confidently had expected results. Only that morning he had swelled with pride as he heard Mrs. Jay tell her quarrelsome husband that she wished she could exchange him for the Cardinal. Did not the gentle dove pause by the sumac, when she left brooding to take her morning dip in the dust, and gaze at him with unconcealed admiration? No doubt she devoutly wished her plain pudgy husband wore a scarlet coat. But it is praise from one's own sex that is praise indeed, and only an hour ago the lark had reported that from his lookout above cloud he saw no other singer anywhere so splendid as the Cardinal of the sumac. Because of these things he held fast to his conviction that he was a prince indeed; and he decided to remain in his chosen location and with his physical and vocal attractions compel the finest little cardinal in the fields to seek him. He planned it all very carefully: how she would hear his splendid music and come to take a peep at him; how she would be captivated by his size and beauty; how she would come timidly, but come, of course, for his approval; how he would condescend to accept her if she pleased him in all particulars; how she would be devoted to him; and how she would approve his choice of a home, for the sumac was in a lovely spot for scenery, as well as nest-building. For several days he had boasted, he had bantered, he had challenged, he had on this last day almost condescended to coaxing, but not one little bright-eyed cardinal female had come to offer herself. The performance of a brown thrush drove him wild with envy. The thrush came gliding up the river bank, a rusty-coated, sneaking thing of the underbrush, and taking possession of a thorn bush just opposite the sumac, he sang for an hour in the open. There was no way to improve that music. It was woven fresh from the warp and woof of his fancy. It was a song so filled with the joy and gladness of spring, notes so thrilled with love's pleading and passion's tender pulsing pain, that at its close there were a half-dozen admiring thrush females gathered around. With care and deliberation the brown thrush selected the most attractive, and she followed him to the thicket as if charmed. It was the Cardinal's dream materialized for another before his very eyes, and it filled him with envy. If that plain brown bird that slinked as if he had a theft to account for, could, by showing himself and singing for an hour, win a mate, why should not he, the most gorgeous bird of the woods, openly flaunting his charms and discoursing his music, have at least equal success? Should he, the proudest, most magnificent of cardinals, be compelled to go seeking a mate like any common bird? Perish the thought! He went to the river to bathe. After finding a spot where the water flowed crystal-clear over a bed of white limestone, he washed until he felt that he could be no cleaner. Then the Cardinal went to his favourite sun-parlour, and stretching on a limb, he stood his feathers on end, and sunned, fluffed and prinked until he was immaculate. On the tip-top antler of the old stag sumac, he perched and strained until his jetty whiskers appeared stubby. He poured out a tumultuous cry vibrant with every passion raging in him. He caught up his own rolling echoes and changed and varied them. He improvised, and set the shining river ringing, "Wet year! Wet year!" He whistled and whistled until all birdland and even mankind heard, for the farmer paused at his kitchen door, with his pails of foaming milk, and called to his wife: "Hear that, Maria! Jest hear it! I swanny, if that bird doesn't stop predictin' wet weather, I'll get so scared I won't durst put in my corn afore June. They's some birds like killdeers an' bobwhites 'at can make things pretty plain, but I never heard a bird 'at could jest speak words out clear an' distinct like that fellow. Seems to come from the river bottom. B'lieve I'll jest step down that way an' see if the lower field is ready for the plow yet." "Abram Johnson," said his wife, "bein's you set up for an honest man, if you want to trapse through slush an' drizzle a half-mile to see a bird, why say so, but don't for land's sake lay it on to plowin' 'at you know in all conscience won't be ready for a week yet 'thout pretendin' to look." Abram grinned sheepishly. "I'm willin' to call it the bird if you are, Maria. I've been hearin' him from the barn all day, an' there's somethin' kind o' human in his notes 'at takes me jest a little diffrunt from any other bird I ever noticed. I'm really curious to set eyes on him. Seemed to me from his singin' out to the barn, it 'ud be mighty near like meetin' folks." "Bosh!" exclaimed Maria. "I don't s'pose he sings a mite better 'an any other bird. It's jest the old Wabash rollin' up the echoes. A bird singin' beside the river always sounds twicet as fine as one on the hills. I've knowed that for forty year. Chances are 'at he'll be gone 'fore you get there." As Abram opened the door, "Wet year! Wet year!" pealed the flaming prophet. He went out, closing the door softly, and with an utter disregard for the corn field, made a bee line for the musician. "I don't know as this is the best for twinges o' rheumatiz," he muttered, as he turned up his collar and drew his old hat lower to keep the splashing drops from his face. "I don't jest rightly s'pose I should go; but I'm free to admit I'd as lief be dead as not to answer when I get a call, an' the fact is, I'm CALLED down beside the river." "Wet year! Wet year!" rolled the Cardinal's prediction. "Thanky, old fellow! Glad to hear you! Didn't jest need the information, but I got my bearin's rightly from it! I can about pick out your bush, an' it's well along towards evenin', too, an' must be mighty near your bedtime. Looks as if you might be stayin' round these parts! I'd like it powerful well if you'd settle right here, say 'bout where you are. An' where are you, anyway?" Abram went peering and dodging beside the fence, peeping into the bushes, searching for the bird. Suddenly there was a whir of wings and a streak of crimson. "Scared you into the next county, I s'pose," he muttered. But it came nearer being a scared man than a frightened bird, for the Cardinal flashed straight toward him until only a few yards away, and then, swaying on a bush, it chipped, cheered, peeked, whistled broken notes, and manifested perfect delight at the sight of the white-haired old man. Abram stared in astonishment. "Lord A'mighty!" he gasped. "Big as a blackbird, red as a live coal, an' a-comin' right at me. You are somebody's pet, that's what you are! An' no, you ain't either. Settin' on a sawed stick in a little wire house takes all the ginger out of any bird, an' their feathers are always mussy. Inside o' a cage never saw you, for they ain't a feather out o' place on you. You are finer'n a piece o' red satin. An' you got that way o' swingin' an' dancin' an' high-steppin' right out in God A'mighty's big woods, a teeterin' in the wind, an' a dartin' 'crost the water. Cage never touched you! But you are somebody's pet jest the same. An' I look like the man, an' you are tryin' to tell me so, by gum!" Leaning toward Abram, the Cardinal turned his head from side to side, and peered, "chipped," and waited for an answering "Chip" from a little golden-haired child, but there was no way for the man to know that. "It's jest as sure as fate," he said. "You think you know me, an' you are tryin' to tell me somethin'. Wish to land I knowed what you want! Are you tryin' to tell me `Howdy'? Well, I don't 'low nobody to be politer 'an I am, so far as I know." Abram lifted his old hat, and the raindrops glistened on his white hair. He squared his shoulders and stood very erect. "Howdy, Mr. Redbird! How d'ye find yerself this evenin'? I don't jest riccolict ever seein' you before, but I'll never meet you agin 'thout knowin' you. When d'you arrive? Come through by the special midnight flyer, did you? Well, you never was more welcome any place in your life. I'd give a right smart sum this minnit if you'd say you came to settle on this river bank. How do you like it? To my mind it's jest as near Paradise as you'll strike on earth. "Old Wabash is a twister for curvin' and windin' round, an' it's limestone bed half the way, an' the water's as pretty an' clear as in Maria's springhouse. An' as for trimmin', why say, Mr. Redbird, I'll jest leave it to you if she ain't all trimmed up like a woman's spring bunnit. Look at the grass a-creepin' right down till it's a trailin' in the water! Did you ever see jest quite such fine fringy willers? An' you wait a little, an' the flowerin' mallows 'at grows long the shinin' old river are fine as garden hollyhocks. Maria says 'at thy'd be purtier 'an hers if they were only double; but, Lord, Mr. Redbird, they are! See 'em once on the bank, an' agin in the water! An' back a little an' there's jest thickets of papaw, an' thorns, an' wild grape-vines, an' crab, an' red an' black haw, an' dogwood, an' sumac, an' spicebush, an' trees! Lord! Mr. Redbird, the sycamores, an' maples, an' tulip, an' ash, an' elm trees are so bustin' fine 'long the old Wabash they put 'em into poetry books an' sing songs about 'em. What do you think o' that? Jest back o' you a little there's a sycamore split into five trunks, any one o' them a famous big tree, tops up 'mong the clouds, an' roots diggin' under the old river; an' over a little farther's a maple 'at's eight big trees in one. Most anything you can name, you can find it 'long this ole Wabash, if you only know where to hunt for it. "They's mighty few white men takes the trouble to look, but the Indians used to know. They'd come canoein' an' fishin' down the river an' camp under these very trees, an' Ma 'ud git so mad at the old squaws. Settlers wasn't so thick then, an' you had to be mighty careful not to rile 'em, an' they'd come a-trapesin' with their wild berries. Woods full o' berries! Anybody could get 'em by the bushel for the pickin', an' we hadn't got on to raisin' much wheat, an' had to carry it on horses over into Ohio to get it milled. Took Pa five days to make the trip; an' then the blame old squaws 'ud come, an' Ma 'ud be compelled to hand over to 'em her big white loaves. Jest about set her plumb crazy. Used to get up in the night, an' fix her yeast, an' bake, an' let the oven cool, an' hide the bread out in the wheat bin, an' get the smell of it all out o' the house by good daylight, so's 'at she could say there wasn't a loaf in the cabin. Oh! if it's good pickin' you're after, they's berries for all creation 'long the river yet; an' jest wait a few days till old April gets done showerin' an' I plow this corn field!" Abram set a foot on the third rail and leaned his elbows on the top. The Cardinal chipped delightedly and hopped and tilted closer. "I hadn't jest 'lowed all winter I'd tackle this field again. I've turned it every spring for forty year. Bought it when I was a young fellow, jest married to Maria. Shouldered a big debt on it; but I always loved these slopin' fields, an' my share of this old Wabash hasn't been for sale nor tradin' any time this past forty year. I've hung on to it like grim death, for it's jest that much o' Paradise I'm plumb sure of. First time I plowed this field, Mr. Redbird, I only hit the high places. Jest married Maria, an' I didn't touch earth any too frequent all that summer. I've plowed it every year since, an' I've been 'lowin' all this winter, when the rheumatiz was gettin' in its work, 'at I'd give it up this spring an' turn it to medder; but I don't know. Once I got started, b'lieve I could go it all right an' not feel it so much, if you'd stay to cheer me up a little an' post me on the weather. Hate the doggondest to own I'm worsted, an' if you say it's stay, b'lieve I'll try it. Very sight o' you kinder warms the cockles o' my heart all up, an' every skip you take sets me a-wantin' to be jumpin', too. "What on earth are you lookin' for? Man! I b'lieve it's grub! Somebody's been feedin' you! An' you want me to keep it up? Well, you struck it all right, Mr. Redbird. Feed you? You bet I will! You needn't even 'rastle for grubs if you don't want to. Like as not you're feelin' hungry right now, pickin' bein' so slim these airly days. Land's sake! I hope you don't feel you've come too soon. I'll fetch you everything on the place it's likely a redbird ever teched, airly in the mornin' if you'll say you'll stay an' wave your torch 'long my river bank this summer. I haven't a scrap about me now. Yes, I have, too! Here's a handful o' corn I was takin' to the banty rooster; but shucks! he's fat as a young shoat now. Corn's a leetle big an' hard for you. Mebby I can split it up a mite." Abram took out his jack-knife, and dotting a row of grains along the top rail, he split and shaved them down as fine as possible; and as he reached one end of the rail, the Cardinal, with a spasmodic "Chip!" dashed down and snatched a particle from the other, and flashed back to the bush, tested, approved, and chipped his thanks. "Pshaw now!" said Abram, staring wide-eyed. "Doesn't that beat you? So you really are a pet? Best kind of a pet in the whole world, too! Makin' everybody, at sees you happy, an' havin' some chance to be happy yourself. An' I look like your friend? Well! Well! I'm monstrous willin' to adopt you if you'll take me; an', as for feedin', from to-morrow on I'll find time to set your little table 'long this same rail every day. I s'pose Maria 'ull say 'at I'm gone plumb crazy; but, for that matter, if I ever get her down to see you jest once, the trick's done with her, too, for you're the prettiest thing God ever made in the shape of a bird, 'at I ever saw. Look at that topknot a wavin' in the wind! Maybe praise to the face is open disgrace; but I'll take your share an' mine, too, an' tell you right here an' now 'at you're the blamedest prettiest thing 'at I ever saw. "But Lord! You ortn't be so careless! Don't you know you ain't nothin' but jest a target? Why don't you keep out o' sight a little? You come a-shinneyin' up to nine out o' ten men 'long the river like this, an' your purty, coaxin', palaverin' way won't save a feather on you. You'll get the little red heart shot plumb outen your little red body, an' that's what you'll get. It's a dratted shame! An' there's law to protect you, too. They's a good big fine for killin' such as you, but nobody seems to push it. Every fool wants to test his aim, an' you're the brightest thing on the river bank for a mark. "Well, if you'll stay right where you are, it 'ull be a sorry day for any cuss 'at teches you; 'at I'll promise you, Mr. Redbird. This land's mine, an' if you locate on it, you're mine till time to go back to that other old fellow 'at looks like me. Wonder if he's any willinger to feed you an' stand up for you 'an I am?" "Here! Here! Here!" whistled the Cardinal. "Well, I'm mighty glad if you're sayin' you'll stay! Guess it will be all right if you don't meet some o' them Limberlost hens an' tole off to the swamp. Lord! the Limberlost ain't to be compared with the river, Mr. Redbird. You're foolish if you go! Talkin' 'bout goin', I must be goin' myself, or Maria will be comin' down the line fence with the lantern; an', come to think of it, I'm a little moist, not to say downright damp. But then you WARNED me, didn't you, old fellow? Well, I told Maria seein' you 'ud be like meetin' folks, an' it has been. Good deal more'n I counted on, an' I've talked more'n I have in a whole year. Hardly think now 'at I've the reputation o' being a mighty quiet fellow, would you?" Abram straightened and touched his hat brim in a trim half military salute. "Well, good-bye, Mr. Redbird. Never had more pleasure meetin' anybody in my life 'cept first time I met Maria. You think about the plowin', an', if you say `stay,' it's a go! Good-bye; an' do be a little more careful o' yourself. See you in the mornin', right after breakfast, no count taken o' the weather." "Wet year! Wet year!" called the Cardinal after his retreating figure. Abram turned and gravely saluted the second time. The Cardinal went to the top rail and feasted on the sweet grains of corn until his craw was full, and then nestled in the sumac and went to sleep. Early next morning he was abroad and in fine toilet, and with a full voice from the top of the sumac greeted the day--"Wet year! Wet year!" Far down the river echoed his voice until it so closely resembled some member of his family replying that he followed, searching the banks mile after mile on either side, until finally he heard voices of his kind. He located them, but it was only several staid old couples, a long time mated, and busy with their nest-building. The Cardinal returned to the sumac, feeling a degree lonelier than ever. He decided to prospect in the opposite direction, and taking wing, he started up the river. Following the channel, he winged his flight for miles over the cool sparkling water, between the tangle of foliage bordering the banks. When he came to the long cumbrous structures of wood with which men had bridged the river, where the shuffling feet of tired farm horses raised clouds of dust and set the echoes rolling with their thunderous hoof beats, he was afraid; and rising high, he sailed over them in short broken curves of flight. But where giant maple and ash, leaning, locked branches across the channel in one of old Mother Nature's bridges for the squirrels, he knew no fear, and dipped so low beneath them that his image trailed a wavering shadow on the silver path he followed. He rounded curve after curve, and frequently stopping on a conspicuous perch, flung a ringing challenge in the face of the morning. With every mile the way he followed grew more beautiful. The river bed was limestone, and the swiftly flowing water, clear and limpid. The banks were precipitate in some places, gently sloping in others, and always crowded with a tangle of foliage. At an abrupt curve in the river he mounted to the summit of a big ash and made boastful prophecy, "Wet year! Wet year!" and on all sides there sprang up the voices of his kind. Startled, the Cardinal took wing. He followed the river in a circling flight until he remembered that here might be the opportunity to win the coveted river mate, and going slower to select the highest branch on which to display his charms, he discovered that he was only a few yards from the ash from which he had made his prediction. The Cardinal flew over the narrow neck and sent another call, then without awaiting a reply, again he flashed up the river and circled Horseshoe Bend. When he came to the same ash for the third time, he understood. The river circled in one great curve. The Cardinal mounted to the tip-top limb of the ash and looked around him. There was never a fairer sight for the eye of man or bird. The mist and shimmer of early spring were in the air. The Wabash rounded Horseshoe Bend in a silver circle, rimmed by a tangle of foliage bordering both its banks; and inside lay a low open space covered with waving marsh grass and the blue bloom of sweet calamus. Scattered around were mighty trees, but conspicuous above any, in the very center, was a giant sycamore, split at its base into three large trees, whose waving branches seemed to sweep the face of heaven, and whose roots, like miserly fingers, clutched deep into the black muck of Rainbow Bottom. It was in this lovely spot that the rainbow at last materialized, and at its base, free to all humanity who cared to seek, the Great Alchemist had left His rarest treasures--the gold of sunshine, diamond water-drops, emerald foliage, and sapphire sky. For good measure, there were added seeds, berries, and insects for the birds; and wild flowers, fruit, and nuts for the children. Above all, the sycamore waved its majestic head. It made a throne that seemed suitable for the son of the king; and mounting to its topmost branch, for miles the river carried his challenge: "Ho, cardinals! Look this way! Behold me! Have you seen any other of so great size? Have you any to equal my grace? Who can whistle so loud, so clear, so compelling a note? Who will fly to me for protection? Who will come and be my mate?" He flared his crest high, swelled his throat with rolling notes, and appeared so big and brilliant that among the many cardinals that had gathered to hear, there was not one to compare with him. Black envy filled their hearts. Who was this flaming dashing stranger, flaunting himself in the faces of their females? There were many unmated cardinals in Rainbow Bottom, and many jealous males. A second time the Cardinal, rocking and flashing, proclaimed himself; and there was a note of feminine approval so strong that he caught it. Tilting on a twig, his crest flared to full height, his throat swelled to bursting, his heart too big for his body, the Cardinal shouted his challenge for the third time; when clear and sharp arose a cry in answer, "Here! Here! Here!" It came from a female that had accepted the caresses of the brightest cardinal in Rainbow Bottom only the day before, and had spent the morning carrying twigs to a thicket of red haws. The Cardinal, with a royal flourish, sprang in air to seek her; but her outraged mate was ahead of him, and with a scream she fled, leaving a tuft of feathers in her mate's beak. In turn the Cardinal struck him like a flashing rocket, and then red war waged in Rainbow Bottom. The females scattered for cover with all their might. The Cardinal worked in a kiss on one poor little bird, too frightened to escape him; then the males closed in, and serious business began. The Cardinal would have enjoyed a fight vastly with two or three opponents; but a half-dozen made discretion better than valour. He darted among them, scattering them right and left, and made for the sycamore. With all his remaining breath, he insolently repeated his challenge; and then headed down stream for the sumac with what grace he could command. There was an hour of angry recrimination before sweet peace brooded again in Rainbow Bottom. The newly mated pair finally made up; the females speedily resumed their coquetting, and forgot the captivating stranger--all save the poor little one that had been kissed by accident. She never had been kissed before, and never had expected that she would be, for she was a creature of many misfortunes of every nature. She had been hatched from a fifth egg to begin with; and every one knows the disadvantage of beginning life with four sturdy older birds on top of one. It was a meager egg, and a feeble baby that pipped its shell. The remainder of the family stood and took nearly all the food so that she almost starved in the nest, and she never really knew the luxury of a hearty meal until her elders had flown. That lasted only a few days; for the others went then, and their parents followed them so far afield that the poor little soul, clamouring alone in the nest, almost perished. Hunger-driven, she climbed to the edge and exercised her wings until she managed some sort of flight to a neighbouring bush. She missed the twig and fell to the ground, where she lay cold and shivering. She cried pitifully, and was almost dead when a brown-faced, barefoot boy, with a fishing-pole on his shoulder, passed and heard her. "Poor little thing, you are almost dead," he said. "I know what I'll do with you. I'll take you over and set you in the bushes where I heard those other redbirds, and then your ma will feed you." The boy turned back and carefully set her on a limb close to one of her brothers, and there she got just enough food to keep her alive. So her troubles continued. Once a squirrel chased her, and she saved herself by crowding into a hole so small her pursuer could not follow. The only reason she escaped a big blue racer when she went to take her first bath, was that a hawk had his eye on the snake and snapped it up at just the proper moment to save the poor, quivering little bird. She was left so badly frightened that she could not move for a long time. All the tribulations of birdland fell to her lot. She was so frail and weak she lost her family in migration, and followed with some strangers that were none too kind. Life in the South had been full of trouble. Once a bullet grazed her so closely she lost two of her wing quills, and that made her more timid than ever. Coming North, she had given out again and finally had wandered into Rainbow Bottom, lost and alone. She was such a shy, fearsome little body, the females all flouted her; and the males never seemed to notice that there was material in her for a very fine mate. Every other female cardinal in Rainbow Bottom had several males courting her, but this poor, frightened, lonely one had never a suitor; and she needed love so badly! Now she had been kissed by this magnificent stranger! Of course, she knew it really was not her kiss. He had intended it for the bold creature that had answered his challenge, but since it came to her, it was hers, in a way, after all. She hid in the underbrush for the remainder of the day, and was never so frightened in all her life. She brooded over it constantly, and morning found her at the down curve of the horseshoe, straining her ears for the rarest note she ever had heard. All day she hid and waited, and the following days were filled with longing, but he never came again. So one morning, possessed with courage she did not understand, and filled with longing that drove her against her will, she started down the river. For miles she sneaked through the underbrush, and watched and listened; until at last night came, and she returned to Rainbow Bottom. The next morning she set out early and flew to the spot from which she had turned back the night before. From there she glided through the bushes and underbrush, trembling and quaking, yet pushing stoutly onward, straining her ears for some note of the brilliant stranger's. It was mid-forenoon when she reached the region of the sumac, and as she hopped warily along, only a short distance from her, full and splendid, there burst the voice of the singer for whom she was searching. She sprang into air, and fled a mile before she realized that she was flying. Then she stopped and listened, and rolling with the river, she heard those bold true tones. Close to earth, she went back again, to see if, unobserved, she could find a spot where she might watch the stranger that had kissed her. When at last she reached a place where she could see him plainly, his beauty was so bewildering, and his song so enticing that she gradually hopped closer and closer without knowing she was moving. High in the sumac the Cardinal had sung until his throat was parched, and the fountain of hope was almost dry. There was nothing save defeat from overwhelming numbers in Rainbow Bottom. He had paraded, and made all the music he ever had been taught, and improvised much more. Yet no one had come to seek him. Was it of necessity to be the Limberlost then? This one day more he would retain his dignity and his location. He tipped, tilted, and flirted. He whistled, and sang, and trilled. Over the lowland and up and down the shining river, ringing in every change he could invent, he sent for the last time his prophetic message, "Wet year! Wet year!" Chapter 3 "Come here! Come here!" entreated the Cardinal He felt that his music was not reaching his standard as he burst into this new song. He was almost discouraged. No way seemed open to him but flight to the Limberlost, and he so disdained the swamp that love-making would lose something of its greatest charm if he were driven there for a mate. The time seemed ripe for stringent measures, and the Cardinal was ready to take them; but how could he stringently urge a little mate that would not come on his imploring invitations? He listlessly pecked at the berries and flung abroad an inquiring "Chip!" With just an atom of hope, he frequently mounted to his choir-loft and issued an order that savoured far more of a plea, "Come here! Come here!" and then, leaning, he listened intently to the voice of the river, lest he fail to catch the faintest responsive "Chook!" it might bear. He could hear the sniffling of carp wallowing beside the bank. A big pickerel slashed around, breakfasting on minnows. Opposite the sumac, the black bass, with gamy spring, snapped up, before it struck the water, every luckless, honey-laden insect that fell from the feast of sweets in a blossom-whitened wild crab. The sharp bark of the red squirrel and the low of cattle, lazily chewing their cuds among the willows, came to him. The hammering of a woodpecker on a dead sycamore, a little above him, rolled to his straining ears like a drum beat. The Cardinal hated the woodpecker more than he disliked the dove. It was only foolishly effusive, but the woodpecker was a veritable Bluebeard. The Cardinal longed to pull the feathers from his back until it was as red as his head, for the woodpecker had dressed his suit in finest style, and with dulcet tones and melting tenderness had gone acourting. Sweet as the dove's had been his wooing, and one more pang the lonely Cardinal had suffered at being forced to witness his felicity; yet scarcely had his plump, amiable little mate consented to his caresses and approved the sycamore, before he turned on her, pecked her severely, and pulled a tuft of plumage from her breast. There was not the least excuse for this tyrannical action; and the sight filled the Cardinal with rage. He fully expected to see Madam Woodpecker divorce herself and flee her new home, and he most earnestly hoped that she would; but she did no such thing. She meekly flattened her feathers, hurried work in a lively manner, and tried in every way to anticipate and avert her mate's displeasure. Under this treatment he grew more abusive, and now Madam Woodpecker dodged every time she came within his reach. It made the Cardinal feel so vengeful that he longed to go up and drum the sycamore with the woodpecker's head until he taught him how to treat his mate properly. There was plently of lark music rolling with the river, and that morning brought the first liquid golden notes of the orioles. They had arrived at dawn, and were overjoyed with their homecoming, for they were darting from bank to bank singing exquisitely on wing. There seemed no end to the bird voices that floated with the river, and yet there was no beginning to the one voice for which the Cardinal waited with passionate longing. The oriole's singing was so inspiring that it tempted the Cardinal to another effort, and perching where he gleamed crimson and black against the April sky, he tested his voice, and when sure of his tones, he entreatingly called: "Come here! Come here!" Just then he saw her! She came daintily over the earth, soft as down before the wind, a rosy flush suffusing her plumage, a coral beak, her very feet pink--the shyest, most timid little thing alive. Her bright eyes were popping with fear, and down there among the ferns, anemones and last year's dried leaves, she tilted her sleek crested head and peered at him with frightened wonder and silent helplessness. It was for this the Cardinal had waited, hoped, and planned for many days. He had rehearsed what he conceived to be every point of the situation, and yet he was not prepared for the thing that suddenly happened to him. He had expected to reject many applicants before he selected one to match his charms; but instantly this shy little creature, slipping along near earth, taking a surreptitious peep at him, made him feel a very small bird, and he certainly never before had felt small. The crushing possibility that somewhere there might be a cardinal that was larger, brighter, and a finer musician than he, staggered him; and worst of all, his voice broke suddenly to his complete embarrassment. Half screened by the flowers, she seemed so little, so shy, so delightfully sweet. He "chipped" carefully once or twice to steady himself and clear his throat, for unaccountably it had grown dry and husky; and then he tenderly tried again. "Come here! Come here!" implored the Cardinal. He forgot all about his dignity. He knew that his voice was trembling with eagerness and hoarse with fear. He was afraid to attempt approaching her, but he leaned toward her, begging and pleading. He teased and insisted, and he did not care a particle if he did. It suddenly seemed an honour to coax her. He rocked on the limb. He side-stepped and hopped and gyrated gracefully. He fluffed and flirted and showed himself to every advantage. It never occurred to him that the dove and the woodpecker might be watching, though he would not have cared in the least if they had been; and as for any other cardinal, he would have attacked the combined forces of the Limberlost and Rainbow Bottom. He sang and sang. Every impulse of passion in his big, crimson, palpitating body was thrown into those notes; but she only turned her head from side to side, peering at him, seeming sufficiently frightened to flee at a breath, and answered not even the faintest little "Chook!" of encouragement. The Cardinal rested a second before he tried again. That steadied him and gave him better command of himself. He could tell that his notes were clearing and growing sweeter. He was improving. Perhaps she was interested. There was some encouragement in the fact that she was still there. The Cardinal felt that his time had come. "Come here! Come here!" He was on his mettle now. Surely no cardinal could sing fuller, clearer, sweeter notes! He began at the very first, and rollicked through a story of adventure, colouring it with every wild, dashing, catchy note he could improvise. He followed that with a rippling song of the joy and fulness of spring, in notes as light and airy as the wind-blown soul of melody, and with swaying body kept time to his rhythmic measures. Then he glided into a song of love, and tenderly, pleadingly, passionately, told the story as only a courting bird can tell it. Then he sang a song of ravishment; a song quavering with fear and the pain tugging at his heart. He almost had run the gamut, and she really appeared as if she intended to flee rather than to come to him. He was afraid to take even one timid little hop toward her. In a fit of desperation the Cardinal burst into the passion song. He arose to his full height, leaned toward her with outspread quivering wings, and crest flared to the utmost, and rocking from side to side in the intensity of his fervour, he poured out a perfect torrent of palpitant song. His cardinal body swayed to the rolling flood of his ecstatic tones, until he appeared like a flaming pulsing note of materialized music, as he entreated, coaxed, commanded, and pled. From sheer exhaustion, he threw up his head to round off the last note he could utter, and breathlessly glancing down to see if she were coming, caught sight of a faint streak of gray in the distance. He had planned so to subdue the little female he courted that she would come to him; he was in hot pursuit a half day's journey away before he remembered it. No other cardinal ever endured such a chase as she led him in the following days. Through fear and timidity she had kept most of her life in the underbrush. The Cardinal was a bird of the open fields and tree-tops. He loved to rock with the wind, and speed arrow-like in great plunges of flight. This darting and twisting over logs, among leaves, and through tangled thickets, tired, tried, and exasperated him more than hundreds of miles of open flight. Sometimes he drove her from cover, and then she wildly dashed up-hill and down-dale, seeking another thicket; but wherever she went, the Cardinal was only a breath behind her, and with every passing mile his passion for her grew. There was no time to eat, bathe, or sing; only mile after mile of unceasing pursuit. It seemed that the little creature could not stop if she would, and as for the Cardinal, he was in that chase to remain until his last heart-beat. It was a question how the frightened bird kept in advance. She was visibly the worse for this ardent courtship. Two tail feathers were gone, and there was a broken one beating from her wing. Once she had flown too low, striking her head against a rail until a drop of blood came, and she cried pitifully. Several times the Cardinal had cornered her, and tried to hold her by a bunch of feathers, and compel her by force to listen to reason; but she only broke from his hold and dashed away a stricken thing, leaving him half dead with longing and remorse. But no matter how baffled she grew, or where she fled in her headlong flight, the one thing she always remembered, was not to lead the Cardinal into the punishment that awaited him in Rainbow Bottom. Panting for breath, quivering with fear, longing for well-concealed retreats, worn and half blinded by the disasters of flight through strange country, the tired bird beat her aimless way; but she would have been torn to pieces before she would have led her magnificent pursuer into the wrath of his enemies. Poor little feathered creature! She had been fleeing some kind of danger all her life. She could not realize that love and protection had come in this splendid guise, and she fled on and on. Once the Cardinal, aching with passion and love, fell behind that she might rest, and before he realized that another bird was close, an impudent big relative of his, straying from the Limberlost, entered the race and pursued her so hotly that with a note of utter panic she wheeled and darted back to the Cardinal for protection. When to the rush of rage that possessed him at the sight of a rival was added the knowledge that she was seeking him in her extremity, such a mighty wave of anger swept the Cardinal that he appeared twice his real size. Like a flaming brand of vengeance he struck that Limberlost upstart, and sent him rolling to earth, a mass of battered feathers. With beak and claw he made his attack, and when he so utterly demolished his rival that he hopped away trembling, with dishevelled plumage stained with his own blood, the Cardinal remembered his little love and hastened back, confidently hoping for his reward. She was so securely hidden, that although he went searching, calling, pleading, he found no trace of her the remainder of that day. The Cardinal almost went distracted; and his tender imploring cries would have moved any except a panic-stricken bird. He did not even know in what direction to pursue her. Night closed down, and found him in a fever of love-sick fear, but it brought rest and wisdom. She could not have gone very far. She was too worn. He would not proclaim his presence. Soon she would suffer past enduring for food and water. He hid in the willows close where he had lost her, and waited with what patience he could; and it was a wise plan. Shortly after dawn, moving stilly as the break of day, trembling with fear, she came slipping to the river for a drink. It was almost brutal cruelty, but her fear must be overcome someway; and with a cry of triumph the Cardinal, in a plunge of flight, was beside her. She gave him one stricken look, and dashed away. The chase began once more and continued until she was visibly breaking. There was no room for a rival that morning. The Cardinal flew abreast of her and gave her a caress or attempted a kiss whenever he found the slightest chance. She was almost worn out, her flights were wavering and growing shorter. The Cardinal did his utmost. If she paused to rest, he crept close as he dared, and piteously begged: "Come here! Come here!" When she took wing, he so dexterously intercepted her course that several time she found refuge in his sumac without realizing where she was. When she did that, he perched just as closely as he dared; and while they both rested, he sang to her a soft little whispered love song, deep in his throat; and with every note he gently edged nearer. She turned her head from him, and although she was panting for breath and palpitant with fear, the Cardinal knew that he dared not go closer, or she would dash away like the wild thing she was. The next time she took wing, she found him so persistently in her course that she turned sharply and fled panting to the sumac. When this had happened so often that she seemed to recognize the sumac as a place of refuge, the Cardinal slipped aside and spent all his remaining breath in an exultant whistle of triumph, for now he was beginning to see his way. He dashed into mid-air, and with a gyration that would have done credit to a flycatcher, he snapped up a gadfly that should have been more alert. With a tender "Chip!" from branch to branch, slowly, cautiously, he came with it. Because he was half starved himself, he knew that she must be almost famished. Holding it where she could see, he hopped toward her, eagerly, carefully, the gadfly in his beak, his heart in his mouth. He stretched his neck and legs to the limit as he reached the fly toward her. What matter that she took it with a snap, and plunged a quarter of a mile before eating it? She had taken food from him! That was the beginning. Cautiously he impelled her toward the sumac, and with untiring patience kept her there the remainder of the day. He carried her every choice morsel he could find in the immediate vicinity of the sumac, and occasionally she took a bit from his beak, though oftenest he was compelled to lay it on a limb beside her. At dusk she repeatedly dashed toward the underbrush; but the Cardinal, with endless patience and tenderness, maneuvered her to the sumac, until she gave up, and beneath the shelter of a neighbouring grapevine, perched on a limb that was the Cardinal's own chosen resting-place, tucked her tired head beneath her wing, and went to rest. When she was soundly sleeping, the Cardinal crept as closely as he dared, and with one eye on his little gray love, and the other roving for any possible danger, he spent a night of watching for any danger that might approach. He was almost worn out; but this was infinitely better than the previous night, at any rate, for now he not only knew where she was, but she was fast asleep in his own favourite place. Huddled on the limb, the Cardinal gloated over her. He found her beauty perfect. To be sure, she was dishevelled; but she could make her toilet. There were a few feathers gone; but they would grow speedily. She made a heart-satisfying picture, on which the Cardinal feasted his love-sick soul, by the light of every straying moonbeam that slid around the edges of the grape leaves. Wave after wave of tender passion shook him. In his throat half the night he kept softly calling to her: "Come here! Come here!" Next morning, when the robins announced day beside the shining river, she awoke with a start; but before she could decide in which direction to fly, she discovered a nice fresh grub laid on the limb close to her, and very sensibly remained for breakfast. Then the Cardinal went to the river and bathed. He made such delightful play of it, and the splash of the water sounded so refreshing to the tired draggled bird, that she could not resist venturing for a few dips. When she was wet she could not fly well, and he improved the opportunity to pull her broken quills, help her dress herself, and bestow a few extra caresses. He guided her to his favourite place for a sun bath; and followed the farmer's plow in the corn field until he found a big sweet beetle. He snapped off its head, peeled the stiff wing shields, and daintily offered it to her. He was so delighted when she took it from his beak, and remained in the sumac to eat it, that he established himself on an adjoining thorn-bush, where the snowy blossoms of a wild morning-glory made a fine background for his scarlet coat. He sang the old pleading song as he never had sung it before, for now there was a tinge of hope battling with the fear in his heart. Over and over he sang, rounding, fulling, swelling every note, leaning toward her in coaxing tenderness, flashing his brilliant beauty as he swayed and rocked, for her approval; and all that he had suffered and all that he hoped for was in his song. Just when his heart was growing sick within him, his straining ear caught the faintest, most timid call a lover ever answered. Only one imploring, gentle "Chook!" from the sumac! His song broke in a suffocating burst of exultation. Cautiously he hopped from twig to twig toward her. With tender throaty murmurings he slowly edged nearer, and wonder of wonders! with tired eyes and quivering wings, she reached him her beak for a kiss. At dinner that day, the farmer said to his wife: "Maria, if you want to hear the prettiest singin', an' see the cutest sight you ever saw, jest come down along the line fence an' watch the antics o' that redbird we been hearin'." "I don't know as redbirds are so scarce 'at I've any call to wade through slush a half-mile to see one," answered Maria. "Footin's pretty good along the line fence," said Abram, "an' you never saw a redbird like this fellow. He's as big as any two common ones. He's so red every bush he lights on looks like it was afire. It's past all question, he's been somebody's pet, an' he's taken me for the man. I can get in six feet of him easy. He's the finest bird I ever set eyes on; an' as for singin', he's dropped the weather, an' he's askin' folks to his housewarmin' to-day. He's been there alone for a week, an' his singin's been first-class; but to-day he's picked up a mate, an' he's as tickled as ever I was. I am really consarned for fear he'll burst himself." Maria sniffed. "Course, don't come if you're tired, honey," said the farmer. "I thought maybe you'd enjoy it. He's a-doin' me a power o' good. My joints are limbered up till I catch myself pretty near runnin', on the up furrow, an' then, down towards the fence, I go slow so's to stay near him as long as I can." Maria stared. "Abram Johnson, have you gone daft?" she demanded. Abram chuckled. "Not a mite dafter'n you'll be, honey, once you set eyes on the fellow. Better come, if you can. You're invited. He's askin' the whole endurin' country to come." Maria said nothing more; but she mentally decided she had no time to fool with a bird, when there were housekeeping and spring sewing to do. As she recalled Abram's enthusiastic praise of the singer, and had a whiff of the odour-laden air as she passed from kitchen to spring-house, she was compelled to admit that it was a temptation to go; but she finished her noon work and resolutely sat down with her needle. She stitched industriously, her thread straightening with a quick nervous sweep, learned through years of experience; and if her eyes wandered riverward, and if she paused frequently with arrested hand and listened intently, she did not realize it. By two o'clock, a spirit of unrest that demanded recognition had taken possession of her. Setting her lips firmly, a scowl clouding her brow, she stitched on. By half past two her hands dropped in her lap, Abram's new hickory shirt slid to the floor, and she hesitatingly arose and crossed the room to the closet, from which she took her overshoes, and set them by the kitchen fire, to have them ready in case she wanted them. "Pshaw!" she muttered, "I got this shirt to finish this afternoon. There's butter an' bakin' in the mornin', an' Mary Jane Simms is comin' for a visit in the afternoon." She returned to the window and took up the shirt, sewing with unusual swiftness for the next half-hour; but by three she dropped it, and opening the kitchen door, gazed toward the river. Every intoxicating delight of early spring was in the air. The breeze that fanned her cheek was laden with subtle perfume of pollen and the crisp fresh odour of unfolding leaves. Curling skyward, like a beckoning finger, went a spiral of violet and gray smoke from the log heap Abram was burning; and scattered over spaces of a mile were half a dozen others, telling a story of the activity of his neighbours. Like the low murmur of distant music came the beating wings of hundreds of her bees, rimming the water trough, insane with thirst. On the wood-pile the guinea cock clattered incessantly: "Phut rack! Phut rack!" Across the dooryard came the old turkey-gobbler with fan tail and a rasping scrape of wing, evincing his delight in spring and mating time by a series of explosive snorts. On the barnyard gate the old Shanghai was lustily challenging to mortal combat one of his kind three miles across country. From the river arose the strident scream of her blue gander jealously guarding his harem. In the poultry-yard the hens made a noisy cackling party, and the stable lot was filled with cattle bellowing for the freedom of the meadow pasture, as yet scarcely ready for grazing. It seemed to the little woman, hesitating in the doorway, as if all nature had entered into a conspiracy to lure her from her work, and just then, clear and imperious, arose the demand of the Cardinal: "Come here! Come here!" Blank amazement filled her face. "As I'm a livin' woman!" she gasped. "He's changed his song! That's what Abram meant by me bein' invited. He's askin' folks to see his mate. I'm goin'." The dull red of excitement sprang into her cheeks. She hurried on her overshoes, and drew an old shawl over her head. She crossed the dooryard, followed the path through the orchard, and came to the lane. Below the barn she turned back and attempted to cross. The mud was deep and thick, and she lost an overshoe; but with the help of a stick she pried it out, and replaced it. "Joke on me if I'd a-tumbled over in this mud," she muttered. She entered the barn, and came out a minute later, carefully closing and buttoning the door, and started down the line fence toward the river. Half-way across the field Abram saw her coming. No need to recount how often he had looked in that direction during the afternoon. He slapped the lines on the old gray's back and came tearing down the slope, his eyes flashing, his cheeks red, his hands firmly gripping the plow that rolled up a line of black mould as he passed. Maria, staring at his flushed face and shining eyes, recognized that his whole being proclaimed an inward exultation. "Abram Johnson," she solemnly demanded, "have you got the power?" "Yes," cried Abram, pulling off his old felt hat, and gazing into the crown as if for inspiration. "You've said it, honey! I got the power! Got it of a little red bird! Power o' spring! Power o' song! Power o' love! If that poor little red target for some ornery cuss's bullet can get all he's getting out o' life to-day, there's no cause why a reasonin' thinkin' man shouldn't realize some o' his blessings. You hit it, Maria; I got the power. It's the power o' God, but I learned how to lay hold of it from that little red bird. Come here, Maria!" Abram wrapped the lines around the plow handle, and cautiously led his wife to the fence. He found a piece of thick bark for her to stand on, and placed her where she would be screened by a big oak. Then he stood behind her and pointed out the sumac and the female bird. "Jest you keep still a minute, an' you'll feel paid for comin' all right, honey," he whispered, "but don't make any sudden movement." "I don't know as I ever saw a worse-lookin' specimen 'an she is," answered Maria. "She looks first-class to him. There's no kick comin' on his part, I can tell you," replied Abram. The bride hopped shyly through the sumac. She pecked at the dried berries, and frequently tried to improve her plumage, which certainly had been badly draggled; and there was a drop of blood dried at the base of her beak. She plainly showed the effects of her rough experience, and yet she was a most attractive bird; for the dimples in her plump body showed through the feathers, and instead of the usual wickedly black eyes of the cardinal family, hers were a soft tender brown touched by a love-light there was no mistaking. She was a beautiful bird, and she was doing all in her power to make herself dainty again. Her movements clearly indicated how timid she was, and yet she remained in the sumac as if she feared to leave it; and frequently peered expectantly among the tree-tops. There was a burst of exultation down the river. The little bird gave her plumage a fluff, and watched anxiously. On came the Cardinal like a flaming rocket, calling to her on wing. He alighted beside her, dropped into her beak a morsel of food, gave her a kiss to aid digestion, caressingly ran his beak the length of her wing quills, and flew to the dogwood. Mrs. Cardinal enjoyed the meal. It struck her palate exactly right. She liked the kiss and caress, cared, in fact, for all that he did for her, and with the appreciation of his tenderness came repentance for the dreadful chase she had led him in her foolish fright, and an impulse to repay. She took a dainty hop toward the dogwood, and the invitation she sent him was exquisite. With a shrill whistle of exultant triumph the Cardinal answered at a headlong rush. The farmer's grip tightened on his wife's shoulder, but Maria turned toward him with blazing, tear-filled eyes. "An' you call yourself a decent man, Abram Johnson?" "Decent?" quavered the astonished Abram. "Decent? I believe I am." "I believe you ain't," hotly retorted his wife. "You don't know what decency is, if you go peekin' at them. They ain't birds! They're folks!" "Maria," pled Abram, "Maria, honey." "I am plumb ashamed of you," broke in Maria. "How d'you s'pose she'd feel if she knew there was a man here peekin' at her? Ain't she got a right to be lovin' and tender? Ain't she got a right to pay him best she knows? They're jest common human bein's, an' I don't know where you got privilege to spy on a female when she's doin' the best she knows." Maria broke from his grasp and started down the line fence. In a few strides Abram had her in his arms, his withered cheek with its springtime bloom pressed against her equally withered, tear-stained one. "Maria," he whispered, waveringly, "Maria, honey, I wasn't meanin' any disrespect to the sex." Maria wiped her eyes on the corner of her shawl. "I don't s'pose you was, Abram," she admitted; "but you're jest like all the rest o' the men. You never think! Now you go on with your plowin' an' let that little female alone." She unclasped his arms and turned homeward. "Honey," called Abram softly, "since you brought 'em that pocketful o' wheat, you might as well let me have it." "Landy!" exclaimed Maria, blushing; "I plumb forgot my wheat! I thought maybe, bein' so early, pickin' was scarce, an' if you'd put out a little wheat an' a few crumbs, they'd stay an' nest in the sumac, as you're so fond o' them." "Jest what I'm fairly prayin' they'll do, an' I been carryin' stuff an' pettin' him up best I knowed for a week," said Abram, as he knelt, and cupped his shrunken hands, while Maria guided the wheat from her apron into them. "I'll scatter it along the top rail, an' they'll be after it in fifteen minutes. Thank you, Maria. 'T was good o' you to think of it." Maria watched him steadily. How dear he was! How dear he always had been! How happy they were together! "Abram," she asked, hesitatingly, "is there anything else I could do for--your birds?" They were creatures of habitual repression, and the inner glimpses they had taken of each other that day were surprises they scarcely knew how to meet. Abram said nothing, because he could not. He slowly shook his head, and turned to the plow, his eyes misty. Maria started toward the line fence, but she paused repeatedly to listen; and it was no wonder, for all the redbirds from miles down the river had gathered around the sumac to see if there were a battle in birdland; but it was only the Cardinal, turning somersaults in the air, and screaming with bursting exuberance: "Come here! Come here!" Chapter 4 "So dear! So dear!" crooned the Cardinal She had taken possession of the sumac. The location was her selection and he loudly applauded her choice. She placed the first twig, and after examining it carefully, he spent the day carrying her others just as much alike as possible. If she used a dried grass blade, he carried grass blades until she began dropping them on the ground. If she worked in a bit of wild grape-vine bark, he peeled grape-vines until she would have no more. It never occurred to him that he was the largest cardinal in the woods, in those days, and he had forgotten that he wore a red coat. She was not a skilled architect. Her nest certainly was a loose ramshackle affair; but she had built it, and had allowed him to help her. It was hers; and he improvised a paean in its praise. Every morning he perched on the edge of the nest and gazed in songless wonder at each beautiful new egg; and whenever she came to brood she sat as if entranced, eyeing her treasures in an ecstasy of proud possession. Then she nestled them against her warm breast, and turned adoring eyes toward the Cardinal. If he sang from the dogwood, she faced that way. If he rocked on the wild grape-vine, she turned in her nest. If he went to the corn field for grubs, she stood astride her eggs and peered down, watching his every movement with unconcealed anxiety. The Cardinal forgot to be vain of his beauty; she delighted in it every hour of the day. Shy and timid beyond belief she had been during her courtship; but she made reparation by being an incomparably generous and devoted mate. And the Cardinal! He was astonished to find himself capable of so much and such varied feeling. It was not enough that he brooded while she went to bathe and exercise. The daintiest of every morsel he found was carried to her. When she refused to swallow another particle, he perched on a twig close by the nest many times in a day; and with sleek feathers and lowered crest, gazed at her in silent worshipful adoration. Up and down the river bank he flamed and rioted. In the sumac he uttered not the faintest "Chip!" that might attract attention. He was so anxious to be inconspicuous that he appeared only half his real size. Always on leaving he gave her a tender little peck and ran his beak the length of her wing--a characteristic caress that he delighted to bestow on her. If he felt that he was disturbing her too often, he perched on the dogwood and sang for life, and love, and happiness. His music was in a minor key now. The high, exultant, ringing notes of passion were mellowed and subdued. He was improvising cradle songs and lullabies. He was telling her how he loved her, how he would fight for her, how he was watching over her, how he would signal if any danger were approaching, how proud he was of her, what a perfect nest she had built, how beautiful he thought her eggs, what magnificent babies they would produce. Full of tenderness, melting with love, liquid with sweetness, the Cardinal sang to his patient little brooding mate: "So dear! So dear!" The farmer leaned on his corn-planter and listened to him intently. "I swanny! If he hasn't changed his song again, an' this time I'm blest if I can tell what he's saying!" Every time the Cardinal lifted his voice, the clip of the corn-planter ceased, and Abram hung on the notes and studied them over. One night he said to his wife: "Maria, have you been noticin' the redbird of late? He's changed to a new tune, an' this time I'm completely stalled. I can't for the life of me make out what he's saying. S'pose you step down to-morrow an' see if you can catch it for me. I'd give a pretty to know!" Maria felt flattered. She always had believed that she had a musical ear. Here was an opportunity to test it and please Abram at the same time. She hastened her work the following morning, and very early slipped along the line fence. Hiding behind the oak, with straining ear and throbbing heart, she eagerly listened. "Clip, clip," came the sound of the planter, as Abram's dear old figure trudged up the hill. "Chip! Chip!" came the warning of the Cardinal, as he flew to his mate. He gave her some food, stroked her wing, and flying to the dogwood, sang of the love that encompassed him. As he trilled forth his tender caressing strain, the heart of the listening woman translated as did that of the brooding bird. With shining eyes and flushed cheeks, she sped down the fence. Panting and palpitating with excitement, she met Abram half-way on his return trip. Forgetful of her habitual reserve, she threw her arms around his neck, and drawing his face to hers, she cried: "Oh, Abram! I got it! I got it! I know what he's saying! Oh, Abram, my love! My own! To me so dear! So dear!" "So dear! So dear!" echoed the Cardinal. The bewilderment in Abram's face melted into comprehension. He swept Maria from her feet as he lifted his head. "On my soul! You have got it, honey! That's what he's saying, plain as gospel! I can tell it plainer'n anything he's sung yet, now I sense it." He gathered Maria in his arms, pressed her head against his breast with a trembling old hand, while the face he turned to the morning was beautiful. "I wish to God," he said quaveringly, "'at every creature on earth was as well fixed as me an' the redbird!" Clasping each other, they listened with rapt faces, as, mellowing across the corn field, came the notes of the Cardinal: "So dear! So dear!" After that Abram's devotion to his bird family became a mild mania. He carried food to the top rail of the line fence every day, rain or shine, with the same regularity that he curried and fed Nancy in the barn. From caring for and so loving the Cardinal, there grew in his tender old heart a welling flood of sympathy for every bird that homed on his farm. He drove a stake to mark the spot where the killdeer hen brooded in the corn field, so that he would not drive Nancy over the nest. When he closed the bars at the end of the lane, he always was careful to leave the third one down, for there was a chippy brooding in the opening where it fitted when closed. Alders and sweetbriers grew in his fence corners undisturbed that spring if he discovered that they sheltered an anxious-eyed little mother. He left a square yard of clover unmowed, because it seemed to him that the lark, singing nearer the Throne than any other bird, was picking up stray notes dropped by the Invisible Choir, and with unequalled purity and tenderness, sending them ringing down to his brooding mate, whose home and happiness would be despoiled by the reaping of that spot of green. He delayed burning the brush-heap from the spring pruning, back of the orchard, until fall, when he found it housed a pair of fine thrushes; for the song of the thrush delighted him almost as much as that of the lark. He left a hollow limb on the old red pearmain apple-tree, because when he came to cut it there was a pair of bluebirds twittering around, frantic with anxiety. His pockets were bulgy with wheat and crumbs, and his heart was big with happiness. It was the golden springtime of his later life. The sky never had seemed so blue, or the earth so beautiful. The Cardinal had opened the fountains of his soul; life took on a new colour and joy; while every work of God manifested a fresh and heretofore unappreciated loveliness. His very muscles seemed to relax, and new strength arose to meet the demands of his uplifted spirit. He had not finished his day's work with such ease and pleasure in years; and he could see the influence of his rejuvenation in Maria. She was flitting around her house with broken snatches of song, even sweeter to Abram's ears than the notes of the birds; and in recent days he had noticed that she dressed particularly for her afternoon's sewing, putting on her Sunday lace collar and a white apron. He immediately went to town and bought her a finer collar than she ever had owned in her life. Then he hunted a sign painter, and came home bearing a number of pine boards on which gleamed in big, shiny black letters: +----------------------+ | NO HUNTING ALLOWED | | ON THIS FARM | +----------------------+ He seemed slightly embarrassed when he showed them to Maria. "I feel a little mite onfriendly, putting up signs like that 'fore my neighbours," he admitted, "but the fact is, it ain't the neighbours so much as it's boys that need raising, an' them town creatures who call themselves sportsmen, an' kill a hummin'-bird to see if they can hit it. Time was when trees an' underbrush were full o' birds an' squirrels, any amount o' rabbits, an' the fish fairly crowdin' in the river. I used to kill all the quail an' wild turkeys about here a body needed to make an appetizing change, It was always my plan to take a little an' leave a little. But jest look at it now. Surprise o' my life if I get a two-pound bass. Wild turkey gobblin' would scare me most out of my senses, an', as for the birds, there are jest about a fourth what there used to be, an' the crops eaten to pay for it. I'd do all I'm tryin' to for any bird, because of its song an' colour, an' pretty teeterin' ways, but I ain't so slow but I see I'm paid in what they do for me. Up go these signs, an' it won't be a happy day for anybody I catch trespassin' on my birds." Maria studied the signs meditatively. "You shouldn't be forced to put 'em up," she said conclusively. "If it's been decided 'at it's good for 'em to be here, an' laws made to protect 'em, people ought to act with some sense, an' leave them alone. I never was so int'rested in the birds in all my life; an' I'll jest do a little lookin' out myself. If you hear a spang o' the dinner bell when you're out in the field, you'll know it means there's some one sneakin' 'round with a gun." Abram caught Maria, and planted a resounding smack on her cheek, where the roses of girlhood yet bloomed for him. Then he filled his pockets with crumbs and grain, and strolled to the river to set the Cardinal's table. He could hear the sharp incisive "Chip!" and the tender mellow love-notes as he left the barn; and all the way to the sumac they rang in his ears. The Cardinal met him at the corner of the field, and hopped over bushes and the fence only a few yards from him. When Abram had scattered his store on the rail, the bird came tipping and tilting, daintily caught up a crumb, and carried it to the sumac. His mate was pleased to take it; and he carried her one morsel after another until she refused to open her beak for more. He made a light supper himself; and then swinging on the grape-vine, he closed the day with an hour of music. He repeatedly turned a bright questioning eye toward Abram, but he never for a moment lost sight of the nest and the plump gray figure of his little mate. As she brooded over her eggs, he brooded over her; and that she might realize the depth and constancy of his devotion, he told her repeatedly, with every tender inflection he could throw into his tones, that she was "So dear! So dear!" The Cardinal had not known that the coming of the mate he so coveted would fill his life with such unceasing gladness, and yet, on the very day that happiness seemed at fullest measure, there was trouble in the sumac. He had overstayed his time, chasing a fat moth he particularly wanted for his mate, and she, growing thirsty past endurance, left the nest and went to the river. Seeing her there, he made all possible haste to take his turn at brooding, so he arrived just in time to see a pilfering red squirrel starting away with an egg. With a vicious scream the Cardinal struck him full force. His rush of rage cost the squirrel an eye; but it lost the father a birdling, for the squirrel dropped the egg outside the nest. The Cardinal mournfully carried away the tell-tale bits of shell, so that any one seeing them would not look up and discover his treasures. That left three eggs; and the brooding bird mourned over the lost one so pitifully that the Cardinal perched close to the nest the remainder of the day, and whispered over and over for her comfort that she was "So dear! So dear!" Chapter 5 "See here! See here!" demanded the Cardinal The mandate repeatedly rang from the topmost twig of the thorn tree, and yet the Cardinal was not in earnest. He was beside himself with a new and delightful excitement, and he found it impossible to refrain from giving vent to his feelings. He was commanding the farmer and every furred and feathered denizen of the river bottom to see; then he fought like a wild thing if any of them ventured close, for great things were happening in the sumac. In past days the Cardinal had brooded an hour every morning while his mate went to take her exercise, bathe, and fluff in the sun parlour. He had gone to her that morning as usual, and she looked at him with anxious eyes and refused to move. He had hopped to the very edge of the nest and repeatedly urged her to go. She only ruffled her feathers, and nestled the eggs she was brooding to turn them, but did not offer to leave. The Cardinal reached over and gently nudged her with his beak, to remind her that it was his time to brood; but she looked at him almost savagely, and gave him a sharp peck; so he knew she was not to be bothered. He carried her every dainty he could find and hovered near her, tense with anxiety. It was late in the afternoon before she went after the drink for which she was half famished. She scarcely had reached a willow and bent over the water before the Cardinal was on the edge of the nest. He examined it closely, but he could see no change. He leaned to give the eggs careful scrutiny, and from somewhere there came to him the faintest little "Chip!" he ever had heard. Up went the Cardinal's crest, and he dashed to the willow. There was no danger in sight; and his mate was greedily dipping her rosy beak in the water. He went back to the cradle and listened intently, and again that feeble cry came to him. Under the nest, around it, and all through the sumac he searched, until at last, completely baffled, he came back to the edge. The sound was so much plainer there, that he suddenly leaned, caressing the eggs with his beak; then the Cardinal knew! He had heard the first faint cries of his shell-incased babies! With a wild scream he made a flying leap through the air. His heart was beating to suffocation. He started in a race down the river. If he alighted on a bush he took only one swing, and springing from it flamed on in headlong flight. He flashed to the top of the tallest tulip tree, and cried cloudward to the lark: "See here! See here!" He dashed to the river bank and told the killdeers, and then visited the underbrush and informed the thrushes and wood robins. Father-tender, he grew so delirious with joy that he forgot his habitual aloofness, and fraternized with every bird beside the shining river. He even laid aside his customary caution, went chipping into the sumac, and caressed his mate so boisterously she gazed at him severely and gave his wing a savage pull to recall him to his sober senses. That night the Cardinal slept in the sumac, very close to his mate, and he shut only one eye at a time. Early in the morning, when he carried her the first food, he found that she was on the edge of the nest, dropping bits of shell outside; and creeping to peep, he saw the tiniest coral baby, with closed eyes, and little patches of soft silky down. Its beak was wide open, and though his heart was even fuller than on the previous day, the Cardinal knew what that meant; and instead of indulging in another celebration, he assumed the duties of paternity, and began searching for food, for now there were two empty crops in his family. On the following day there were four. Then he really worked. How eagerly he searched, and how gladly he flew to the sumac with every rare morsel! The babies were too small for the mother to leave; and for the first few days the Cardinal was constantly on wing. If he could not find sufficiently dainty food for them in the trees and bushes, or among the offerings of the farmer, he descended to earth and searched like a wood robin. He forgot he needed a bath or owned a sun parlour; but everywhere he went, from his full heart there constantly burst the cry: "See here! See here!" His mate made never a sound. Her eyes were bigger and softer than ever, and in them glowed a steady lovelight. She hovered over those three red mites of nestlings so tenderly! She was so absorbed in feeding, stroking, and coddling them she neglected herself until she became quite lean. When the Cardinal came every few minutes with food, she was a picture of love and gratitude for his devoted attention, and once she reached over and softly kissed his wing. "See here! See here!" shrilled the Cardinal; and in his ecstasy he again forgot himself and sang in the sumac. Then he carried food with greater activity than ever to cover his lapse. The farmer knew that it lacked an hour of noon, but he was so anxious to tell Maria the news that he could not endure the suspense another minute. There was a new song from the sumac. He had heard it as he turned the first corner with the shovel plow. He had listened eagerly, and had caught the meaning almost at once--"See here! See here!" He tied the old gray mare to the fence to prevent her eating the young corn, and went immediately. By leaning a rail against the thorn tree he was able to peer into the sumac, and take a good look at the nest of handsome birdlings, now well screened with the umbrella-like foliage. It seemed to Abram that he never could wait until noon. He critically examined the harness, in the hope that he would find a buckle missing, and tried to discover a flaw in the plow that would send him to the barn for a file; but he could not invent an excuse for going. So, when he had waited until an hour of noon, he could endure it no longer. "Got news for you, Maria," he called from the well, where he was making a pretense of thirst. "Oh I don't know," answered Maria, with a superior smile. "If it's about the redbirds, he's been up to the garden three times this morning yellin', 'See here!' fit to split; an' I jest figured that their little ones had hatched. Is that your news?" "Well I be durned!" gasped the astonished Abram. Mid-afternoon Abram turned Nancy and started the plow down a row that led straight to the sumac. He intended to stop there, tie to the fence, and go to the river bank, in the shade, for a visit with the Cardinal. It was very warm, and he was feeling the heat so much, that in his heart he knew he would be glad to reach the end of the row and the rest he had promised himself. The quick nervous strokes of the dinner bell, "Clang! Clang!" came cutting the air clearly and sharply. Abram stopped Nancy with a jerk. It was the warning Maria had promised to send him if she saw prowlers with guns. He shaded his eyes with his hand and scanned the points of the compass through narrowed lids with concentrated vision. He first caught a gleam of light playing on a gun-barrel, and then he could discern the figure of a man clad in hunter's outfit leisurely walking down the lane, toward the river. Abram hastily hitched Nancy to the fence. By making the best time he could, he reached the opposite corner, and was nibbling the midrib of a young corn blade and placidly viewing the landscape when the hunter passed. "Howdy!" he said in an even cordial voice. The hunter walked on without lifting his eyes or making audible reply. To Abram's friendly oldfashioned heart this seemed the rankest discourtesy; and there was a flash in his eye and a certain quality in his voice he lifted a hand for parley. "Hold a minute, my friend," he said. "Since you are on my premises, might I be privileged to ask if you have seen a few signs 'at I have posted pertainin' to the use of a gun?" "I am not blind," replied the hunter; "and my education has been looked after to the extent that I can make out your notices. From the number and size of them, I think I could do it, old man, if I had no eyes." The scarcely suppressed sneer, and the "old man" grated on Abram's nerves amazingly, for a man of sixty years of peace. The gleam in his eyes grew stronger, and there was a perceptible lift of his shoulders as he answered: "I meant 'em to be read an' understood! From the main road passin' that cabin up there on the bank, straight to the river, an' from the furthermost line o' this field to the same, is my premises, an' on every foot of 'em the signs are in full force. They're in a little fuller force in June, when half the bushes an' tufts o' grass are housin' a young bird family, 'an at any other time. They're sort o' upholdin' the legislature's act, providing for the protection o' game an' singin' birds; an' maybe it 'ud be well for you to notice 'at I'm not so old but I'm able to stand up for my right to any livin' man." There certainly was an added tinge of respect in the hunter's tones as he asked: "Would you consider it trespass if a man simply crossed your land, following the line of the fences to reach the farm of a friend?" "Certainly not!" cried Abram, cordial in his relief. "To be sure not! Glad to have you convenience yourself. I only wanted to jest call to your notice 'at the BIRDS are protected on this farm." "I have no intention of interfering with your precious birds, I assure you," replied the hunter. "And if you require an explanation of the gun in June, I confess I did hope to be able to pick off a squirrel for a very sick friend. But I suppose for even such cause it would not be allowed on your premises." "Oh pshaw now!" said Abram. "Man alive! I'm not onreasonable. O' course in case o' sickness I'd be glad if you could run across a squirrel. All I wanted was to have a clear understandin' about the birds. Good luck, an' good day to you!" Abram started across the field to Nancy, but he repeatedly turned to watch the gleam of the gun-barrel, as the hunter rounded the corner and started down the river bank. He saw him leave the line of the fence and disappear in the thicket. "Goin' straight for the sumac," muttered Abram. "It's likely I'm a fool for not stayin' right beside him past that point. An' yet--I made it fair an' plain, an' he passed his word 'at he wouldn't touch the birds." He untied Nancy, and for the second time started toward the sumac. He had been plowing carefully, his attention divided between the mare and the corn; but he uprooted half that row, for his eyes wandered to the Cardinal's home as if he were fascinated, and his hands were shaking with undue excitement as he gripped the plow handles. At last he stopped Nancy, and stood gazing eagerly toward the river. "Must be jest about the sumac," he whispered. "Lord! but I'll be glad to see the old gun-barrel gleamin' safe t'other side o' it." There was a thin puff of smoke, and a screaming echo went rolling and reverberating down the Wabash. Abram's eyes widened, and a curious whiteness settled on his lips. He stood as if incapable of moving. "Clang! Clang!" came Maria's second warning. The trembling slid from him, and his muscles hardened. There was no trace of rheumatic stiffness in his movements. With a bound he struck the chain-traces from the singletree at Nancy's heels. He caught the hames, leaped on her back, and digging his heels into her sides, he stretched along her neck like an Indian and raced across the corn field. Nancy's twenty years slipped from her as her master's sixty had from him. Without understanding the emergency, she knew that he required all the speed there was in her; and with trace-chains rattling and beating on her heels, she stretched out until she fairly swept the young corn, as she raced for the sumac. Once Abram straightened, and slipping a hand into his pocket, drew out a formidable jack-knife, opening it as he rode. When he reached the fence, he almost flew over Nancy's head. He went into a fence corner, and with a few slashes severed a stout hickory withe, stripping the leaves and topping it as he leaped the fence. He grasped this ugly weapon, his eyes dark with anger as he appeared before the hunter, who supposed him at the other side of the field. "Did you shoot at that redbird?" he roared. As his gun was at the sportman's shoulder, and he was still peering among the bushes, denial seemed useless. "Yes, I did," he replied, and made a pretense of turning to the sumac again. There was a forward impulse of Abram's body. "Hit 'im?" he demanded with awful calm. "Thought I had, but I guess I only winged him." Abram's fingers closed around his club. At the sound of his friend's voice, the Cardinal came darting through the bushes a wavering flame, and swept so closely to him for protection that a wing almost brushed his cheek. "See here! See here!" shrilled the bird in deadly panic. There was not a cut feather on him. Abram's relief was so great he seemed to shrink an inch in height. "Young man, you better thank your God you missed that bird," he said solemnly, "for if you'd killed him, I'd a-mauled this stick to ribbons on you, an' I'm most afraid I wouldn't a-knowed when to quit." He advanced a step in his eagerness, and the hunter, mistaking his motive, levelled his gun. "Drop that!" shouted Abram, as he broke through the bushes that clung to him, tore the clothing from his shoulders, and held him back. "Drop that! Don't you dare point a weapon at me; on my own premises, an' after you passed your word. "Your word!" repeated Abram, with withering scorn, his white, quivering old face terrible to see. "Young man, I got a couple o' things to say to you. You'r' shaped like a man, an' you'r' dressed like a man, an' yet the smartest person livin' would never take you for anything but an egg-suckin' dog, this minute. All the time God ever spent on you was wasted, an' your mother's had the same luck. I s'pose God's used to having creatures 'at He's made go wrong, but I pity your mother. Goodness knows a woman suffers an' works enough over her children, an' then to fetch a boy to man's estate an' have him, of his own free will an' accord, be a liar! Young man, truth is the cornerstone o' the temple o' character. Nobody can put up a good buildin' without a solid foundation; an' you can't do solid character buildin' with a lie at the base. Man 'at's a liar ain't fit for anything! Can't trust him in no sphere or relation o' life; or in any way, shape, or manner. You passed out your word like a man, an' like a man I took it an' went off trustin' you, an' you failed me. Like as not that squirrel story was a lie, too! Have you got a sick friend who is needin' squirrel broth?" The hunter shook his head. "No? That wasn't true either? I'll own you make me curious. 'Ud you mind tellin' me what was your idy in cookin' up that squirrel story?" The hunter spoke with an effort. "I suppose I wanted to do something to make you feel small," he admitted, in a husky voice. "You wanted to make me feel small," repeated Abram, wonderingly. "Lord! Lord! Young man, did you ever hear o' a boomerang? It's a kind o' weapon used in Borneo, er Australy, er some o' them furrin parts, an' it's so made 'at the heathens can pitch it, an' it cuts a circle an' comes back to the fellow, at throwed. I can't see myself, an' I don't know how small I'm lookin'; but I'd rather lose ten year o' my life 'an to have anybody catch me lookin' as little as you do right now. I guess we look about the way we feel in this world. I'm feelin' near the size o' Goliath at present; but your size is such 'at it hustles me to see any MAN in you at all. An' you wanted to make me feel small! My, oh, my! An' you so young yet, too! "An' if it hadn't a-compassed a matter o' breakin' your word, what 'ud you want to kill the redbird for, anyhow? Who give you rights to go 'round takin' such beauty an' joy out of the world? Who do you think made this world an' the things 'at's in it? Maybe it's your notion 'at somebody about your size whittled it from a block o' wood, scattered a little sand for earth, stuck a few seeds for trees, an' started the oceans with a waterin' pot! I don't know what paved streets an' stall feedin' do for a man, but any one 'at's lived sixty year on the ground knows 'at this whole old earth is jest teemin' with work 'at's too big for anything but a God, an' a mighty BIG God at that! "You don't never need bother none 'bout the diskivries o' science, for if science could prove 'at the earth was a red hot slag broken from the sun, 'at balled an' cooled flyin' through space until the force o' gravity caught an' held it, it doesn't prove what the sun broke from, or why it balled an' didn't cool. Sky over your head, earth under foot, trees around you, an' river there--all full o' life 'at you ain't no mortal right to touch, 'cos God made it, an' it's His! Course, I know 'at He said distinct 'at man was to have `dominion over the beasts o' the field, an' the fowls o' the air' An' that means 'at you're free to smash a copperhead instead of letting it sting you. Means 'at you better shoot a wolf than to let it carry off your lambs. Means, at it's right to kill a hawk an' save your chickens; but God knows 'at shootin' a redbird just to see the feathers fly isn't having dominion over anything; it's jest makin' a plumb beast o' YERSELF. Passes me, how you can face up to the Almighty, an' draw a bead on a thing like that! Takes more gall'n I got! "God never made anything prettier 'an that bird, an' He must a-been mighty proud o' the job. Jest cast your eyes on it there! Ever see anything so runnin' over with dainty, pretty, coaxin' ways? Little red creatures, full o' hist'ry, too! Ever think o' that? Last year's bird, hatched hereabout, like as not. Went South for winter, an' made friends 'at's been feedin', an' teachin' it to TRUST mankind. Back this spring in a night, an' struck that sumac over a month ago. Broke me all up first time I ever set eyes on it. "Biggest reddest redbird I ever saw; an' jest a master hand at king's English! Talk plain as you can! Don't know what he said down South, but you can bank on it, it was sumpin' pretty fine. When he settled here, he was discoursin' on the weather, an' he talked it out about proper. He'd say, `Wet year! Wet year!' jest like that! He got the `wet' jest as good as I can, an', if he drawed the `ye-ar' out a little, still any blockhead could a-told what he was sayin', an' in a voice pretty an' clear as a bell. Then he got love-sick, an' begged for comp'ny until he broke me all up. An' if I'd a-been a hen redbird I wouldn't a-been so long comin'. Had me pulverized in less'n no time! Then a little hen comes 'long, an' stops with him; an' 'twas like an organ playin' prayers to hear him tell her how he loved her. Now they've got a nest full o' the cunningest little topknot babies, an' he's splittin' the echoes, calling for the whole neighbourhood to come see 'em, he's so mortal proud. "Stake my life he's never been fired on afore! He's pretty near wild with narvousness, but he's got too much spunk to leave his fam'ly, an' go off an' hide from creatures like you. They's no caution in him. Look at him tearin' 'round to give you another chance! "I felt most too rheumaticky to tackle field work this spring until he come 'long, an' the fire o' his coat an' song got me warmed up as I ain't been in years. Work's gone like it was greased, an' my soul's been singin' for joy o' life an' happiness ev'ry minute o' the time since he come. Been carryin' him grub to that top rail once an' twice a day for the last month, an' I can go in three feet o' him. My wife comes to see him, an' brings him stuff; an' we about worship him. Who are you, to come 'long an' wipe out his joy in life, an' our joy in him, for jest nothin'? You'd a left him to rot on the ground, if you'd a hit him; an' me an' Maria's loved him so! "D'you ever stop to think how full this world is o' things to love, if your heart's jest big enough to let 'em in? We love to live for the beauty o' the things surroundin' us, an' the joy we take in bein' among 'em. An' it's my belief 'at the way to make folks love us, is for us to be able to 'preciate what they can do. If a man's puttin' his heart an' soul, an' blood, an' beef-steak, an' bones into paintin' picters, you can talk farmin' to him all day, an' he's dumb; but jest show him 'at you see what he's a-drivin' at in his work, an' he'll love you like a brother. Whatever anybody succeeds in, it's success 'cos they so love it 'at they put the best o' theirselves into it; an' so, lovin' what they do, is lovin' them. "It 'ud 'bout kill a painter-man to put the best o' himself into his picture, an' then have some fellow like you come 'long an' pour turpentine on it jest to see the paint run; an' I think it must pretty well use God up, to figure out how to make an' colour a thing like that bird, an' then have you walk up an' shoot the little red heart out of it, jest to prove 'at you can! He's the very life o' this river bank. I'd as soon see you dig up the underbrush, an' dry up the river, an' spoil the picture they make against the sky, as to hev' you drop the redbird. He's the red life o' the whole thing! God must a-made him when his heart was pulsin' hot with love an' the lust o' creatin' in-com-PAR-able things; an' He jest saw how pretty it 'ud be to dip his featherin' into the blood He was puttin' in his veins. "To my mind, ain't no better way to love an' worship God, 'an to protect an' 'preciate these fine gifts He's given for our joy an' use. Worshipin' that bird's a kind o' religion with me. Getting the beauty from the sky, an' the trees, an' the grass, an' the water 'at God made, is nothin' but doin' Him homage. Whole earth's a sanctuary. You can worship from sky above to grass under foot. "Course, each man has his particular altar. Mine's in that cabin up at the bend o' the river. Maria lives there. God never did cleaner work, 'an when He made Maria. Lovin, her's sacrament. She's so clean, an' pure, an' honest, an' big-hearted! In forty year I've never jest durst brace right up to Maria an' try to put in words what she means to me. Never saw nothin' else as beautiful, or as good. No flower's as fragrant an' smelly as her hair on her pillow. Never tapped a bee tree with honey sweet as her lips a-twitchin' with a love quiver. Ain't a bird 'long the ol' Wabash with a voice up to hers. Love o' God ain't broader'n her kindness. When she's been home to see her folks, I've been so hungry for her 'at I've gone to her closet an' kissed the hem o' her skirts more'n once. I've never yet dared kiss her feet, but I've always wanted to. I've laid out 'at if she dies first, I'll do it then. An' Maria 'ud cry her eyes out if you'd a-hit the redbird. Your trappin's look like you could shoot. I guess 'twas God made that shot fly the mark. I guess--" "If you can stop, for the love of mercy do it!" cried the hunter. His face was a sickly white, his temples wet with sweat, and his body trembling. "I can't endure any more. I don't suppose you think I've any human instincts at all; but I have a few, and I see the way to arouse more. You probably won't believe me, but I'll never kill another innocent harmless thing; and I will never lie again so long as I live." He leaned his gun against the thorn tree, and dropped the remainder of his hunter's outfit beside it on the ground. "I don't seem a fit subject to `have dominion,'" he said. "I'll leave those thing for you; and thank you for what you have done for me." There was a crash through the bushes, a leap over the fence, and Abram and the Cardinal were alone. The old man sat down suddenly on a fallen limb of the sycamore. He was almost dazed with astonishment. He held up his shaking hands, and watched them wonderingly, and then cupped one over each trembling knee to steady himself. He outlined his dry lips with the tip of his tongue, and breathed in heavy gusts. He glanced toward the thorn tree. "Left his gun," he hoarsely whispered, "an' it's fine as a fiddle. Lock, stock, an' barrel just a-shinin'. An' all that heap o' leather fixin's. Must a-cost a lot o' money. Said he wasn't fit to use 'em! Lept the fence like a panther, an' cut dirt across the corn field. An' left me the gun! Well! Well! Well! Wonder what I said? I must a-been almost FIERCE." "See here! See here!" shrilled the Cardinal. Abram looked him over carefully. He was quivering with fear, but in no way injured. "My! but that was a close call, ol' fellow" said, Abram. "Minute later, an' our fun 'ud a-been over, an' the summer jest spoiled. Wonder if you knew what it meant, an' if you'll be gun-shy after this. Land knows, I hope so; for a few more such doses 'ull jest lay me up." He gathered himself together at last, set the gun over the fence, and climbing after it, caught Nancy, who had feasted to plethora on young corn. He fastened up the trace-chains, and climbing to her back, laid the gun across his lap and rode to the barn. He attended the mare with particular solicitude, and bathed his face and hands in the water trough to make himself a little more presentable to Maria. He started to the house, but had only gone a short way when he stopped, and after standing in thought for a time, turned back to the barn and gave Nancy another ear of corn. "After all, it was all you, ol' girl," he said, patting her shoulder, "I never on earth could a-made it on time afoot." He was so tired he leaned for support against her, for the unusual exertion and intense excitement were telling on him sorely, and as he rested he confided to her: "I don't know as I ever in my life was so riled, Nancy. I'm afraid I was a little mite fierce." He exhibited the gun, and told the story very soberly at supper time; and Maria was so filled with solicitude for him and the bird, and so indignant at the act of the hunter, that she never said a word about Abram's torn clothing and the hours of patching that would ensue. She sat looking at the gun and thinking intently for a long time; and then she said pityingly: "I don't know jest what you could a-said 'at 'ud make a man go off an' leave a gun like that. Poor fellow! I do hope, Abram, you didn't come down on him too awful strong. Maybe he lost his mother when he was jest a little tyke, an' he hasn't had much teachin'." Abram was completely worn out, and went early to bed. Far in the night Maria felt him fumbling around her face in an effort to learn if she were covered; and as he drew the sheet over her shoulder he muttered in worn and sleepy tones: "I'm afraid they's no use denyin' it, Maria, I WAS JEST MORTAL FIERCE." In the sumac the frightened little mother cardinal was pressing her precious babies close against her breast; and all through the night she kept calling to her mate, "Chook! Chook!" and was satisfied only when an answering "Chip!" came. As for the Cardinal, he had learned a new lesson. He had not been under fire before. Never again would he trust any one carrying a shining thing that belched fire and smoke. He had seen the hunter coming, and had raced home to defend his mate and babies, thus making a brilliant mark of himself; and as he would not have deserted them, only the arrival of the farmer had averted a tragedy in the sumac. He did not learn to use caution for himself; but after that, if a gun came down the shining river, he sent a warning "Chip!" to his mate, telling her to crouch low in her nest and keep very quiet, and then, in broken waves of flight, and with chirp and flutter, he exposed himself until he had lured danger from his beloved ones. When the babies grew large enough for their mother to leave them a short time, she assisted in food hunting, and the Cardinal was not so busy. He then could find time frequently to mount to the top of the dogwood, and cry to the world, "See here! See here!" for the cardinal babies were splendid. But his music was broken intermittent vocalizing now, often uttered past a beakful of food, and interspersed with spasmodic "chips" if danger threatened his mate and nestlings. Despite all their care, it was not so very long until trouble came to the sumac; and it was all because the first-born was plainly greedy; much more so than either his little brother or his sister, and he was one day ahead of them in strength. He always pushed himself forward, cried the loudest and longest, and so took the greater part of the food carried to the nest; and one day, while he was still quite awkward and uncertain, he climbed to the edge and reached so far that he fell. He rolled down the river bank, splash! into the water; and a hungry old pickerel, sunning in the weeds, finished him at a snap. He made a morsel so fat, sweet, and juicy that the pickerel lingered close for a week, waiting to see if there would be any more accidents. The Cardinal, hunting grubs in the corn field, heard the frightened cries of his mate, and dashed to the sumac in time to see the poor little ball of brightly tinted feathers disappear in the water and to hear the splash of the fish. He called in helpless panic and fluttered over the spot. He watched and waited until there was no hope of the nestling coming up, then he went to the sumac to try to comfort his mate. She could not be convinced that her young one was gone, and for the remainder of the day filled the air with alarm cries and notes of wailing. The two that remained were surely the envy of Birdland. The male baby was a perfect copy of his big crimson father, only his little coat was gray; but it was so highly tinged with red that it was brilliant, and his beak and feet were really red; and how his crest did flare, and how proud and important he felt, when he found he could raise and lower it at will. His sister was not nearly so bright as he, and she was almost as greedy as the lost brother. With his father's chivalry he allowed her to crowd in and take the most of the seeds and berries, so that she continually appeared as if she could swallow no more, yet she was constantly calling for food. She took the first flight, being so greedy she forgot to be afraid, and actually flew to a neighbouring thorn tree to meet the Cardinal, coming with food, before she realized what she had done. For once gluttony had its proper reward. She not only missed the bite, but she got her little self mightily well scared. With popping eyes and fear-flattened crest, she clung to the thorn limb, shivering at the depths below; and it was the greatest comfort when her brother plucked up courage and came sailing across to her. But, of course, she could not be expected to admit that. When she saw how easily he did it, she flared her crest, turned her head indifferently, and inquired if he did not find flying a very easy matter, once he mustered courage to try it; and she made him very much ashamed indeed because he had allowed her to be the first to leave the nest. From the thorn tree they worked their way to the dead sycamore; but there the lack of foliage made them so conspicuous that their mother almost went into spasms from fright, and she literally drove them back to the sumac. The Cardinal was so inordinately proud, and made such a brave showing of teaching them to fly, bathe, and all the other things necessary for young birds to know, that it was a great mercy they escaped with their lives. He had mastered many lessons, but he never could be taught how to be quiet and conceal himself. With explosive "chips" flaming and flashing, he met dangers that sent all the other birds beside the shining river racing to cover. Concealment he scorned; and repose he never knew. It was a summer full of rich experience for the Cardinal. After these first babies were raised and had flown, two more nests were built, and two other broods flew around the sumac. By fall the Cardinal was the father of a small flock, and they were each one neat, trim, beautiful river birds. He had lived through spring with its perfumed air, pale flowers, and burning heart hunger. He had known summer in its golden mood, with forests pungent with spicebush and sassafras; festooned with wild grape, woodbine, and bittersweet; carpeted with velvet moss and starry mandrake peeping from beneath green shades; the never-ending murmur of the shining river; and the rich fulfilment of love's fruition. Now it was fall, and all the promises of spring were accomplished. The woods were glorious in autumnal tints. There were ripened red haws, black haws, and wild grapes only waiting for severe frosts, nuts rattling down, scurrying squirrels, and the rabbits' flash of gray and brown. The waysides were bright with the glory of goldenrod, and royal with the purple of asters and ironwort. There was the rustle of falling leaves, the flitting of velvety butterflies, the whir of wings trained southward, and the call of the king crow gathering his followers. Then to the Cardinal came the intuition that it was time to lead his family to the orange orchard. One day they flamed and rioted up and down the shining river, raced over the corn field, and tilted on the sumac. The next, a black frost had stripped its antlered limbs. Stark and deserted it stood, a picture of loneliness. O bird of wonderful plumage and human-like song! What a precious thought of Divinity to create such beauty and music for our pleasure! Brave songster of the flaming coat, too proud to hide your flashing beauty, too fearless to be cautious of the many dangers that beset you, from the top of the morning we greet you, and hail you King of Birdland, at your imperious command: "See here! See here!" 
6164	----	THE LIFE OF THE FIELDS BY RICHARD JEFFERIES My thanks are due to those editors who have so kindly permitted me to reprint the following pages:--"The Field-Play" appeared in _Time_; "Bits of Oak Bark" and "The Pageant of Summer" in _Longman's Magazine_; "Meadow Thoughts" and "Mind under Water" in _The Graphic_; "Clematis Lane," "Nature near Brighton," "Sea, Sky, and Down," "January in the Sussex Woods," and "By the Exe" in _The Standard_; "Notes on Landscape Painting," in _The Magazine of Art_; "Village Miners," in _The Gentleman's Magazine_; "Nature and the Gamekeeper," "The Sacrifice to Trout," "The Hovering of the Kestrel," and "Birds Climbing the Air," in _The St. James's Gazette_; "Sport and Science," in _The National Review_; "The Water-Colley," in _The Manchester Guardian_; "Country Literature," "Sunlight in a London Square," "Venice in the East End," "The Pigeons at the British Museum," and "The Plainest City in Europe," in _The Pall Mall Gazette_. RICHARD JEFFERIES CONTENTS THE PAGEANT OF SUMMER THE FIELD PLAY: I. UPTILL-A-THORN II. RURAL DYNAMITE BITS OF OAK BARK: I. THE ACORN-GATHERER II. THE LEGEND OF A GATEWAY III. A ROMAN BROOK MEADOW THOUGHTS CLEMATIS LANE NATURE NEAR BRIGHTON SEA, SKY, AND DOWN JANUARY IN THE SUSSEX WOODS BY THE EXE THE WATER-COLLEY NOTES ON LANDSCAPE PAINTING VILLAGE MINERS MIND UNDER WATER SPORT AND SCIENCE NATURE AND THE GAMEKEEPER THE SACRIFICE TO TROUT THE HOVERING OF THE KESTREL BIRDS CLIMBING THE AIR COUNTRY LITERATURE: I. THE AWAKENING. II. SCARCITY OF BOOKS III. THE VILLAGER'S TASTE IN READING IV. PLAN OF DISTRIBUTION SUNLIGHT IN A LONDON SQUARE VENICE IN THE EAST END. THE PIGEONS AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM THE PLAINEST CITY IN EUROPE THE PAGEANT OF SUMMER I Green rushes, long and thick, standing up above the edge of the ditch, told the hour of the year as distinctly as the shadow on the dial the hour of the day. Green and thick and sappy to the touch, they felt like summer, soft and elastic, as if full of life, mere rushes though they were. On the fingers they left a green scent; rushes have a separate scent of green, so, too, have ferns, very different to that of grass or leaves. Rising from brown sheaths, the tall stems enlarged a little in the middle, like classical columns, and heavy with their sap and freshness, leaned against the hawthorn sprays. From the earth they had drawn its moisture, and made the ditch dry; some of the sweetness of the air had entered into their fibres, and the rushes--the common rushes--were full of beautiful summer. The white pollen of early grasses growing on the edge was dusted from them each time the hawthorn boughs were shaken by a thrush. These lower sprays came down in among the grass, and leaves and grass-blades touched. Smooth round stems of angelica, big as a gun-barrel, hollow and strong, stood on the slope of the mound, their tiers of well-balanced branches rising like those of a tree. Such a sturdy growth pushed back the ranks of hedge parsley in full white flower, which blocked every avenue and winding bird's-path of the bank. But the "gix," or wild parsnip, reached already high above both, and would rear its fluted stalk, joint on joint, till it could face a man. Trees they were to the lesser birds, not even bending if perched on; but though so stout, the birds did not place their nests on or against them. Something in the odour of these umbelliferous plants, perhaps, is not quite liked; if brushed or bruised they give out a bitter greenish scent. Under their cover, well shaded and hidden, birds build, but not against or on the stems, though they will affix their nests to much less certain supports. With the grasses that overhung the edge, with the rushes in the ditch itself, and these great plants on the mound, the whole hedge was wrapped and thickened. No cunning of glance could see through it; it would have needed a ladder to help any one look over. It was between the may and the June roses. The may-bloom had fallen, and among the hawthorn boughs were the little green bunches that would feed the redwings in autumn. High up the briars had climbed, straight and towering while there was a thorn, or an ash sapling, or a yellow-green willow to uphold them, and then curving over towards the meadow. The buds were on them, but not yet open; it was between the may and the rose. As the wind, wandering over the sea, takes from each wave an invisible portion, and brings to those on shore the ethereal essence of ocean, so the air lingering among the woods and hedges--green waves and billows--became full of fine atoms of summer. Swept from notched hawthorn leaves, broad-topped oak-leaves, narrow ash sprays and oval willows; from vast elm cliffs and sharp-taloned brambles under; brushed from the waving grasses and stiffening corn, the dust of the sunshine was borne along and breathed. Steeped in flower and pollen to the music of bees and birds, the stream of the atmosphere became a living thing. It was life to breathe it, for the air itself was life. The strength of the earth went up through the leaves into the wind. Fed thus on the food of the Immortals, the heart opened to the width and depth of the summer--to the broad horizon afar, down to the minutest creature in the grass, up to the highest swallow. Winter shows us Matter in its dead form, like the Primary rocks, like granite and basalt--clear but cold and frozen crystal. Summer shows us Matter changing into life, sap rising from the earth through a million tubes, the alchemic power of light entering the solid oak; and see! it bursts forth in countless leaves. Living things leap in the grass, living things drift upon the air, living things are coming forth to breathe in every hawthorn bush. No longer does the immense weight of Matter--the dead, the crystallised--press ponderously on the thinking mind. The whole office of Matter is to feed life--to feed the green rushes, and the roses that are about to be; to feed the swallows above, and us that wander beneath them. So much greater is this ween and common rush than all the Alps. Fanning so swiftly, the wasp's wings are but just visible as he passes; did he pause, the light would be apparent through their texture. On the wings of the dragon-fly as he hovers an instant before he darts there is a prismatic gleam. These wing textures are even more delicate than the minute filaments on a swallow's quill, more delicate than the pollen of a flower. They are formed of matter indeed, but how exquisitely it is resolved into the means and organs of life! Though not often consciously recognised, perhaps this is the great pleasure of summer, to watch the earth, the dead particles, resolving themselves into the living case of life, to see the seed-leaf push aside the clod and become by degrees the perfumed flower. From the tiny mottled egg come the wings that by-and-by shall pass the immense sea. It is in this marvellous transformation of clods and cold matter into living things that the joy and the hope of summer reside. Every blade of grass, each leaf, each separate floret and petal, is an inscription speaking of hope. Consider the grasses and the oaks, the swallows, the sweet blue butterfly--they are one and all a sign and token showing before our eyes earth made into life. So that my hope becomes as broad as the horizon afar, reiterated by every leaf, sung on every bough, reflected in the gleam of every flower. There is so much for us yet to come, so much to be gathered, and enjoyed. Not for you and me, now, but for our race, who will ultimately use this magical secret for their happiness. Earth holds secrets enough to give them the life of the fabled Immortals. My heart is fixed firm and stable in the belief that ultimately the sunshine and the summer, the flowers and the azure sky, shall become, as it were, interwoven into man's existence. He shall take from all their beauty and enjoy their glory. Hence it is that a flower is to me so much more than stalk and petals. When I look in the glass I see that every line in my face means pessimism; but in spite of my face--that is my experience--I remain an optimist. Time with an unsteady hand has etched thin crooked lines, and, deepening the hollows, has cast the original expression into shadow. Pain and sorrow flow over us with little ceasing, as the sea-hoofs beat on the beach. Let us not look at ourselves but onwards, and take strength from the leaf and the signs of the field. He is indeed despicable who cannot look onwards to the ideal life of man. Not to do so is to deny our birthright of mind. The long grass flowing towards the hedge has reared in a wave against it. Along the hedge it is higher and greener, and rustles into the very bushes. There is a mark only now where the footpath was; it passed close to the hedge, but its place is traceable only as a groove in the sorrel and seed-tops. Though it has quite filled the path, the grass there cannot send its tops so high; it has left a winding crease. By the hedge here stands a moss-grown willow, and its slender branches extend over the sward. Beyond it is an oak, just apart from the bushes; then the ground gently rises, and an ancient pollard ash, hollow and black inside, guards an open gateway like a low tower. The different tone of green shows that the hedge is there of nut-trees; but one great hawthorn spreads out in a semicircle, roofing the grass which is yet more verdant in the still pool (as it were) under it. Next a corner, more oaks, and a chestnut in bloom. Returning to-this spot an old apple tree stands right out in the meadow like an island. There seemed just now the tiniest twinkle of movement by the rushes, but it was lost among the hedge parsley. Among the grey leaves of the willow there is another flit of motion; and visible now against the sky there is a little brown bird, not to be distinguished at the moment from the many other little brown birds that are known to be about. He got up into the willow from the hedge parsley somehow, without being seen to climb or fly. Suddenly he crosses to the tops of the hawthorn and immediately flings himself up into the air a yard or two, his wings and ruffled crest making a ragged outline; jerk, jerk, jerk, as if it were with the utmost difficulty he could keep even at that height. He scolds, and twitters, and chirps, and all at once sinks like a stone into the hedge and out of sight as a stone into a pond. It is a whitethroat; his nest is deep in the parsley and nettles. Presently he will go out to the island apple tree and back again in a minute or two; the pair of them are so fond of each other's affectionate company they cannot remain apart. Watching the line of the hedge, about every two minutes, either near at hand or yonder a bird darts out just at the level of the grass, hovers a second with labouring wings, and returns as swiftly to the cover. Sometimes it is a flycatcher, sometimes a greenfinch, or chaffinch, now and then a robin, in one place a shrike, perhaps another is a redstart. They are fly-fishing all of them, seizing insects from the sorrel tips and grass, as the kingfisher takes a roach from the water. A blackbird slips up into the oak and a dove descends in the corner by the chestnut tree. But these are not visible together, only one at a time and with intervals. The larger part of the life of the hedge is out of sight. All the thrush-fledglings, the young blackbirds, and finches are hidden, most of them on the mound among the ivy, and parsley, and rough grasses, protected too by a roof of brambles. The nests that still have eggs are not, like the nests of the early days of April, easily found; they are deep down in the tangled herbage by the shore of the ditch, or far inside the thorny thickets which then looked mere bushes, and are now so broad. Landrails are running in the grass concealed as a man would be in a wood; they have nests and eggs on the ground for which you may search in vain till the mowers come. Up in the corner a fragment of white fur and marks of scratching show where a doe has been preparing for a litter. Some well-trodden runs lead from mound to mound; they are sandy near the hedge where the particles have been carried out adhering to the rabbits' feet and fur. A crow rises lazily from the upper end of the field, and perches in the chestnut. His presence, too, was unsuspected. He is there by far too frequently. At this season the crows are always in the mowing-grass, searching about, stalking in winding tracks from furrow to furrow, picking up an egg here and a foolish fledgling that has wandered from the mound yonder. Very likely there may be a moorhen or two slipping about under cover of the long grass; thus hidden, they can leave the shelter of the flags and wander a distance from the brook. So that beneath the surface of the grass and under the screen of the leaves there are ten times more birds than are seen. Besides the singing and calling, there is a peculiar sound which is only heard in summer. Waiting quietly to discover what birds are about, I become aware of a sound in the very air. It is not the midsummer hum which will soon be heard over the heated hay in the valley and over the cooler hills alike. It is not enough to be called a hum, and does but just tremble at the extreme edge of hearing. If the branches wave and rustle they overbear it; the buzz of a passing bee is so much louder it overcomes all of it that is in the whole field. I cannot, define it, except by calling the hours of winter to mind--they are silent; you hear a branch crack or creak as it rubs another in the wood, you hear the hoar-frost crunch on the grass beneath your feet, but the air is without sound in itself. The sound of summer is everywhere--in the passing breeze, in the hedge, in the broad branching trees, in the grass as it swings; all the myriad particles that together make the summer are in motion. The sap moves in the trees, the pollen is pushed out from grass and flower, and yet again these acres and acres of leaves and square miles of grass blades--for they would cover acres and square miles if reckoned edge to edge--are drawing their strength from the atmosphere. Exceedingly minute as these vibrations must be, their numbers perhaps may give them a volume almost reaching in the aggregate to the power of the ear. Besides the quivering leaf, the swinging grass, the fluttering bird's wing, and the thousand oval membranes which innumerable insects whirl about, a faint resonance seems to come from the very earth itself. The fervour of the sunbeams descending in a tidal flood rings on the strung harp of earth. It is this exquisite undertone, heard and yet unheard, which brings the mind into sweet accordance with the wonderful instrument of nature. By the apple tree there is a low bank, where the grass is less tall and admits the heat direct to the ground; here there are blue flowers--bluer than the wings of my favourite butterflies--with white centres--the lovely bird's-eyes, or veronica. The violet and cowslip, bluebell and rose, are known to thousands; the veronica is overlooked. The ploughboys know it, and the wayside children, the mower and those who linger in fields, but few else. Brightly blue and surrounded by greenest grass, imbedded in and all the more blue for the shadow of the grass, these growing butterflies' wings draw to themselves the sun. From this island I look down into the depth of the grasses. Red sorrel spires--deep drinkers of reddest sun wine--stand the boldest, and in their numbers threaten the buttercups. To these in the distance they give the gipsy-gold tint--the reflection of fire on plates of the precious metal. It will show even on a ring by firelight; blood in the gold, they say. Gather the open marguerite daisies, and they seem large--so wide a disc, such fingers of rays; but in the grass their size is toned by so much green. Clover heads of honey lurk in the bunches and by the hidden footpath. Like clubs from Polynesia the tips of the grasses are varied in shape: some tend to a point--the foxtails--some are hard and cylindrical; others, avoiding the club shape, put forth the slenderest branches with fruit of seed at the ends, which tremble as the air goes by. Their stalks are ripening and becoming of the colour of hay while yet the long blades remain green. Each kind is repeated a hundred times, the foxtails are succeeded by foxtails, the narrow blades by narrow blades, but never become monotonous; sorrel stands by sorrel, daisy flowers by daisy. This bed of veronica at the foot of the ancient apple has a whole handful of flowers, and yet they do not weary the eye. Oak follows oak and elm ranks with elm, but the woodlands are pleasant; however many times reduplicated, their beauty only increases. So, too, the summer days; the sun rises on the same grasses and green hedges, there is the same blue sky, but did we ever have enough of them? No, not in a hundred years! There seems always a depth, somewhere, unexplored, a thicket that has not been seen through, a corner full of ferns, a quaint old hollow tree, which may give us something. Bees go by me as I stand under the apple, but they pass on for the most part bound on a long journey, across to the clover fields or up to the thyme lands; only a few go down into the mowing-grass. The hive bees are the most impatient of insects; they cannot bear to entangle their wings beating against grasses or boughs. Not one will enter a hedge. They like an open and level surface, places cropped by sheep, the sward by the roadside, fields of clover, where the flower is not deep under grass. II It is the patient humble-bee that goes down into the forest of the mowing-grass. If entangled, the humble-bee climbs up a sorrel stem and takes wing, without any sign of annoyance. His broad back with tawny bar buoyantly glides over the golden buttercups. He hums to himself as he goes, so happy is he. He knows no skep, no cunning work in glass receives his labour, no artificial saccharine aids him when the beams of the sun are cold, there is no step to his house that he may alight in comfort; the way is not made clear for him that he may start straight for the flowers, nor are any sown for him. He has no shelter if the storm descends suddenly; he has no dome of twisted straw well thatched and tiled to retreat to. The butcher-bird, with a beak like a crooked iron nail, drives him to the ground, and leaves him pierced with a thorn; but no hail of shot revenges his tortures. The grass stiffens at nightfall (in autumn), and he must creep where he may, if possibly he may escape the frost. No one cares for the humble-bee. But down to the flowering nettle in the mossy-sided ditch, up into the tall elm, winding in and out and round the branched buttercups, along the banks of the brook, far inside the deepest wood, away he wanders and despises nothing. His nest is under the rough grasses and the mosses of the mound; a mere tunnel beneath the fibres and matted surface. The hawthorn overhangs it, the fern grows by, red mice rustle past. It thunders, and the great oak trembles; the heavy rain drops through the treble roof of oak and hawthorn and fern. Under the arched branches the lightning plays along, swiftly to and fro, or seems to, like the swish of a whip, a yellowish-red against the green; a boom! a crackle as if a tree fell from the sky. The thick grasses are bowed, the white florets of the wild parsley are beaten down, the rain hurls itself, and suddenly a fierce blast tears the green oak leaves and whirls them out into the fields; but the humble-bee's home, under moss and matted fibres, remains uninjured. His house at the root of the king of trees, like a cave in the rock, is safe. The storm passes and the sun comes out, the air is the sweeter and the richer for the rain, like verses with a rhyme; there will be more honey in the flowers. Humble he is, but wild; always in the field, the wood; always by the banks and thickets; always wild and humming to his flowers. Therefore I like the humble-bee, being, at heart at least, for ever roaming among the woodlands and the hills and by the brooks. In such quick summer storms the lightning gives the impression of being far more dangerous than the zigzag paths traced on the autumn sky. The electric cloud seems almost level with the ground and the livid flame to rush to and fro beneath the boughs as the little bats do in the evening. Caught by such a cloud, I have stayed under thick larches at the edge of plantations. They are no shelter, but conceal one perfectly. The wood-pigeons come home to their nest trees; in larches they seem to have permanent nests, almost like rooks. Kestrels, too, come home to the wood. Pheasants crow, but not from fear--from defiance, in fear they scream. The boom startles them, and they instantly defy the sky. The rabbits quietly feed on out in the field between the thistles and rushes that so often grow in woodside pastures, quietly hopping to their favourite places, utterly heedless how heavy the echoes may be in the hollows of the wooded hills. Till the rain comes they take no heed whatever, but then make for shelter. Blackbirds often make a good deal of noise; but the soft turtle-doves coo gently, let the lightning be as savage as it will. Nothing has the least fear. Man alone, more senseless than a pigeon, put a god in vapour; and to this day, though the printing press has set a foot on every threshold, numbers bow the knee when they hear the roar the timid dove does not heed. So trustful are the doves, the squirrels, the birds of the branches, and the creatures of the field. Under their tuition let us rid ourselves of mental terrors, and face death itself as calmly as they do the livid lightning; so trustful and so content with their fate, resting in themselves and unappalled. If but by reason and will I could reach the godlike calm and courage of what we so thoughtlessly call the timid turtle-dove, I should lead a nearly perfect life. The bark of the ancient apple tree under which I have been standing is shrunken like iron which has been heated and let cool round the rim of a wheel. For a hundred years the horses have rubbed against it while feeding in the aftermath. The scales of the bark are gone or smoothed down and level, so that insects have no hiding-place. There are no crevices for them, the horsehairs that were caught anywhere have been carried away by birds for their nests. The trunk is smooth and columnar, hard as iron. A hundred times the mowing-grass has grown up around it, the birds have built their nests, the butterflies fluttered by, and the acorns dropped from the oaks. It is a long, long time, counted by artificial hours or by the seasons, but it is longer still in another way. The greenfinch in the hawthorn yonder has been there since I came out, and all the time has been happily talking to his love. He has left the hawthorn indeed, but only for a minute or two, to fetch a few seeds, and comes back each time more full of song-talk than ever. He notes no slow movement of the oak's shadow on the grass; it is nothing to him and his lady dear that the sun, as seen from his nest, is crossing from one great bough of the oak to another. The dew even in the deepest and most tangled grass has long since been dried, and some of the flowers that close at noon will shortly fold their petals. The morning airs, which breathe so sweetly, come less and less frequently as the heat increases. Vanishing from the sky, the last fragments of cloud have left an untarnished azure. Many times the bees have returned to their hives, and thus the index of the day advances. It is nothing to the green-finches; all their thoughts are in their song-talk. The sunny moment is to them all in all. So deeply are they rapt in it that they do not know whether it is a moment or a year. There is no clock for feeling, for joy, for love. And with all their motions and stepping from bough to bough, they are not restless; they have so much time, you see. So, too, the whitethroat in the wild parsley; so, too, the thrush that just now peered out and partly fluttered his wings as he stood to look. A butterfly comes and stays on a leaf--a leaf much warmed by the sun--and shuts his wings. In a minute he opens them, shuts them again, half wheels round, and by-and-by--just when he chooses, and not before--floats away. The flowers open, and remain open for hours, to the sun. Hastelessness is the only word one can make up to describe it; there is much rest, but no haste. Each moment, as with the greenfinches, is so full of life that it seems so long and so sufficient in itself. Not only the days, but life itself lengthens in summer. I would spread abroad my arms and gather more of it to me, could I do so. All the procession of living and growing things passes. The grass stands up taller and still taller, the sheaths open, and the stalk arises, the pollen clings till the breeze sweeps it. The bees rush past, and the resolute wasps; the humble-bees, whose weight swings them along. About the oaks and maples the brown chafers swarm; and the fern-owls at dusk, and the blackbirds and jays by day, cannot reduce their legions while they last. Yellow butterflies, and white, broad red admirals, and sweet blues; think of the kingdom of flowers which is theirs! Heavy moths burring at the edge of the copse; green, and red, and gold flies: gnats, like smoke, around the tree-tops; midges so thick over the brook, as if you could haul a netful; tiny leaping creatures in the grass; bronze beetles across the path; blue dragonflies pondering on cool leaves of water-plantain. Blue jays flitting, a magpie drooping across from elm to elm; young rooks that have escaped the hostile shot blundering up into the branches; missel thrushes leading their fledglings, already strong on the wing, from field to field. An egg here on the sward dropped by a starling; a red ladybird creeping, tortoise-like, up a green fern frond. Finches undulating through the air, shooting themselves with closed wings, and linnets happy with their young. Golden dandelion discs--gold and orange--of a hue more beautiful, I think, than the higher and more visible buttercup. A blackbird, gleaming, so black is he, splashing in the runlet of water across the gateway. A ruddy kingfisher swiftly drawing himself as you might draw a stroke with a pencil, over the surface of the yellow buttercups, and away above the hedge. Hart's-tongue fern, thick with green, so green as to be thick with its colour, deep in the ditch under the shady hazel boughs. White meadow-sweet lifting its tiny florets, and black-flowered sedges. You must push through the reed grass to find the sword-flags; the stout willow-herbs will not be trampled down, but resist the foot like underwood. Pink lychnis flowers behind the withy stoles, and little black moorhens swim away, as you gather it, after their mother, who has dived under the water-grass, and broken the smooth surface of the duckweed. Yellow loosestrife is rising, thick comfrey stands at the very edge; the sandpipers run where the shore is free from bushes. Back by the underwood the prickly and repellent brambles will presently present us with fruit. For the squirrels the nuts are forming, green beechmast is there--green wedges under the spray; up in the oaks the small knots, like bark rolled up in a dot, will be acorns. Purple vetches along the mounds, yellow lotus where the grass is shorter, and orchis succeeds to orchis. As I write them, so these things come--not set in gradation, but like the broadcast flowers in the mowing-grass. Now follows the gorse, and the pink rest-harrow, and the sweet lady's-bedstraw, set as it were in the midst of a little thorn-bush. The broad repetition of the yellow clover is not to be written; acre upon acre, and not one spot of green, as if all the green had been planed away, leaving only the flowers to which the bees come by the thousand from far and near. But one white campion stands in the midst of the lake of yellow. The field is scented as though a hundred hives of honey had been emptied on it. Along the mound by it the bluebells are seeding, the hedge has been cut and the ground is strewn with twigs. Among those seeding bluebells and dry twigs and mosses I think a titlark has his nest, as he stays all day there and in the oak over. The pale clear yellow of charlock, sharp and clear, promises the finches bushels of seed for their young. Under the scarlet of the poppies the larks run, and then for change of colour soar into the blue. Creamy honeysuckle on the hedge around the cornfield, buds of wild rose everywhere, but no sweet petal yet. Yonder, where the wheat can climb no higher up the slope, are the purple heath-bells, thyme and flitting stonechats. The lone barn shut off by acres of barley is noisy with sparrows. It is their city, and there is a nest in every crevice, almost under every tile. Sometimes the partridges run between the ricks, and when the bats come out of the roof, leverets play in the waggon-track. At even a fern-owl beats by, passing close to the eaves whence the moths issue. On the narrow waggon-track which descends along a coombe and is worn in chalk, the heat pours down by day as if an invisible lens in the atmosphere focussed the sun's rays. Strong woody knapweed endures it, so does toadflax and pale blue scabious, and wild mignonette. The very sun of Spain burns and burns and ripens the wheat on the edge of the coombe, and will only let the spring moisten a yard or two around it; but there a few rushes have sprung, and in the water itself brooklime with blue flowers grows so thickly that nothing but a bird could find space to drink. So down again from this sun of Spain to woody coverts where the wild hops are blocking every avenue, and green-flowered bryony would fain climb to the trees; where grey-flecked ivy winds spirally about the red rugged bark of pines, where burdocks fight for the footpath, and teazle-heads look over the low hedges. Brake-fern rises five feet high; in some way woodpeckers are associated with brake, and there seem more of them where it flourishes. If you count the depth and strength of its roots in the loamy sand, add the thickness of its flattened stem, and the width of its branching fronds, you may say that it comes near to be a little tree. Beneath where the ponds are bushy mare's-tails grow, and on the moist banks jointed pewterwort; some of the broad bronze leaves of water-weeds seem to try and conquer the pond and cover it so firmly that a wagtail may run on them. A white butterfly follows along the waggon-road, the pheasants slip away as quietly as the butterfly flies, but a jay screeches loudly and flutters in high rage to see us. Under an ancient garden wall among matted bines of trumpet convolvulus, there is a hedge-sparrow's nest overhung with ivy on which even now the last black berries cling. There are minute white flowers on the top of the wall, out of reach, and lichen grows against it dried by the sun till it looks ready to crumble. By the gateway grows a thick bunch of meadow geranium, soon to flower; over the gate is the dusty highway road, quiet but dusty, dotted with the innumerable footmarks of a flock of sheep that has passed. The sound of their bleating still comes back, and the bees driven up by their feet have hardly had time to settle again on the white clover beginning to flower on the short roadside sward. All the hawthorn leaves and briar and bramble, the honeysuckle, too, is gritty with the dust that has been scattered upon it. But see--can it be? Stretch a hand high, quick, and reach it down; the first, the sweetest, the dearest rose of June. Not yet expected, for the time is between the may and the roses, least of all here in the hot and dusty highway; but it is found--the first rose of June. Straight go the white petals to the heart; straight the mind's glance goes back to how many other pageants of summer in old times When perchance the sunny days were even more sunny; when the stilly oaks were full of mystery, lurking like the Druid's mistletoe in the midst of their mighty branches. A glamour in the heart came back to it again from every flower; as the sunshine was reflected from them so the feeling in the heart returned tenfold. To the dreamy summer haze love gave a deep enchantment, the colours were fairer, the blue more lovely in the lucid sky. Each leaf finer, and the gross earth enamelled beneath the feet. A sweet breath on the air, a soft warm hand in the touch of the sunshine, a glance in the gleam of the rippled waters, a whisper in the dance of the shadows. The ethereal haze lifted the heavy oaks and they were buoyant on the mead, the rugged bark was chastened and no longer rough, each slender flower beneath them again refined. There was a presence everywhere though unseen, on the open hills, and not shut out under the dark pines. Dear were the June roses then because for another gathered. Yet even dearer now with so many years as it were upon the petals; all the days that have been before, all the heart-throbs, all our hopes lie in this opened bud. Let not the eyes grow dim, look not back but forward; the soul must uphold itself like the sun. Let us labour to make the heart grow larger as we become older, as the spreading oak gives more shelter. That we could but take to the soul some of the greatness and the beauty of the summer! Still the pageant moves. The song-talk of the finches rises and sinks like the tinkle of a waterfall. The greenfinches have been by me all the while. A bullfinch pipes now and then further up the hedge where the brambles and thorns are thickest. Boldest of birds to look at, he is always in hiding. The shrill tone of a goldfinch came just now from the ash branches, but he has gone on. Every four or five minutes a chaffinch sings close by, and another fills the interval near the gateway. There are linnets somewhere, but I cannot from the old apple tree fix their exact place. Thrushes have sung and ceased; they will begin again in ten minutes. The blackbirds do not cease; the note tittered by a blackbird in the oak yonder before it can drop is taken up by a second near the top of the field, and ere it falls is caught by a third on the left-hand side. From one of the topmost boughs of an elm there fell the song of a willow warbler for awhile; one of the least of birds, he often seeks the highest branches of the highest tree. A yellowhammer has just flown from a bare branch in the gateway, where he has been perched and singing a full hour. Presently he will commence again, and as the sun declines will sing him to the horizon, and then again sing till nearly dusk. The yellowhammer is almost the longest of all the singers; he sits and sits and has no inclination to move. In the spring he sings, in the summer he sings, and he continues when the last sheaves are being carried from the wheat field. The redstart yonder has given forth a few notes, the whitethroat flings himself into the air at short intervals and chatters, the shrike calls sharp and determined, faint but shrill calls descend from the swifts in the air These descend, but the twittering notes of the swallows do not reach so far--they are too high to-day. A cuckoo has called by the brook, and now fainter from a greater distance. That the titlarks are singing I know, but not within hearing from here; a dove, though, is audible, and a chiffchaff has twice passed. Afar beyond the oaks at the top of the field dark specks ascend from time to time, and after moving in wide circles for awhile descend again to the corn. These must be larks; but their notes are not powerful enough to reach me, though they would were it not for the song in the hedges, the hum of innumerable insects, and the ceaseless "crake, crake" of landrails. There are at least two landrails in the mowing-grass; one of them just now seemed coming straight towards the apple tree, and I expected in a minute to see the grass move, when the bird turned aside and entered the tufts and wild parsley by the hedge. Thence the call has come without a moment's pause, "crake, crake," till the thick hedge seems filled with it. Tits have visited the apple tree over my head, a wren has sung in the willow, or rather on a dead branch projecting lower down than the leafy boughs, and a robin across under the elms in the opposite hedge. Elms are a favourite tree of robins--not the upper branches, but those that grow down the trunk, and are the first to have leaves in spring. The yellowhammer is the most persistent individually, but I think the blackbirds when listened to are the masters of the fields. Before one can finish another begins, like the summer ripples succeeding behind each other, so that the melodious sound merely changes its position. Now here, now in the corner, then across the field, again in the distant copse, where it seems about to sink, when it rises again almost at hand. Like a great human artist, the blackbird makes no effort, being fully conscious that his liquid tone cannot be matched. He utters a few delicious notes, and carelessly quits the green stage of the oak till it pleases him to sing again. Without the blackbird, in whose throat the sweetness of the green fields dwells, the days would be only partly summer. Without the violet all the bluebells and cowslips could not make a spring, and without the blackbird even the nightingale would be but half welcome. It is not yet noon, these songs have been ceaseless since dawn; this evening, after the yellowhammer has sung the sun down, when the moon rises and the faint stars appear, still the cuckoo will call, and the grasshopper lark, the landrail's "crake, crake" will echo from the mound, a warbler or a blackcap will utter his notes, and even at the darkest of the summer night the swallows will hardly sleep in their nests. As the morning sky grows blue, an hour before the sun, up will rise the larks singing and audible now, the cuckoo will recommence, and the swallows will start again on their tireless journey. So that the songs of the summer birds are as ceaseless as the sound of the waterfall which plays day and night. I cannot leave it; I must stay under the old tree in the midst of the long grass, the luxury of the leaves, and the song in the very air. I seem as if I could feel all the glowing life the sunshine gives and the south wind calls to being. The endless grass, the endless leaves, the immense strength of the oak expanding, the unalloyed joy of finch and blackbird; from all of them I receive a little. Each gives me something of the pure joy they gather for themselves. In the blackbird's melody one note is mine; in the dance of the leaf shadows the formed maze is for me, though the motion is theirs; the flowers with a thousand faces have collected the kisses of the morning. Feeling with them, I receive some, at least, of their fulness of life. Never could I have enough; never stay long enough--whether here or whether lying on the shorter sward under the sweeping and graceful birches, or on the thyme-scented hills. Hour after hour, and still not enough. Or walking the footpath was never long enough, or my strength sufficient to endure till the mind was weary. The exceeding beauty of the earth, in her splendour of life, yields a new thought with every petal. The hours when the mind is absorbed by beauty are the only hours when we really live, so that the longer we can stay among these things so much the more is snatched from inevitable Time. Let the shadow advance upon the dial-I can watch it with equanimity while it is there to be watched. It is only when the shadow is _not_ there, when the clouds of winter cover it, that the dial is terrible. The invisible shadow goes on and steals from us. But now, while I can see the shadow of the tree and watch it slowly gliding along the surface of the grass, it is mine. These are the only hours that are not wasted--these hours that absorb the soul and fill it with beauty. This is real life, and all else is illusion, or mere endurance. Does this reverie of flowers and waterfall and song form an ideal, a human ideal, in the mind? It does; much the same ideal that Phidias sculptured of man and woman filled with a godlike sense of the violet fields of Greece, beautiful beyond thought, calm as my turtle-dove before the lurid lightning of the unknown. To be beautiful and to be calm, without mental fear, is the ideal of nature. If I cannot achieve it, at least I can think it. THE FIELD-PLAY I UPTILL-A-THORN "Save the nightingale alone; She, poor bird, as all forlorn, Lean'd her breast uptill a thorn." --_Passionate Pilgrim._ She pinned her torn dress with a thorn torn from the bushes through which she had scrambled to the hay-field. The gap from the lane was narrow, made more narrow by the rapid growth of summer; her rake caught in an ash-spray, and in releasing it she "ranted" the bosom of her print dress. So soon as she had got through she dropped her rake on the hay, searched for a long, nail-like thorn, and thrust it through, for the good-looking, careless hussy never had any provision of pins about her. Then, taking a June rose which pricked her finger, she put the flower by the "rant", or tear, and went to join the rest of the hay-makers. The blood welled up out of the scratch in the finger more freely than would have been supposed from so small a place. She put her lips to it to suck it away, as folk do in all quarters of the earth yet discovered, being one of those instinctive things which come without teaching. A red dot of blood stained her soft white cheek, for, in brushing back her hair with her hand, she forgot the wounded finger. With red blood on her face, a thorn and a rose in her bosom, and a hurt on her hand, she reached the chorus of rakers. The farmer and the sun are the leading actors, and the hay-makers are the chorus, who bear the burden of the play. Marching, each a step behind the other, and yet in a row, they presented a slanting front, and so crossed the field, turning the "wallows." At the hedge she took her place, the last in the row. There were five men and eight women; all flouted her. The men teased her for being late again at work; she said it was so far to come. The women jeered at her for tearing her dress--she couldn't get through a "thornin'" hedge right. There was only one thing she could do, and that was to "make a vool of zum veller" (make a fool of some fellow). Dolly did not take much notice, except that her nervous temperament showed slight excitement in the manner she used her rake, now turning the hay quickly, now missing altogether, then catching the teeth of the rake in the buttercup-runners. The women did not fail to tell her how awkward she was. By-and-by Dolly bounced forward, and, with a flush on her cheek, took the place next to the men. They teased her too, you see, but there was no spiteful malice in their tongues. There are some natures which, naturally meek, if much condemned, defy that condemnation, and willingly give it ground of justification by open guilt. The women accused her of too free a carriage with the men; she replied by seeking their company in the broad glare of the summer day. They laughed loudly, joked, but welcomed her; they chatted with her gaily; they compelled her to sip from their ale as they paused by the hedge. By noon there was a high colour on her cheeks; the sun, the exercise, the badinage had brought it up. So fair a complexion could not brown even in summer, exposed to the utmost heat. The beams indeed did heighten the hue of her cheeks a little, but it did not shade to brown. Her chin and neck were wholly untanned, white and soft, and the blue veins roamed at their will. Lips red, a little full perhaps; teeth slightly prominent but white and gleamy as she smiled. Dark brown hair in no great abundance, always slipping out of its confinement and straggling, now on her forehead, and now on her shoulders, like wandering bines of bryony. The softest of brown eyes under long eyelashes; eyes that seemed to see everything in its gentlest aspect, that could see no harm anywhere. A ready smile on the face, and a smile in the form. Her shape yielded so easily at each movement that it seemed to smile as she walked. Her nose was the least pleasing feature--not delicate enough to fit with the complexion, and distinctly upturned, though not offensively. But it was not noticed; no one saw anything beyond the laughing lips, the laughing shape, the eyes that melted so near to tears. The torn dress, the straggling hair, the tattered shoes, the unmended stocking, the straw hat split, the mingled poverty and carelessness--perhaps rather dreaminess--disappeared when once you had met the full untroubled gaze of those beautiful eyes. Untroubled, that is, with any ulterior thought of evil or cunning; they were as open as the day, the day which you can make your own for evil or good. So, too, like the day, was she ready to the making. No stability; now fast in motion; now slow; now by fits and starts; washing her face to-day, her hands to-morrow. Never going straight, even along the road; talking with the waggoner, helping a child to pick watercress, patting the shepherd's dog, finding a flower, and late every morning at the hay-field. It was so far to come, she said; no doubt it was, if these stoppings and doublings were counted in. No character whatever, no more than the wind; she was like a well-hung gate swinging to a touch; like water yielding to let a reed sway; like a singing-flame rising and falling to a word, and even to an altered tone of voice. A word pushed her this way; a word pushed her that. Always yielding, sweet, and gentle. Is not this the most seductive of all characters in women? Had they left her alone, would it have been any different? Those bitter, coarse, feminine tongues which gave her the name of evil, and so led her to openly announce that, as she had the name, she would carry on the game. That is an old country saying, "Bear the name, carry the game." If you have the name of a poacher, then poach; you will be no worse off and you will have the pleasure of the poaching. It is a serious matter, indeed, to give any one a bad name, more especially a sensitive, nervous, beautiful girl. Under the shady oaks at luncheon the men all petted her and flattered her in their rude way, which, rude as it was, had the advantage of admitting of no mistake. Two or three more men strolled up from other fields, luncheon in hand and eating as they came, merely to chat with her. One was a mower--a powerful fellow, big boned, big everywhere, and heavy fisted; his chest had been open since four o'clock that morning to the sun, and was tanned like his face. He took her in his mighty arms and kissed her before them all; not one dared move, for the weight of that bone-smashing fist was known. Big Mat drank, as all strong men do; he fought; beyond that there was nothing against him. He worked hard, and farmers are only too glad of a man who will work. He was rather a favourite with the master, and trusted. He kissed her twice, and then went back to his work of mowing, which needs more strength than any other country labour--a mower is to a man what a dray-horse is to a horse. They lingered long over the luncheon under the shady oaks, with the great blue tile of the sky overhead, and the sweet scent of hay around them. They lingered so long, that young Mr. Andrew came to start them again, and found Dolly's cheeks all aglow. The heat and the laughter had warmed them; her cheeks burned, in contrast to her white, pure forehead--for her hat was off--and to the cool shade of the trees. She lingered yet a little longer chatting with Mr. Andrew--lingered a full half-hour--and when they parted, she had given him a rose from the hedge. Young Mr. Andrew was but half a farmer's son; he was destined for a merchant's office in town; he had been educated for it, and was only awaiting the promised opening. He was young, but no yokel; too knowing of town cunning and selfish hardness to entangle himself. Yet those soft brown eyes, that laughing shape; Andrew was very young and so was she, and the summer sun burned warm. The blackbirds whistled the day away, and the swallows sought their nests under the eaves. The curved moon hung on the sky as the hunter's horn on the wall. Timid Wat--the hare--came ambling along the lane, and almost ran against two lovers in a recess of the bushes by an elm. Andrew, Andrew! these lips are too sweet for you; get you to your desk--that smiling shape, those shaded, soft brown eyes, let them alone. Be generous--do not awaken hopes you can never, never fulfil. The new-mown hay is scented yet more sweetly in the evening--of a summer's eve it is always too soon to go home. The blackbirds whistled again, big Mat slew the grass from the rising to the going down of the sun--moon-daisies, sorrel, and buttercups lay in rows of swathe as he mowed. I wonder whether the man ever thought, as he reposed at noontide on a couch of grass under the hedge? Did he think that those immense muscles, that broad, rough-hewn plank of a chest of his, those vast bones encased in sinewy limbs--being flesh in its fulness--ought to have more of this earth than mere common men, and still more than thin-faced people--mere people, not men--in black coats? Did he dimly claim the rights of strength in his mind, and arrogate to himself the prerogatives of arbitrary kings? Who knows what big processes of reasoning, dim and big, passed through his mind in the summer days? Did he conclude he had a right to take what others only asked or worked for? The sweet scent of the new-mown hay disappeared, the hay became whiter, the ricks rose higher, and were topped and finished. Hourly the year grew drier and sultry, as the time of wheat-harvest approached. Sap of spring had dried away; dry stalk of high summer remained, browned with heat. Mr. Andrew (in the country the son is always called by his Christian name, with the prefix Master or Mr.) had been sent for to London to fill the promised lucrative berth. The reapers were in the corn--Dolly tying up; big Mat slashing at the yellow stalks. Why the man worked so hard no one could imagine, unless it was for pure physical pleasure of using those great muscles. Unless, indeed, a fire, as it were, was burning in his mind, and drove him to labour to smother it, as they smother fires by beating them. Dolly was happier than ever--the gayest of the gay. She sang, she laughed, her white, gleaming teeth shone in the sunshine; it was as if she had some secret which enabled her to defy the taunts and cruel, shameless words hurled at her, like clods of earth, by the other women. Gay she was, as the brilliant poppies who, having the sun as their own, cared for nothing else. Till suddenly, just before the close of harvest, Dolly and Mat were missing from the field. Of course their absence was slanderously connected, but there was no known ground for it. Big Mat was found intoxicated at the tavern, from which he never moved for a fortnight, spending in one long drain of drink the lump of money his mighty arms had torn from the sun in the burning hours of work. Dolly was ill at home; sometimes in her room, sometimes downstairs; but ill, shaky and weak--ague they called it. There were dark circles round her eyes, her chin drooped to her breast; she wrapped herself in a shawl in all the heat. It was some time before even the necessity of working brought her forth again, and then her manner was hurried and furtive; she would begin trembling all of a minute, and her eyes filled quickly. By degrees the autumn advanced, and the rooks followed the ploughman. Dolly gradually recovered something of her physical buoyancy; her former light-heartedness never returned. Sometimes an incident would cause a flash of the old gaiety, only for her to sink back into subdued quietness. The change was most noticeable in her eyes; soft and tender still, brown and velvety, there was a deep sadness in them--the longer she looked at you, the more it was visible. They seemed as if her spirit had suffered some great wrong; too great for redress, and that could only be borne in silence. How beautiful are beautiful eyes! Not from one aspect only, as a picture is, where the light falls rightly on it--the painter's point of view--they vary to every and any aspect. The orb rolls to meet the changing circumstance, and is adjusted to all. But a little inquiry into the mechanism of the eyes will indicate how wondrously they are formed. Science has dispelled many illusions, broken many dreams; but here, in the investigation of the eye, it has added to our marvelling interest. The eye is still like the work of a magician: it is physically divine. Besides the liquid flesh which delights the beholder, there is then the retina, the mysterious nerve which receives a thousand pictures on one surface and confuses none; and further, the mystery of the brain, which reproduces them at will, twenty years, yes threescore years and ten, afterwards. Perhaps of all physical things, the eye is most beautiful, most divine. Her eyes were still beautiful, but subdued and full of a great wrong. What that wrong was became apparent in the course of time. Dolly had to live with Mat, and, unhappily, not as his wife. Next harvest there was a child wrapped in a red shawl with her in the field, placed under the shocks while she worked. Her brother Bill talked and threatened--of what avail was it? The law gave no redress, and among men in these things, force is master still. There were none who could meet big Mat in fight. Something seemed to burn in Mat like fire. Now he worked, and now he drank, but the drink which would have killed another did him no injury. He grew and flourished upon it, more bone, more muscle, more of the savage nature of original man. But there was something within on fire. Was he not satisfied even yet? Did he arrogate yet further prerogatives of kings?--prerogatives which even kings claim no longer. One day, while in drink, his heavy fist descended--he forgot his might; he did not check it, like Ulysses in the battle with Irus--and Dolly fell. When they lifted her up, one eye was gone. It was utterly put out, organically destroyed; no skill, no money, no loving care could restore it. The soft, brown velvet, the laugh, the tear gone for ever. The divine eye was broken--battered as a stone might be. The exquisite structure which reflected the trees and flowers, and took to itself the colour of the summer sky, was shapeless. In the second year, Mr. Andrew came down, and one day met her in the village. He did not know her. The stoop, the dress which clothed, but responded to no curve, the sunken breast, and the sightless eye, how should he recognise these? This ragged, plain, this ugly, repellent creature--he did not know her. She spoke; Mr. Andrew hastily fumbled in his pocket, fetched out half-a-crown, gave it, and passed on quickly. How fortunate that he had not entangled himself! Meantime, Mat drank and worked harder than ever, and became more morose, so that no one dared cross him, yet as a worker he was trusted by the farmer. Whatever it was, the fire in him burned deeper, and to the very quick. The poppies came and went once more, the harvest moon rose yellow and ruddy, all the joy of the year proceeded, but Dolly was like a violet over which a waggon-wheel had rolled. The thorn had gone deep into her bosom. II RURAL DYNAMITE In the cold North men eat bread of fir-bark; in our own fields the mouse, if pressed for food in winter, will gnaw the bark of sapling trees. Frost sharpens the teeth like a file, and hunger is keener than frost. If any one used to more fertile scenes had walked across the barren meads Mr. Roberts rented as the summer declined, he would have said that a living could only be gained from them as the mouse gains it in frost-time. By sharp-set nibbling and paring; by the keenest frost-bitten meanness of living; by scraping a little bit here, and saving another trifle yonder, a farmer might possibly get through the year. At the end of each year he would be rather worse off than before, descending a step annually. He must nibble like a frost-driven mouse to merely exist. So poor was the soil, that the clay came to the surface, and in wet weather a slip of the foot exposed it--the heel cut through the veneer of turf into the cold, dead, moist clay. Nothing grew but rushes. Every time a horse moved over the marshy land his hoof left deep holes which never again filled up, but remained the year through, now puddles, full of rain water, and now dry holes. The rain made the ground a swamp; the sun cracked it as it does paint. Who could pay rent for such a place?--for rushes, flags, and water. Yet it was said, with whisper and nod, that the tenant, Mr. Roberts, was a warm man as warm men go after several years of bad seasons, falling prices, and troubles of all kinds. For one thing, he hopped, and it is noted among country folk, that, if a man hops, he generally accumulates money. Mr. Roberts hopped, or rather dragged his legs from rheumatics contracted in thirty years' hardest of hard labour on that thankless farm. Never did any man labour so continually as he, from the earliest winter dawn when the blackbird, with puffed feathers, still tried to slumber in the thornbush, but could not for cold, on till the latest summer eve, after the white barn owl had passed round the fir copse. Both with his hands, and with his eyes, now working, now watching, the man ceased not, and such was his dogged pertinacity that, like the mouse, he won a living. He did more, he saved. At what price? At the price of a fireless life: I mean without cheer, by denial of everything which renders human life superior to that of the rabbit in his burrow. No wife, no children, no niece, or any woman to see to his comforts; no comfort and no pleasure; a bare house and rheumatism. Bill, his principal labourer, Dolly's brother, slept with him in the same bed, master and man, a custom common in old times, long since generally disused. Yet Mr. Roberts was not without some humanism, if such a word may be used; certainly he never gave away a penny, but as certainly he cheated no man. He was upright in conduct, and not unpleasant in manner. He could not have been utterly crabbed for this one labourer, Bill, to stay with him five-and-twenty years. This was the six-and-twentieth year they had dwelt there together in the gaunt, grey, lonely house, with woods around them, isolated from the world, and without a hearth. A hearth is no hearth unless a woman sit by it. This six-and-twentieth year, the season then just ended, had been the worst of the series; rain had spoiled the hay, increased the payment of wages by lengthening the time of hay-making; ruin, he declared, stared him in the face; he supposed at last he must leave the tenancy. And now the harvest was done, the ricks thatched with flags from the marsh (to save straw), the partridges were dispersed, the sportsmen having broken up the coveys, the black swifts had departed--they built every year in the grey stone slates on the lonely house--and nothing was left to be done but to tend the cattle morning and evening, to reflect on the losses, and to talk ceaselessly of the new terror which hung over the whole district. It was rick-burning. Probably, gentlemen in London, who "sit at home at ease," imagine rick-burning a thing of the past, impossible since insurance robbed the incendiary of his sting, unheard of and extinct. Nothing of the kind. That it is not general is true, still to this day it breaks out in places, and rages with vehemence, placing the countryside under a reign of terror. The thing seems inexplicable, but it is a fact; the burning of ricks and farm-sheds every now and then, in certain localities, reaches the dimensions of a public disaster. One night from the garret window, Mr. Roberts, and Bill, his man, counted five fires visible at once. One was in full sight, not a mile distant, two behind the wood, above which rose the red glow, the other two dimly illumined the horizon on the left like a rising moon. While they watched in the dark garret the rats scampered behind them, and a white barn owl floated silently by. They counted up fourteen fires that had taken place since the beginning of the month, and now there were five together. Mr. Roberts did not sleep that night. Being so near the woods and preserves it was part of the understanding that he should not keep a gun--he took a stout staff, and went out to his hayricks, and there stayed till daylight. By ten o'clock he was trudging into the town; his mind had been half-crazed with anxiety for his ricks; he was not insured, he had never insured, just to save the few shillings it cost, such was the nibbling by which he lived. He had struggled hard and kept the secret to himself--of the non-insurance--he foresaw that if known he should immediately suffer. But at the town the insurance agent demurred to issue a policy. The losses had been so heavy, there was no knowing how much farther the loss might extend, for not the slightest trace of the incendiary had yet been discovered, notwithstanding the reward offered, and this was a new policy. Had it been to add to an old one, had Mr. Roberts insured in previous years, it would have been different. He could not do it on his own responsibility, he must communicate with the head office; most likely they would do it, but he must have their authority. By return of post he should know. Mr. Roberts trudged home again, with the misery of two more nights confronting him; two more nights of exposure to the chance of utter ruin. If those ricks were burned, the savings--the nibblings of his life--were gone. This intense, frost-bitten economy, by which alone he had been able to prosper, now threatened to overwhelm him with destruction. There is nothing that burns so resolutely as a hayrick; nothing that catches fire so easily. Children are playing with matches; one holds the ignited match till, it scorches the fingers, and then drops it. The expiring flame touches three blades of dry grass, of hay fallen from the rick, these flare immediately; the flame runs along like a train of gun-powder, rushes up the side of the rick, singeing it as a horse's coat is singed, takes the straw of the thatch which blackens into a hole, cuts its way through, the draught lifts it up the slope of the thatch, and in five minutes the rick is on fire irrecoverably. Unless beaten out at the first start, it is certain to go on. A spark from a pipe, dropped from the mouth of a sleeping man, will do it. Once well alight, and the engines may come at full speed, one five miles, one eight, two ten; they may pump the pond dry, and lay hose to the distant brook--it is in vain. The spread of the flames may be arrested, but not all the water that can be thrown will put out the rick. The outside of the rick where the water strikes it turns black, and dense smoke arises, but the inside core continues to burn till the last piece is charred. All that can be done is to hastily cut away that side of the rick--if any remains--yet untouched, and carry it bodily away. A hayrick will burn for hours, one huge mass of concentrated, glowing, solid fire, not much flame, but glowing coals, so that the farmer may fully understand, may watch and study and fully comprehend the extent of his loss. It burns itself from a square to a dome, and the red dome grows gradually smaller till its lowest layer of ashes strews the ground. It burns itself as it were in blocks: the rick was really homogeneous; it looks while aglow as if it had been constructed of large bricks or blocks of hay. These now blackened blocks dry and crumble one by one till the dome sinks. Under foot the earth is heated, so intense is the fire; no one can approach, even on the windward side, within a pole's length. A widening stream of dense white smoke flows away upwards, flecked with great sparks, blackening the elms, and carrying flakes of burning hay over outhouses, sheds, and farmsteads. Thus from the clouds, as it seems, drops further destruction. Nothing in the line of the wind is safe. Fine impalpable ashes drift and fall like rain half a mile away. Sometimes they remain suspended in the air for hours, and come down presently when the fire is out, like volcanic dust drifting from the crater. This dust lies soft and silky on the hand. By the burning rick, the air rushing to the furnace roars aloud, coming so swiftly as to be cold; on one side intense heat, on the other cold wind. The pump, pump, swing, swing of the manual engines; the quick, short pant of the steam fire-engine; the stream and hiss of the water; shouts and answers; gleaming brass helmets; frightened birds; crowds of white faces, whose frames are in shadow; a red glow on the black, wet mud of the empty pond; rosy light on the walls of the homestead, crossed with vast magnified shadows; windows glistening; men dragging sail-like tarpaulins and rick cloths to cover the sheds; constables upright and quiet, but watchful, standing at intervals to keep order; if by day, the strangest mixture of perfect calm and heated anxiety, the smoke bluish, the floating flakes visible as black specks, the flames tawny, pigeons fluttering round, cows grazing in idol-like indifference to human fears. Ultimately, rows of flattened and roughly circular layers of blackened ashes, whose traces remain for months. This is dynamite in the hands of the village ruffian. This hay, or wheat, or barley, not only represents money; it represents the work of an entire year, the sunshine of a whole summer; it is the outcome of man's thought and patient labour, and it is the food of the helpless cattle. Besides the hay, there often go with it buildings, implements, waggons, and occasionally horses are suffocated. Once now and then the farmstead goes. Now, has not the farmer, even if covered by insurance, good reason to dread this horrible incendiarism? It is a blow at his moral existence as well as at his pecuniary interests. Hardened indeed must be that heart that could look at the old familiar scene, blackened, fire-spilt, trodden, and blotted, without an inward desolation. Boxes and barrels of merchandise in warehouses can be replaced, but money does not replace the growth of nature. Hence the brutality of it--the blow at a man's heart. His hay, his wheat, his cattle, are to a farmer part of his life; coin will not replace them. Nor does the incendiary care if the man himself, his house, home, and all perish at the same time. It is dynamite in despite of insurance. The new system of silos--burying the grass when cut at once in its green state, in artificial caves--may much reduce the risk of fire if it comes into general use. These fire invasions almost always come in the form of an epidemic; not one but three, five, ten, fifteen fires follow in quick succession. Sometimes they last through an entire winter, though often known to take place in summer, directly after harvest. Rarely does detection happen; to this day half these incendiary fires are never followed by punishment. Yet it is noted that they generally occur within a certain radius; they are all within six, or seven, or eight miles, being about the distance that a man or two bent on evil could compass in the night time. But it is not always night; numerous fires are started in broad daylight. Stress of winter weather, little food, and clothing, and less fuel at home have been put forward as causes of a chill desperation, ending in crime. On the contrary, these fires frequently occur when labourers' pockets are full, just after they have received their harvest wages. Bread is not at famine prices; hard masters are not specially selected for the gratification of spite; good masters suffer equally. What then is the cause? There is none but that bitter, bitter feeling which I venture to call the dynamite disposition, and which is found in every part of the civilised world; in Germany, Italy, France, and our own mildly ruled England. A brooding, morose, concentrated hatred of those who possess any kind of substance or comfort; landlord, farmer, every one. An unsparing vendetta, a merciless shark-like thirst of destructive vengeance; a monomania of battering, smashing, crushing, such as seizes the Lancashire weaver, who kicks his woman's brains out without any special reason for dislike, mingled with and made more terrible by this unchangeable hostility to property and those who own it. No creed, no high moral hopes of the rights of man and social regeneration, no true sans culottism even, nothing at all but set teeth and inflated nostrils; blow up, burn, smash, annihilate! A disposition or character which is not imaginary but a fact, as proved abundantly by the placing of rails and iron chairs on lines to upset trains, by the dynamite explosions at Government offices, railway stations, and even at newspaper offices, the sending of letters filled with explosives, firing dynamite in trout streams just to destroy the harmless fish; a character which in the country has hitherto manifested itself in the burning of ricks and farm buildings. Science is always putting fresh power into the hands of this class. In cities they have partly awakened to the power of knowledge; in the country they still use the match. If any one thinks that there is no danger in England because there are no deep-seated causes of discontent, such as foreign rule, oppressive enactments, or conscription, I can assure him that he is wofully mistaken. This class needs no cause at all; prosperity cannot allay its hatred, and adversity does not weaken it. It is certainly unwise to the last degree to provoke this demon, to control which as yet no means have been found. You cannot arrest the invisible; you cannot pour Martini-Henry bullets into a phantom. How are you going to capture people who blow themselves into atoms in order to shatter the frame of a Czar? In its dealings with the lower class this generation is certainly far from wise. Never was the distinction so sharp between the poor--the sullen poor who stand scornful and desperate at the street corners--and the well-to-do. The contrast now extends to every one who can afford a black coat. It is not confined to the millionaire. The contrast is with every black coat. Those who only see the drawing-room side of society, those who move, too, in the well-oiled atmosphere of commercial offices, are quite ignorant of the savage animosity which watches them to and fro the office or the drawing-room from the street corner. Question it is if any mediaeval soldiery bursting abroad in Sinigaglia were so brutal as is the street rough, that blot and hideous product of modern civilisation. How easy it is to point to the sobriety and the good sense of the working class and smile in assumed complacency! What have the sober mass of the working class to do with it? No more than you or I, or the Rothschilds, or dukes of blood royal. There the thing is, and it requires no great sagacity to see that the present mode of dealing with it is a failure and likely to be worse. If you have gunpowder, you should not put it under hydraulic pressure. You should not stir it up and hold matches to it to see if it is there. That is what prosecutions and imprisonments on charges of atheism and so on do. It is stirring up the powder and trying it with a match. Nor should you put it under hydraulic pressure, which is now being done all over the country, under the new laws which force every wretch who enters a workhouse for a night's shelter to stay there two nights; under the cold-blooded cruelty which, in the guise of science, takes the miserable quarter of a pint of ale from the lips of the palsied and decrepit inmates; which puts the imbecile--even the guiltless imbecile--on what is practically bread and water. Words fail me to express the cruelty and inhumanity of this crazed legislation. Sometimes we see a complacent paragraph in the papers, penned by an official doubtless, congratulating the public that the number relieved under the new regulations has dropped from, say, six hundred to a hundred and fifty. And what, oh blindest of the blind, do you imagine has become of the remaining four hundred and fifty? Has your precious folly extinguished them? Are they dead? No, indeed. All over the country, hydraulic pressure, in the name of science, progress, temperance, and similar perverted things, is being put on the gunpowder--or the dynamite, if you like--of society. Every now and then some individual member of the Army of Wretches turns and becomes the Devil of modern civilisation. Modern civilisation has put out the spiritual Devil and produced the Demon of Dynamite. Let me raise a voice, in pleading for more humane treatment of the poor--the only way, believe me, by which society can narrow down and confine the operations of this new Devil. A human being is not a dog, yet is treated worse than a dog. Force these human dogs to learn to read with empty stomachs--stomachs craving for a piece of bread while education is crammed into them. In manhood, if unfortunate, set them to break stones. If imbecility supervene give them bread and water. In helpless age give them the cup of cold water. This is the way to breed dynamite. And then at the other end of the scale let your Thames Embankment Boulevard be the domain of the street rough; let your Islington streets be swept by bands of brutes; let the well dressed be afraid to venture anywhere unless in the glare of gas and electric light! Manufacture it in one district, and give it free scope and play in another. Yet never was there an age in which the mass of society, from the titled to the cottager, was so full of real and true humanity, so ready to start forward to help, so imbued with the highest sentiments. The wrong is done in official circles. No steel-clad baron of Norman days, no ruthless red-stockinged cardinal, with the Bastile in one hand and the tumbril in the other, ever ruled with so total an absence of Heart as the modern "official," the Tyrants of the nineteenth century; whose rods are hobbies in the name of science miscalled, in the name of temperance perverted, in the name of progress backwards, in the name of education without food. It is time that the common-sense of society at large rose in revolution against it. Meantime dynamite. This is a long digression: suppose while you have been reading it that Mr. Roberts has passed one of the two terrible nights, his faithful Bill at one end of the rickyard and himself at the other. The second night they took up their positions in the same manner as soon as it was dark. There was no moon, and the sky was overcast with those stationary clouds which often precede a great storm, so that the darkness was marked, and after they had parted a step or two they lost sight of each other. Worn with long wakefulness, and hard labour during the day, they both dropped asleep at their posts. Mr. Roberts awoke from the dead vacancy of sleep to the sensation of a flash of light crossing his eyelids, and to catch a glimpse of a man's neck with a red necktie illuminated by flame like a Rembrandt head in the centre of shadow. He leaped forward literally yelling--the incendiary he wholly forgot--his rick! his rick! He beat the side of the rick with his stick, and as it had but just caught he beat the flame out. Then he dropped senseless on the ground. Bill, awakened by Roberts' awful yell or shriek of excitement, started to his feet, heard a man rushing by in the darkness, and hurled his heavy stick in that direction. By the thud which followed and a curse, he knew it had hit the object, but not with sufficient force to bring the scoundrel down. The fellow escaped; Bill went to his master and lifted him up; how he got Roberts home he did not know, but it was hours before Roberts could speak. Towards sunrise he recovered, and would go immediately to assure himself that the ricks were safe. Then they found a man's hat--Bill's stick had knocked it off--and by that hat and the red necktie the incendiary was brought to justice. The hat was big Mat's; he always wore a red necktie. Big Mat made no defence; he was simply stolidly indifferent to the whole proceedings. The only statement he made was that he had not fired four of the ricks, and he did not know who had done so. Example is contagious; some one had followed the dynamite lead, detection never took place, but the fires ceased. Mat, of course, went for the longest period of penal servitude the law allotted. I should say that he did not himself know why he did it. That intense, brooding moroseness, that wormwood hatred, does not often understand itself. So much the more dangerous is it; no argument, no softening influence can reach it. Faithful Bill, who had served Mr. Roberts almost all his life, and who probably would have served him till the end, received a money reward from the insurance office for his share in detecting the incendiary. This reward ruined him--killed him. Golden sovereigns in his pocket destroyed him. He went on the drink; he drank, and was enticed to drink, till in six weeks he died in the infirmary of the workhouse. Mat being in the convict prison, and Dolly near to another confinement, she could not support herself; she was driven to the same workhouse in which her brother had but just died. I am not sure, but believe that pseudo-science, the Torturer of these days, denied her the least drop of alcohol during her travail. If it did permit one drop, then was the Torturer false to his creed. Dolly survived, but utterly broken, hollow-chested, a workhouse fixture. Still, so long as she could stand she had to wash in the laundry; weak as she was, they weakened her still further with steam and heat, and labour. Washing is hard work for those who enjoy health and vigour. To a girl, broken in heart and body, it is a slow destroyer. Heat relaxes all the fibres; Dolly's required bracing. Steam will soften wood and enable the artificer to bend it to any shape. Dolly's chest became yet more hollow; her cheek-bones prominent; she bent to the steam. This was the girl who had lingered in the lane to help the boy pick watercress, to gather a flower, to listen to a thrush, to bask in the sunshine. Open air and green fields were to her life itself. Heart miseries are always better borne in the open air. How just, how truly scientific, to shut her in a steaming wash-house! The workhouse was situated in a lovely spot, on the lowest slope of hills, hills covered afar with woods. Meads at hand, corn-fields farther away, then green slopes over which broad cloud-shadows glided slowly. The larks sang in spring, in summer the wheat was golden, in autumn the distant woods were brown and red and yellow. Had you spent your youth in those fields, had your little drama of life been enacted in them, do you not think that you would like at least to gaze out at them from the windows of your prison? It was observed that the miserable wretches were always looking out of the windows in this direction. The windows on that side were accordingly built up and bricked in that they might not look out. BITS OF OAK BARK I THE ACORN-GATHERER Black rooks, yellow oak leaves, and a boy asleep at the foot of the tree. His head was lying on a bulging root close to the stem: his feet reached to a small sack or bag half full of acorns. In his slumber his forehead frowned--they were fixed lines, like the grooves in the oak bark. There was nothing else in his features attractive or repellent: they were such as might have belonged to a dozen hedge children. The set angry frown was the only distinguishing mark--like the dents on a penny made by a hobnail boot, by which it can be known from twenty otherwise precisely similar. His clothes were little better than sacking, but clean, tidy, and repaired. Any one would have said, "Poor, but carefully tended." A kind heart might have put a threepenny-bit in his clenched little fist, and sighed. But that iron set frown on the young brow would not have unbent even for the silver. Caw! Caw! The happiest creatures in the world are the rooks at the acorns. It is not only the eating of them, but the finding: the fluttering up there and hopping from branch to branch, the sidling out to the extreme end of the bough, and the inward chuckling when a friend lets his acorn drop tip-tap from bough to bough. Amid such plenty they cannot quarrel or fight, having no cause of battle, but they can boast of success, and do so to the loudest of their voices. He who has selected a choice one flies with it as if it were a nugget in his beak, out to some open spot of ground, followed by a general Caw! This was going on above while the boy slept below. A thrush looked out from the hedge, and among the short grass there was still the hum of bees, constant sun-worshippers as they are. The sunshine gleamed on the rooks' black feathers overhead, and on the sward sparkled from hawkweed, some lotus and yellow weed, as from a faint ripple of water. The oak was near a corner formed by two hedges, and in the angle was a narrow thorny gap. Presently an old woman, very upright, came through this gap carrying a faggot on her shoulder and a stout ash stick in her hand. She was very clean, well dressed for a labouring woman, hard of feature, but superior in some scarcely defined way to most of her class. The upright carriage had something to do with it, the firm mouth, the light blue eyes that looked every one straight in the face. Possibly these, however, had less effect than her conscious righteousness. Her religion lifted her above the rest, and I do assure you that it was perfectly genuine. That hard face and cotton gown would have gone to the stake. When she had got through the gap she put the faggot down in it, walked a short distance out into the field, and came back towards the boy, keeping him between her and the corner. Caw! said the rooks, Caw! Caw! Thwack, thwack, bang, went the ash stick on the sleeping boy, heavily enough to have broken his bones. Like a piece of machinery suddenly let loose, without a second of dubious awakening and without a cry, he darted straight for the gap in the corner. There the faggot stopped him, and before he could tear it away the old woman had him again, thwack, thwack, and one last stinging slash across his legs as he doubled past her. Quick as the wind as he rushed he picked up the bag of acorns and pitched it into the mound, where the acorns rolled down into a pond and were lost--a good round shilling's worth. Then across the field without his cap, over the rising ground, and out of sight. The old woman made no attempt to hold him, knowing from previous experience that it was useless, and would probably result in her own overthrow. The faggot, brought a quarter of a mile for the purpose, enabled her, you see, to get two good chances at him. A wickeder boy never lived: nothing could be done with the reprobate. He was her grandson--at least, the son of her daughter, for he was not legitimate. The man drank, the girl died, as was believed, of sheer starvation: the granny kept the child, and he was now between ten and eleven years old. She had done and did her duty, as she understood it. A prayer-meeting was held in her cottage twice a week, she prayed herself aloud among them, she was a leading member of the sect. Neither example, precept, nor the rod could change that boy's heart. In time perhaps she got to beat him from habit rather than from any particular anger of the moment, just as she fetched water and filled her kettle, as one of the ordinary events of the day. Why did not the father interfere? Because if so he would have had to keep his son: so many shillings a week the less for ale. In the garden attached to the cottage there was a small shed with a padlock, used to store produce or wood in. One morning, after a severe beating, she drove the boy in there and locked him in the whole day without food. It was no use, he was as hardened as ever. A footpath which crossed the field went by the cottage, and every Sunday those who were walking to church could see the boy in the window with granny's Bible open before him. There he had to sit, the door locked, under terror of stick, and study the page. What was the use of compelling him to do that? He could not read. "No," said the old woman, "he won't read, but I makes him look at his book." The thwacking went on for some time, when one day the boy was sent on an errand two or three miles, and for a wonder started willingly enough. At night he did not return, nor the next day, nor the next, and it was as clear as possible that he had run away. No one thought of tracking his footsteps, or following up the path he had to take, which passed a railway, brooks, and a canal. He had run away, and he might stop away: it was beautiful summer weather, and it would do him no harm to stop out for a week. A dealer who had business in a field by the canal thought indeed that he saw something in the water, but he did not want any trouble, nor indeed did he know that some one was missing. Most likely a dead dog; so he turned his back and went to look again at the cow he thought of buying. A barge came by, and the steerswoman, with a pipe in her mouth, saw something roll over and come up under the rudder: the length of the barge having passed over it. She knew what it was, but she wanted to reach the wharf and go ashore and have a quart of ale. No use picking it up, only make a mess on deck, there was no reward--"Gee-up! Neddy." The barge went on, turning up the mud in the shallow water, sending ripples washing up to the grassy meadow shores, while the moorhens hid in the flags till it was gone. In time a labourer walking on the towing-path saw "it," and fished it out, and with it a slender ash sapling, with twine and hook, a worm still on it. This was why the dead boy had gone so willingly, thinking to fish in the "river," as he called the canal. When his feet slipped and he fell in, his fishing-line somehow became twisted about his arms and legs, else most likely he would have scrambled out, as it was not very deep. This was the end; nor was he even remembered. Does any one sorrow for the rook, shot, and hung up as a scarecrow? The boy had been talked to, and held up as a scarecrow all his life: he was dead, and that is all. As for granny, she felt no twinge: she had done her duty. II THE LEGEND OF A GATEWAY A great beech tree with a white mark some way up the trunk stood in the mound by a gate which opened into a lane. Strangers coming down the lane in the dusk often hesitated before they approached this beech. The white mark looked like a ghostly figure emerging from the dark hedge and the shadow of the tree. The trunk itself was of the same hue at that hour as the bushes, so that the whiteness seemed to stand out unsupported. So perfect was the illusion that even those who knew the spot well, walking or riding past and not thinking about it, started as it suddenly came into sight. Ploughboys used to throw flints at it, as if the sound of the stone striking the tree assured them that it was really material. Some lichen was apparently the cause of this whiteness: the great beech indeed was known to be decaying and was dotted with knot-holes high above. The gate was rather low, so that any one could lean with arms over the top bar. At one time a lady used to be very frequently seen just inside the gate, generally without a hat, for the homestead was close by. Sometimes a horse, saddled and bridled, but without his rider, was observed to be fastened to the gate, and country people, being singularly curious and inquisitive, if they chanced to go by always peered through every opening in the hedge till they had discerned where the pair were walking among the cowslips. More often a spaniel betrayed them, especially in the evening, for while the courting was proceeding he amused himself digging with his paws at the rabbit-holes in the mound. The folk returning to their cottages at even smiled and looked meaningly at each other if they heard a peculiarly long and shrill whistle, which was known to every one as Luke's signal. Some said that it was heard every evening: no matter how far Luke had to ride in the day, his whistle was sure to be heard towards dusk. Luke was a timber-dealer, or merchant, a calling that generally leads to substantial profit as wealth is understood in country places. He bought up likely timber all over the neighbourhood: he had wharves on the canal, and yards by the little railway station miles away. He often went up to "Lunnon," but if it was ninety miles, he was sure to be back in time to whistle. If he was not too busy the whistle used to go twice a day, for when he started off in the morning, no matter where he had to go to, that lane was the road to it. The lane led everywhere. Up in the great beech about eleven o'clock on spring mornings there was always a wood-pigeon. The wood-pigeon is a contemplative sort of bird, and pauses now and then during the day to consider over his labours in filling his crop. He came again about half-past four, but it was at eleven that his visit to the beech was usually noticed. From the window in the lady's own room the beech and the gate could be seen, and as that was often Luke's time she frequently sat upstairs with the window open listening for the sound of hoofs, or the well-known whistle. She saw the wood-pigeon on so many occasions that at last she grew to watch for the bird, and when he went up into the tree, put down her work or her book and walked out that way. Secure in the top of the great beech, and conscious that it was spring, when guns are laid aside, the wood-pigeon took no heed of her. There is nothing so pleasant to stroll among as cowslips. This mead was full of them, so much so that a little way in front the surface seemed yellow. They had all short stalks; this is always the case where these flowers grow very thickly, and the bells were a pale and somewhat lemon colour. The great cowslips with deep yellow and marked spots grow by themselves in bunches in corners or on the banks of brooks. Here a man might have mown acres of cowslips, pale but sweet. Out of their cups the bees hummed as she walked amongst them, a closed book in her hand, dreaming. She generally returned with Luke's spaniel beside her, for whether his master came or not the knowing dog rarely missed his visit, aware that there was always something good for him. One morning she went dreaming on like this through the cowslips, past the old beech and the gate, and along by the nut-tree hedge. It was very sunny and warm, and the birds sang with all their might, for there had been a shower at dawn, which always set their hearts atune. At least eight or nine of them were singing at once, thrush and blackbird, cuckoo (afar off), dove, and greenfinch, nightingale, robin and loud wren, and larks in the sky. But, unlike all other music, though each had a different voice and the notes crossed and interfered with each other, yet they did not jangle, but produced the sweetest sounds. The more of them that sang together, the sweeter the music. It is true they all had one thought of love at heart, and that perhaps brought about the concord. She did not expect to see Luke that morning, knowing that he had to get some felled trees removed from a field, the farmer wishing them taken away before the mowing-grass grew too high, and as the spot was ten or twelve miles distant he had to start early. Not being so much on the alert, she fell deeper perhaps into reverie, which lasted till she reached the other side of the field, when the spaniel rushed out of the hedge and leaped up to be noticed, quite startling her. At the same moment she thought she heard the noise of hoofs in the lane--it might be Luke--and immediately afterwards there came his long, shrill, and peculiar whistle from the gate under the beech. She ran as fast as she could, the spaniel barking beside her, and was at the gate in two or three minutes, but Luke was not there. Nor was he anywhere in the lane--she could see up and down it over the low gate. He must have gone on up to the homestead, not seeing her. At the house, however, she found they had not seen him. He had not called. A little hurt that he should have galloped on so hastily, she set about some household affairs, resolved to think no more of him that morning, and to give him a frown when he came in the evening. But he did not come in the evening; it was evident he was detained. Luke's trees were lying in the long grass beside a copse, and the object was to get them out of the field, across the adjacent railway, and to set them down in a lane, on the sward, whence he could send for them at leisure. The farmer was very anxious to get them out of the grass, and Luke did his best to oblige him. When Luke arrived at the spot, having for once ridden straight there, he found that almost all the work was done, and only one tree remained. This they were getting up on the timber-carriage, and Luke dismounted and assisted. While it was on the timber-carriage, he said, as it was the last, they could take it along to the wharf. The farmer had come down to watch how the work got on, and with him was his little boy, a child of five or six. When the boy saw the great tree fixed, he cried to be mounted on it for a ride, but as it was so rough they persuaded him to ride on one of the horses instead. As they all approached the gate at the level crossing, a white gate with the words in long black letters, "To be kept Locked," they heard the roar of the morning express and stayed for it to go by. So soon as the train had passed, the gate was opened and the horses began to drag the carriage across. As they strained at the heavy weight, the boy found the motion uncomfortable and cried out, and Luke, always kind-hearted, went and held him on. Whether it was the shouting at the team, the cracking of the whip, the rumbling of the wheels, or what, was never known; but suddenly the farmer, who had crossed the rail, screamed, "The goods!" Round the curve by the copse, and till then hidden by it, swept a goods train, scarce thirty yards away. Luke might have saved himself, but the boy! He snatched the child from the horse, hurled him--literally hurled him--into the father's arms, and in the instant was a shapeless mass. The scene is too dreadful for further description. This miserable accident happened, as the driver of the goods train afterwards stated, at exactly eight minutes past eleven o'clock. It was precisely at that time that Luke's lady, dreaming among the cowslips, heard the noise of hoofs, and his long, shrill, and peculiar whistle at the gate beneath the beech. She was certain of the time, for these reasons: first, she had seen the wood-pigeon go up into the beech just before she started out; secondly, she remembered nodding to an aged labourer who came up to the house every morning at that hour for his ale; thirdly, it would take a person walking slowly eight or ten minutes to cross that side of the mead; and, fourthly, when she came back to the house to see if Luke was there, the clock pointed to a quarter past, and was known to be a little fast. Without a doubt she had heard the well-known whistle, apparently coming from the gate beneath the beech exactly at the moment poor Luke was dashed to pieces twelve miles away. III A ROMAN BROOK The brook has forgotten me, but I have not forgotten the brook. Many faces have been mirrored since in the flowing water, many feet have waded in the sandy shallow. I wonder if any one else can see it in a picture before the eyes as I can, bright, and vivid as trees suddenly shown at night by a great flash of lightning. All the leaves and branches and the birds at roost are visible during the flash. It is barely a second; it seems much longer. Memory, like the lightning, reveals the pictures in the mind. Every curve, and shore, and shallow is as familiar now as when I followed the winding stream so often. When the mowing-grass was at its height, you could not walk far beside the bank; it grew so thick and strong and full of umbelliferous plants as to weary the knees. The life as it were of the meadows seemed to crowd down towards the brook in summer, to reach out and stretch towards the life-giving water. There the buttercups were taller and closer together, nails of gold driven so thickly that the true surface was not visible. Countless rootlets drew up the richness of the earth like miners in the darkness, throwing their petals of yellow ore broadcast above them. With their fulness of leaves the hawthorn bushes grow larger--the trees extend farther--and thus overhung with leaf and branch, and closely set about by grass and plant, the brook disappeared only a little way off, and could not have been known from a mound and hedge. It was lost in the plain of meads--the flowers alone saw its sparkle. Hidden in those bushes and tall grasses, high in the trees and low on the ground, there were the nests of happy birds. In the hawthorns blackbirds and thrushes built, often overhanging the stream, and the fledglings fluttered out into the flowery grass. Down among the stalks of the umbelliferous plants, where the grasses were knotted together, the nettle-creeper concealed her treasure, having selected a hollow by the bank so that the scythe should pass over. Up in the pollard ashes and willows here and there wood-pigeons built. Doves cooed in the little wooded enclosures where the brook curved almost round upon itself. If there was a hollow in the oak a pair of starlings chose it, for there was no advantageous nook that was not seized on. Low beside the willow stoles the sedge-reedlings built; on the ledges of the ditches, full of flags, moor-hens made their nests. After the swallows had coursed long miles over the meads to and fro, they rested on the tops of the ashes and twittered sweetly. Like the flowers and grass, the birds were drawn towards the brook. They built by it, they came to it to drink; in the evening a grasshopper-lark trilled in a hawthorn bush. By night crossing the footbridge a star sometimes shone in the water underfoot. At morn and even the peasant girls came down to dip; their path was worn through the mowing-grass, and there was a flat stone let into the bank as a step to stand on. Though they were poorly habited, without one line of form or tint of colour that could please the eye, there is something in dipping water that is Greek--Homeric--something that carries the mind home to primitive times. Always the little children came with them; they too loved the brook like the grass and birds. They wanted to see the fishes dart away and hide in the green flags: they flung daisies and buttercups into the stream to float and catch awhile at the flags, and float again and pass away, like the friends of our boyhood, out of sight. Where there was pasture roan cattle came to drink, and horses, restless horses, stood for hours by the edge under the shade of ash trees. With what joy the spaniel plunged in, straight from the bank out among the flags--you could mark his course by seeing their tips bend as he brushed them swimming. All life loved the brook. Far down away from roads and hamlets there was a small orchard on the very bank of the stream, and just before the grass grew too high to walk through I looked in the enclosure to speak to its owner. He was busy with his spade at a strip of garden, and grumbled that the hares would not let it alone, with all that stretch of grass to feed on. Nor would the rooks; and the moor-hens ran over it, and the water-rats burrowed; the wood-pigeons would have the peas, and there was no rest from them all. While he talked and talked, far from the object in hand, as aged people will, I thought how the apple tree in blossom before us cared little enough who saw its glory. The branches were in bloom everywhere, at the top as well as at the side; at the top where no one could see them but the swallows. They did not grow for human admiration: that was not their purpose; that is our affair only--we bring the thought to the tree. On a short branch low down the trunk there hung the weather-beaten and broken handle of an earthenware vessel; the old man said it was a jug, one of the old folks' jugs--he often dug them up. Some were cracked, some nearly perfect; lots of them had been thrown out to mend the lane. There were some chips among the heap of weeds yonder. These fragments were the remains of Anglo-Roman pottery. Coins had been found--half a gallon of them--the children had had most. He took one from his pocket, dug up that morning; they were of no value, they would not ring. The labourers tried to get some ale for them, but could not; no one would take the little brass things. That was all he knew of the Caesars: the apples were in fine bloom now, weren't they? Fifteen centuries before there had been a Roman station at the spot where the lane crossed the brook. There the centurions rested their troops after their weary march across the downs, for the lane, now bramble-grown and full of ruts, was then a Roman road. There were villas, and baths, and fortifications; these things you may read about in books. They are lost now in the hedges, under the flowering grass, in the ash copses, all forgotten in the lane, and along the footpath where the June roses will bloom after the apple blossom has dropped. But just where the ancient military way crosses the brook there grow the finest, the largest, the bluest, and most lovely forget-me-nots that ever lover gathered for his lady. The old man, seeing my interest in the fragments of pottery, wished to show me something of a different kind lately discovered. He led me to a spot where the brook was deep, and had somewhat undermined the edge. A horse trying to drink there had pushed a quantity of earth into the stream, and exposed a human skeleton lying within a few inches of the water. Then I looked up the stream and remembered the buttercups and tall grasses, the flowers that crowded down to the edge; I remembered the nests, and the dove cooing; the girls that came down to dip, the children that cast their flowers to float away. The wind blew the loose apple bloom and it fell in showers of painted snow. Sweetly the greenfinches were calling in the trees: afar the voice of the cuckoo came over the oaks. By the side of the living water, the water that all things rejoiced in, near to its gentle sound, and the sparkle of sunshine on it, had lain this sorrowful thing. MEADOW THOUGHTS The old house stood by the silent country road, secluded by many a long, long mile, and yet again secluded within the great walls of the garden. Often and often I rambled up to the milestone which stood under an oak, to look at the chipped inscription low down--"To London, 79 Miles." So far away, you see, that the very inscription was cut at the foot of the stone, since no one would be likely to want that information. It was half hidden by docks and nettles, despised and unnoticed. A broad land this seventy-nine miles--how many meadows and corn-fields, hedges and woods, in that distance?--wide enough to seclude any house, to hide it, like an acorn in the grass. Those who have lived all their lives in remote places do not feel the remoteness. No one else seemed to be conscious of the breadth that separated the place from the great centre, but it was, perhaps, that consciousness which deepened the solitude to me. It made the silence more still; the shadows of the oaks yet slower in their movement; everything more earnest. To convey a full impression of the intense concentration of Nature in the meadows is very difficult--everything is so utterly oblivious of man's thought and man's heart. The oaks stand--quiet, still--so still that the lichen loves them. At their feet the grass grows, and heeds nothing. Among it the squirrels leap, and their little hearts are as far away from you or me as the very wood of the oaks. The sunshine settles itself in the valley by the brook, and abides there whether we come or not. Glance through the gap in the hedge by the oak, and see how concentrated it is--all of it, every blade of grass, and leaf, and flower, and living creature, finch or squirrel. It is mesmerised upon itself. Then I used to feel that it really was seventy-nine miles to London, and not an hour or two only by rail, really all those miles. A great, broad province of green furrow and ploughed furrow between the old house and the city of the world. Such solace and solitude seventy-nine miles thick cannot be painted; the trees cannot be placed far enough away in perspective. It is necessary to stay in it like the oaks to know it. Lime-tree branches overhung the corner of the garden-wall, whence a view was easy of the silent and dusty road, till overarching oaks concealed it. The white dust heated by the sunshine, the green hedges, and the heavily massed trees, white clouds rolled together in the sky, a footpath opposite lost in the fields, as you might thrust a stick into the grass, tender lime leaves caressing the cheek, and silence. That is, the silence of the fields. If a breeze rustled the boughs, if a greenfinch called, if the cart-mare in the meadow shook herself, making the earth and air tremble by her with the convulsion of her mighty muscles, these were not sounds, they were the silence itself. So sensitive to it as I was, in its turn it held me firmly, like the fabled spells of old time. The mere touch of a leaf was a talisman to bring me under the enchantment, so that I seemed to feel and know all that was proceeding among the grass-blades and in the bushes. Among the lime trees along the wall the birds never built, though so close and sheltered. They built everywhere but there. To the broad coping-stones of the wall under the lime boughs speckled thrushes came almost hourly, sometimes to peer out and reconnoitre if it was safe to visit the garden, sometimes to see if a snail had climbed up the ivy. Then they dropped quietly down into the long strawberry patch immediately under. The cover of strawberries is the constant resource of all creeping things; the thrushes looked round every plant and under every leaf and runner. One toad always resided there, often two, and as you gathered a ripe strawberry you might catch sight of his black eye watching you take the fruit he had saved for you. Down the road skims an eave-swallow, swift as an arrow, his white back making the sun-dried dust dull and dingy; he is seeking a pool for mortar, and will waver to and fro by the brook below till he finds a convenient place to alight. Thence back to the eave here, where for forty years he and his ancestors built in safety. Two white butterflies fluttering round each other rise over the limes, once more up over the house, and soar on till their white shows no longer against the illumined air. A grasshopper calls on the sward by the strawberries, and immediately fillips himself over seven leagues of grass-blades. Yonder a line of men and women file across the field, seen for a moment as they pass a gateway, and the hay changes from hay-colour to green behind them as they turn the under but still sappy side upwards. They are working hard, but it looks easy, slow, and sunny. Finches fly out from the hedgerow to the overturned hay. Another butterfly, a brown one, floats along the dusty road--the only traveller yet. The white clouds are slowly passing behind the oaks, large puffed clouds, like deliberate loads of hay, leaving little wisps and flecks behind them caught in the sky. How pleasant it would be to read in the shadow! There is a broad shadow on the sward by the strawberries cast by a tall and fine-grown American crab tree. The very place for a book; and although I know it is useless, yet I go and fetch one and dispose myself on the grass. I can never read in summer out-of-doors. Though in shadow the bright light fills it, summer shadows are broadest daylight. The page is so white and hard, the letters so very black, the meaning and drift not quite intelligible, because neither eye nor mind will dwell upon it. Human thoughts and imaginings written down are pale and feeble in bright summer light. The eye wanders away, and rests more lovingly on greensward and green lime leaves. The mind wanders yet deeper and farther into the dreamy mystery of the azure sky. Once now and then, determined to write down that mystery and delicious sense while actually in it, I have brought out table and ink and paper, and sat there in the midst of the summer day. Three words, and where is the thought? Gone. The paper is so obviously paper, the ink so evidently ink, the pen so stiff; all so inadequate. You want colour, flexibility, light, sweet low sound--all these to paint it and play it in music, at the same time you want something that will answer to and record in one touch the strong throb of life and the thought, or feeling, or whatever it is that goes out into the earth and sky and space, endless as a beam of light. The very shade of the pen on the paper tells you how utterly hopeless it is to express these things. There is the shade and the brilliant gleaming whiteness; now tell me in plain written words the simple contrast of the two. Not in twenty pages, for the bright light shows the paper in its common fibre-ground, coarse aspect, in its reality, not as a mind-tablet. The delicacy and beauty of thought or feeling is so extreme that it cannot be inked in; it is like the green and blue of field and sky, of veronica flower and grass blade, which in their own existence throw light and beauty on each other, but in artificial colours repel. Take the table indoors again, and the book; the thoughts and imaginings of others are vain, and of your own too deep to be written. For the mind is filled with the exceeding beauty of these things, and their great wondrousness and marvel. Never yet have I been able to write what I felt about the sunlight only. Colour and form and light are as magic to me. It is a trance. It requires a language of ideas to convey it. It is ten years since I last reclined on that grass plot, and yet I have been writing of it as if it was yesterday, and every blade of grass is as visible and as real to me now as then. They were greener towards the house, and more brown-tinted on the margin of the strawberry bed, because towards the house the shadow rested longest. By the strawberries the fierce sunlight burned them. The sunlight put out the books I brought into it just as it put out the fire on the hearth indoors. The tawny flames floating upwards could not bite the crackling sticks when the full beams came pouring on them. Such extravagance of light overcame the little fire till it was screened from the power of the heavens. So here in the shadow of the American crab tree the light of the sky put out the written pages. For this beautiful and wonderful light excited a sense of some likewise beautiful and wonderful truth, some unknown but grand thought hovering as a swallow above. The swallows hovered and did not alight, but they were there. An inexpressible thought quivered in the azure overhead; it could not be fully grasped, but there was a sense and feeling of its presence. Before that mere sense of its presence the weak and feeble pages, the small fires of human knowledge, dwindled and lost meaning. There was something here that was not in the books. In all the philosophies and searches of mind there was nothing that could be brought to face it, to say, This is what it intends, this is the explanation of the dream. The very grass-blades confounded the wisest, the tender lime leaf put them to shame, the grasshopper derided them, the sparrow on the wall chirped his scorn. The books were put out, unless a screen were placed between them and the light of the sky--that is, an assumption, so as to make an artificial mental darkness. Grant some assumptions--that is, screen off the light--and in that darkness everything was easily arranged, this thing here, and that yonder. But Nature grants no assumptions, and the books were put out. There is something beyond the philosophies in the light, in the grass-blades, the leaf, the grasshopper, the sparrow on the wall. Some day the great and beautiful thought which hovers on the confines of the mind will at last alight. In that is hope, the whole sky is full of abounding hope. Something beyond the books, that is consolation. The little lawn beside the strawberry bed, burned brown there, and green towards the house shadow, holds how many myriad grass-blades? Here they are all matted together, long, and dragging each other down. Part them, and beneath them are still more, overhung and hidden. The fibres are intertangled, woven in an endless basket-work and chaos of green and dried threads. A blamable profusion this; a fifth as many would be enough; altogether a wilful waste here. As for these insects that spring out of it as I press the grass, a hundredth part of them would suffice. The American crab tree is a snowy mount in spring; the flakes of bloom, when they fall, cover the grass with a film--a bushel of bloom, which the wind takes and scatters afar. The extravagance is sublime. The two little cherry trees are as wasteful; they throw away handfuls of flower; but in the meadows the careless, spendthrift ways of grass and flower and all things are not to be expressed. Seeds by the hundred million float with absolute indifference on the air. The oak has a hundred thousand more leaves than necessary, and never hides a single acorn. Nothing utilitarian--everything on a scale of splendid waste. Such noble, broadcast, open-armed waste is delicious to behold. Never was there such a lying proverb as "Enough is as good as a feast." Give me the feast; give me squandered millions of seeds, luxurious carpets of petals, green mountains of oak leaves. The greater the waste, the greater the enjoyment--the nearer the approach to real life. Casuistry is of no avail; the fact is obvious; Nature flings treasures abroad, puffs them with open ups along on every breeze, piles up lavish layers of them in the free open air, packs countless numbers together in the needles of a fir tree. Prodigality and superfluity are stamped on everything she does. The ear of wheat returns a hundredfold the grain from which it grew. The surface of the earth offers to us far more than we can consume--the grains, the seeds, the fruits, the animals, the abounding products are beyond the power of all the human race to devour. They can, too, be multiplied a thousandfold. There is no natural lack. Whenever there is lack among us it is from artificial causes, which intelligence should remove. From the littleness, and meanness, and niggardliness forced upon us by circumstances, what a relief to turn aside to the exceeding plenty of Nature! There are no bounds to it, there is no comparison to parallel it, so great is this generosity. No physical reason exists why every human being should not have sufficient, at least, of necessities. For any human being to starve, or even to be in trouble about the procuring of simple food, appears, indeed, a strange and unaccountable thing, quite upside down, and contrary to sense, if you do but consider a moment the enormous profusion the earth throws at our feet. In the slow process of time, as the human heart grows larger, such provision, I sincerely trust, will be made that no one need ever feel anxiety about mere subsistence. Then, too, let there be some imitation of this open-handed generosity and divine waste. Let the generations to come feast free of care, like my finches on the seeds of the mowing-grass, from which no voice drives them. If I could but give away as freely as the earth does! The white-backed eave-swallow has returned many, many times from the shallow drinking-place by the brook to his half-built nest. Sometimes the pair of them cling to the mortar they have fixed under the eave, and twitter to each other about the progress of the work. They dive downwards with such velocity when they quit hold that it seems as if they must strike the ground, but they shoot up again, over the wall and the lime trees. A thrush has been to the arbour yonder twenty times; it is made of crossed laths, and overgrown with "tea-plant," and the nest is inside the lath-work. A sparrow has visited the rose-tree by the wall--the buds are covered with aphides. A brown tree-creeper has been to the limes, then to the cherries, and even to a stout lilac stem. No matter how small the tree, he tries all that are in his way. The bright colours of a bullfinch were visible a moment just now, as he passed across the shadows farther down the garden under the damson trees and into the bushes. The grasshopper has gone past and along the garden-path, his voice is not heard now; but there is another coming. While I have been dreaming, all these and hundreds out in the meadow have been intensely happy. So concentrated on their little work in the sunshine, so intent on the tiny egg, on the insect captured on the grass-tip to be carried to the eager fledglings, so joyful in listening to the song poured out for them or in pouring it forth, quite oblivious of all else. It is in this intense concentration that they are so happy. If they could only live longer!--but a few such seasons for them--I wish they could live a hundred years just to feast on the seeds and sing and be utterly happy and oblivious of everything but the moment they are passing. A black line has rushed up from the espalier apple yonder to the housetop thirty times at least. The starlings fly so swiftly and so straight that they seem to leave a black line along the air. They have a nest in the roof, they are to and fro it and the meadow the entire day, from dawn till eve. The espalier apple, like a screen, hides the meadow from me, so that the descending starlings appear to dive into a space behind it. Sloping downwards the meadow makes a valley; I cannot see it, but know that it is golden with buttercups, and that a brook runs in the groove of it. Afar yonder I can see a summit beyond where the grass swells upwards to a higher level than this spot. There are bushes and elms whose height is decreased by distance on the summit, horses in the shadow of the trees, and a small flock of sheep crowded, as is their wont, in the hot and sunny gateway. By the side of the summit is a deep green trench, so it looks from here, in the hill-side: it is really the course of a streamlet worn deep in the earth. I can see nothing between the top of the espalier screen and the horses under the elms on the hill. But the starlings go up and down into the hollow space, which is aglow with golden buttercups, and, indeed, I am looking over a hundred finches eagerly searching, sweetly calling, happy as the summer day. A thousand thousand grasshoppers are leaping, thrushes are labouring, filled with love and tenderness, doves cooing--there is as much joy as there are leaves on the hedges. Faster than the starling's flight my mind runs up to the streamlet in the deep green trench beside the hill. Pleasant it was to trace it upwards, narrowing at every ascending step, till the thin stream, thinner than fragile glass, did but merely slip over the stones. A little less and it could not have run at all, water could not stretch out to greater tenuity. It smoothed the brown growth on the stones, stroking it softly. It filled up tiny basins of sand and ran out at the edges between minute rocks of flint. Beneath it went under thickest brooklime, blue flowered, and serrated water-parsnips, lost like many a mighty river for awhile among a forest of leaves. Higher up masses of bramble and projecting thorn stopped the explorer, who must wind round the grassy mound. Pausing to look back a moment there were meads under the hill with the shortest and greenest herbage, perpetually watered, and without one single buttercup, a strip of pure green among yellow flowers and yellowing corn. A few hollow oaks on whose boughs the cuckoos stayed to call, two or three peewits coursing up and down, larks singing, and for all else silence. Between the wheat and the grassy mound the path was almost closed, burdocks and brambles thrust the adventurer outward to brush against the wheat-ears. Upwards till suddenly it turned, and led by steep notches in the bank, as it seemed down to the roots of the elm trees. The clump of elms grew right over a deep and rugged hollow; their branches reached out across it, roofing in the cave. Here was the spring, at the foot of a perpendicular rock, moss-grown low down, and overrun with creeping ivy higher. Green thorn bushes filled the chinks and made a wall to the well, and the long narrow hart's-tongue streaked the face of the cliff. Behind the thick thorns hid the course of the streamlet, in front rose the solid rock, upon the right hand the sward came to the edge--it shook every now and then as the horses in the shade of the elms stamped their feet--on the left hand the ears of wheat peered over the verge. A rocky cell in concentrated silence of green things. Now and again a finch, a starling, or a sparrow would come meaning to drink--athirst from the meadow or the cornfield--and start and almost entangle their wings in the bushes, so completely astonished that any one should be there. The spring rises in a hollow under the rock imperceptibly, and without bubble or sound. The fine sand of the shallow basin is undisturbed--no tiny water-volcano pushes up a dome of particles. Nor is there any crevice in the stone, but the basin is always full and always running over. As it slips from the brim a gleam of sunshine falls through the boughs and meets it. To this cell I used to come once now and then on a summer's day, tempted, perhaps, like the finches, by the sweet cool water, but drawn also by a feeling that could not be analysed. Stooping, I lifted the water in the hollow of my hand--carefully, lest the sand might be disturbed--and the sunlight gleamed on it as it slipped through ray fingers. Alone in the green-roofed cave, alone with the sunlight and the pure water, there was a sense of something more than these. The water was more to me than water, and the sun than sun. The gleaming rays on the water in my palm held me for a moment, the touch of the water gave me something from itself. A moment, and the gleam was gone, the water flowing away, but I had had them. Beside the physical water and physical light I had received from them their beauty; they had communicated to me this silent mystery. The pure and beautiful water, the pure, clear, and beautiful light, each had given me something of their truth. So many times I came to it, toiling up the long and shadowless bill in the burning sunshine, often carrying a vessel to take some of it home with me. There was a brook, indeed but this was different, it was the spring; it was taken home as a beautiful flower might be brought. It is not the physical water, it is the sense or feeling that it conveys. Nor is it the physical sunshine; it is the sense of inexpressible beauty which it brings with it. Of such I still drink, and hope to do so still deeper. CLEMATIS LANE Wild clematis grew so thickly on one side of the narrow lane that the hedge seemed made of it. Trailing over the low bushes, the leaves hid the hawthorn and bramble, so that the hedge was covered with clematis leaf and flower. The innumerable pale flowers gave out a faint odour, and coloured the sides of the highway. Rising up the hazel rods and taller hawthorn, the tendrils hung downwards and suspended the flowers overhead. Across the field, where a hill rose and was dotted with bushes--these bushes, too, were concealed by clematis, and though the flowers were so pale, their numbers tinted the slope. A cropped nut-tree hedge, again, low, but five or six yards thick, was bound together by the bines of the same creeping plant, twisting in and out, and holding it together. No care or art could have led it over the branches in so graceful a manner; the lane was festooned for the triumphal progress of the waggons laden with corn. Here and there, on the dry bank over which the clematis projected like an eave, there stood tall campanulas, their blue bells as large as the fingerstall of a foxglove. The slender purple spires of the climbing vetch were lifted above the low hushes to which it clung; there were ferns deeper in the hedge, and yellow bedstraw by the gateways. A few blackberries were ripe, but the clematis seemed to have overcome the brambles, and spoilt their yield. Nuts, reddened at the tip, were visible on the higher hazel boughs; they were ripe, but difficult to get at. Leaving the lane by a waggon track--a gipsy track through a copse--there were large bunches of pale-red berries hanging from the wayfaring trees, or wild viburnum, and green and red berries of bryony wreathed among the branches. The bryony leaves had turned, some were pale buff already. Among the many berries of autumn those of the wayfaring tree may be known by their flattened shape, as if the sides had been pressed in like a flask. The bushes were not high enough for shadow, and the harvest sun was hot between them. The track led past the foot of a steep headland of the Downs, which could not be left without an ascent. Dry and slippery, the short grass gave no hold to the feet, and it was necessary to step in the holes cut through the turf for the purpose. Pushed forward from the main line of the Downs, the buff headland projected into the Weald, as headlands on the southern side of the range project into the sea. Towards the summit the brow came out somewhat, and even the rude steps in the turf were not much assistance in climbing this almost perpendicular wall of sward. Above the brow the ascent became easy; these brows raised steeper than the general slope are often found on the higher hills. A circular entrenchment encloses the summit, but the rampart has much sunk, and is in places levelled. Here it was pleasant to look back upon the beech woods at the foot of the great Downs, and far over the endless fields of the Weald or plain. Thirty fields could be counted in succession, one after the other, like irregular chess-squares, some corn, some grass, and these only extended to the first undulation, where the woods hid the fields behind them. But beyond these, in reality, succeeded another series of fields to the second undulation, and still a third series to the farthest undulation visible. Yet farther there was a faint line of hills, a dark cloud-like bank in the extreme distance. To the right and to the left were similar views. Reapers were at work in the wheat below, but already much of the corn had been carried, and the hum of a threshing engine came up from the ricks. A woodpecker called loudly in the beech wood; a "wish-wish" in the air overhead was caused by the swift motion of a wood-pigeon passing from "holt" to "hurst," from copse to copse. On the dry short turf of the hill-top even the shadow of a swallow was visible as he flew but a few yards high. In a little hollow where the rougher grasses grew longer a blue butterfly fluttered and could not get out. He was entangled with his own wings, he could not guide himself between the grass tops; his wings fluttered and carried him back again. The grass was like a net to him, and there he fluttered till the wind lifted him out, and gave him the freedom of the hills. One small green orchis stood in the grass, alone; the harebells were many. It is curious that, if gathered, in a few hours (if pressed between paper) they become a deeper blue than when growing. Another butterfly went over, large and velvety, flying head to the wind, but unable to make way against it, and so carried sidelong across the current. From the summit of the hill he drifted out into the air five hundred feet above the flowers of the plain. Perhaps it was a peacock; for there was a peacock-butterfly in Clematis Lane. The harebells swung, and the dry tips of the grass bent to the wind which came over the hills from the sea, but from which the sun had dried the sea-moisture, leaving it twice refined--once by the passage above a hundred miles of wave and foam and again by the grasses and the hills, which forced the current to a higher level, where the sunbeams dried it. Twice refined, the air was strong and pure, sweet like the scent of a flower. If the air at the sea-beach is good, that of the hills above the sea is at least twice as good, and twice as strengthening. It possesses all the virtue of the sea air without the moisture which ultimately loosens the joints, and seems to penetrate to the very nerves. Those who desire air and quick recovery should go to the hills, where the wind has a scent of the sunbeams. In the short time since ascending the slope the definition of the view has changed. At first it was clear indeed, and no one would have supposed there was any mist. But now suddenly every hill stands out sharp and definite; the scattered hawthorn bushes are distinct; the hills look higher than before. From about the woods an impalpable bluish mistiness that was there just now has been blown away. The yellow squares of stubble--just cleared--far below are whiter and look drier. I think it is the air that tints everything. This fresh stratum now sweeping over has altered the appearance of the country and given me a new scene. The invisible air, as if charged with colour, has spread another tone broadly over the landscape. Omitting no detail, it has worked out afresh every little bough of the scattered hawthorn bushes, and made each twig distinct. It is the air that tints everything. While I have been thinking, a flock of sheep has stolen quietly into the space enclosed by the entrenchment. With the iron head of his crook placed against his breast, and the handle aslant to the ground, the shepherd leans against it, and looks down upon the reapers. He is a young man, and has a bright intelligent expression on his features. Alone with his sheep so many hours, he is glad of some one to talk to, and points out to me the various places in view. The copses that cover the slopes of the hills he calls "holts"; there are three or four within a short distance. His crook is not a Pyecombe crook (for the best crooks used to be made at Pyecombe, a little Down hamlet), but he has another, which was made from a Pyecombe pattern. The village craftsman, whose shepherd's crooks were sought for all along the South Downs, is no more, and he has left no one able to carry on his work. He had an apprentice, but the apprentice has taken to another craft, and cannot make crooks. The Pyecombe crook has a curve or semicircle, and then opens straight; the straight part starts at a tangent from the semicircle. How difficult it is to describe so simple a matter as a shepherd's crook! In some way or other this Pyecombe form is found more effective for capturing sheep, but it is not so easy to make. The crook he held in his hand opened with an elongated curve. It appeared very small beside the ordinary crooks; this, he said, was an advantage, as it would hold a lamb. Another he showed me had the ordinary hook; this was bought at Brighton. The curve was too big, and a sheep could get its leg out; besides which, the iron was soft, and when a sheep was caught the iron bent and enlarged, and so let the sheep go. The handles were of hazel: one handle was straight, smooth, and the best in appearance--but he said it was weak; the other handle, which was crooked and rough-looking, was twice as strong. They used hazel rods for handles--ash rods were apt to "fly," i.e. break. Wages were now fifteen shillings a week. The "farm hands"--elsewhere labourers--had fifteen shillings a week, and paid one shilling and sixpence a week for their cottages. The new cottages that had been built were two shillings and sixpence a week. They liked the old cottages best, not only because they were cheaper, but because they had larger gardens attached. It seemed that the men were fairly satisfied with their earnings; just then, of course, they were receiving much more for harvest work, such as tying up after the reaping machine at seven shillings and sixpence per acre. Clothes were the heaviest item of expenditure, especially where there was a family and the children were not old enough to earn anything. Except that he said "wid" for with--"wid" this, instead of with this--he scarcely mispronounced a word, speaking as distinctly and expressing himself as clearly as any one could possibly do. The briskness of manner, quick apprehension, and directness of answer showed a well-trained mind. The Sussex shepherd on this lonely hill was quite the equal of any man in his rank of life, and superior in politeness to many who move in more civilised places. He left me to fetch some wattles, called flakes in other counties; a stronger sort of hurdles. Most of the reaping is now done by machine, still there were men cutting wheat by hand at the foot of the hill. They call their reaphooks swaphooks, or swophooks, and are of opinion that although the machine answers well and clears the ground quickly when the corn stands up, if it is beaten down the swaphook is preferable. The swaphook is the same as the fagging-hook of other districts. Every hawthorn bush now bears its red berries, or haws; these are called "hog-hazels." In the west they are called "peggles." "Sweel" is an odd Sussex word, meaning to singe linen. People who live towards the hills (which are near the coast) say that places farther inland are more "uperds "--up the country--up towards Tunbridge, for instance. The grasshoppers sang merrily round me as I sat on the sward; the warm sun and cloudless sky and the dry turf pleased them. Though cloudless, the wind rendered the warmth pleasant, so that the sunbeams, from which there was no shade, were not oppressive. The grasshoppers sang, the wind swept through the grass and swung the harebells, the "drowsy hum" of the threshing engine rose up from the plain; the low slumberous melody of harvest time floated in the air. An hour had gone by imperceptibly before I descended the slope to Clematis Lane. Out in the stubble where the wheat had just been cut, down amongst the dry short stalks of straw, were the light-blue petals of the grey field veronica. Almost the very first of field flowers in the earliest days of spring, when the rain drives over the furrow, and hail may hap at any time, here it was blooming again in the midst of the harvest. Two scenes could scarcely be more dissimilar than the wet and stormy hours of the early year, and the dry, hot time of harvest; the pale blue veronica, with one white petal, flourished in both, true and faithful. The gates beside the lane were not gates at all, but double draw-bars framed together, so that the gate did not open on a hinge, but had to be drawn out of the mortices. Looking over one of these grey and lichened draw-bars in a hazel hedge there were the shocks of wheat standing within the field, and on them a flock of rooks helping themselves freely. Lower in the valley, where there was water, the tall willow-herbs stood up high as the hedges. On the banks of a pool water-plantains had sent up stalks a yard high, branched, and each branch bearing its three-petalled flower. In a copse near the stems of cow-parsnip stood quite seven feet, drawn up by the willow bushes--these great plants are some of the largest that grow in the country. Goatsbeard grew by the wayside; it is like the dandelion, but has dark spots in the centre of the disc, and the flower shuts at noon. The wild carrots were forming their "birds' nests"--so soon as the flowering is over the umbel closes into the shape of a cup or bird's nest. The flower of the wild carrot is white; it is made up of numerous small separate florets on an umbel, and in the centre of these tiny florets is a deep crimson one. Getting down towards the sea and the houses now I found a shrub of henbane by the dusty road, dusty itself, grey-green, and draggled; I call it a shrub, though a plant because of its shrub-like look. The flowers were over--they are a peculiar colour, dark and green veined and red, there is no exact term for it, but you may know the plant by the leaves, which, if crushed, smell like those of the black currant. This is one of the old English medicinal plants still in use. The figs were ripening fast in an orchard; the fig trees are frequently grown between apple trees, which shelter them, and some of the fruit was enclosed in muslin bags to protect it. The fig orchards along the coast suggest thoughts of Italy and the ancient Roman galleys which crossed the sea to the Sussex ports. There is a curious statement in a classic author, to the effect that a letter written by Julius Caesar, when in Britain, on the Kalends of September, reached Rome on the fourth day before the Kalends of October, showing how long a letter was being carried from the South Coast to the centre of Italy, nineteen centuries ago. NATURE NEAR BRIGHTON "As wild as a hawk" is a proverbial comparison, but kestrels venture into the outskirts of Brighton, and even right over the town. Not long since one was observed hovering above a field which divides part of Brighton from Hove. The bird had hardly settled himself and obtained his balance, when three or four rooks who were passing deliberately changed their course to attack him. Moving with greater swiftness, the kestrel escaped their angry but clumsy assaults; still they drove him from the spot, and followed him eastwards over the town till out of sight--now wheeling round, and now doing their utmost to rise higher and get the advantage of him. Kestrels appear rather numerous in this vicinity. Those who have driven round Brighton and Hove must have noticed the large stables which have been erected for the convenience of gentlemen residing in streets where stabling at the rear of the house is impracticable. Early in the year a kestrel began to haunt one of these large establishments, notwithstanding that it was much frequented, carriages driving in and out constantly, hunters taken to and fro, and in despite of the neighbourhood being built over with villas. There was a piece of waste ground by the building where, on a little tree, the hawk perched day after clay. Then, beating round, he hovered over the gardens of the district, often above the public roads and over a large tennis lawn. His farthest sweep seemed to be to the Sussex County Cricket field and then back again. Day after day he went his rounds for weeks together, through the stormy times of the early months, passing several times a day, almost as regularly as the postman. He showed no fear, hovering close to the people in the roads or working in their gardens. All his motions could be observed with facility--the mode of hovering, which he accomplished easily, whether there was a gale or a perfect calm; indeed, his ways could be noted as well as if it had been by the side of the wildest copse. One morning he perched on a chimney; the house was not occupied, but the next to it was, and there were builders' workmen engaged on the opposite side of the road; so that the wild hawk, if unmolested, would soon become comparatively tame. When the season became less rigorous, and the breeding time approached, the kestrel was seen no more; having flown for the copses between the Downs or in the Weald. The power of hovering is not so wonderful as that of soaring, which the hawks possess, but which is also exhibited by seagulls. On a March morning two gulls came up from the sea, and as they neared the Downs began to soar. It was necessary to fix the gaze on one, as the eyes cannot follow two soaring birds at once. This gull, having spread his wings wide, swept up the dean, or valley, with great speed, and, turning a large circle, rose level with the hill. Round again he came, rising spirally--a spiral with a diameter varying from a furlong to a quarter of a mile, sometimes wider--and was now high overhead. Turn succeeded turn, up, up, and this without a single movement of the wings, which were held extended and rigid. The edge of the wing on the outer side was inclined to the horizon--one wing elevated, the other depressed--as the bird leaned inwards like a train going round a curve. The plane of the wings glided up the air as, with no apparent diminution of speed from friction, the bird swiftly ascended. Fourteen times the bird swept round, never so much as moving his wings, till now the gaze could no longer distinguish his manner of progress. The white body was still perceptible, but the wings were indistinct. Up to that height the gull had not assisted his ascent by flapping, or striking the air in any way. The original impulse, and some hitherto unexplained elasticity or property of air, had sufficed to raise him, in apparent defiance of the retardation of friction, and of the drag of gravitation. This power of soaring is the most wonderful of the various problems of flight being accomplished without effort; and yet, according to our preconceived ideas, there must be force somewhere to cause motion. There was a moderate air moving at the time, but it must be remembered that if a wind assists one way it retards the other. [Footnote: See the paper on "Birds Climbing the Air"] Hawks can certainly soar in the calmest weather. One day I saw a weasel cross a road in Hove, close to a terrace of houses. It is curious that a seagull can generally be observed opposite the Aquarium; when there is no seagull elsewhere along the whole Brighton front there is often one there. Young gulls occasionally alight on the roof, or are blown there. Once now and then a porpoise may be seen sunning himself off a groyne; barely dipping himself, and rolling about at the surface, the water shines like oil as it slips off his back. The Brighton rooks are house birds, like sparrows, and perch on the roofs or chimneys--there are generally some on the roof of the Eglise Reformee Francaise, a church situated in a much-frequented part. It is amusing to see a black rook perched on a red tile chimney, with the smoke coming up around him, and darkening with soot his dingy plumage. They take every scrap thrown out, like sparrows, and peck bones if they find them. The builders in Brighton appear to have somewhat overshot the mark, to judge from the number of empty houses, and, indeed, it is currently reported that it will be five years before the building speculation recovers itself. Upon these empty houses, the hoardings, and scaffold-poles, the rooks perch exactly as if they were trees in a hedgerow, waiting with comic gravity to pounce on anything in the gardens or on the lawns. They are quite aware when it is Sunday--on week-days they keep at a fair distance from workmen; on Sundays they drop down in places where at other times they do not dare to venture, so that a glove might be thrown out of window among them. In winter and spring there are rooks everywhere; as summer advances, most leave the town for the fields. A marked sign of spring in Brighton is the return of the wheatears; they suddenly appear in the waste places by the houses in the first few days of April. Wheatears often run a considerable distance on the sward very swiftly, usually stopping on some raised spot of the turf. Meadow-pipits are another spring bird here; any one going up the Dyke Road in early spring will observe a little brown bird singing in the air much like a lark, but more feebly. He only rises to a certain height, and then descends in a slanting direction, singing, to the ground. The meadow-pipit is, apparently, uncertain where he shall come down, wandering and irregular on his course. Many of them finish their song in the gardens of the Convent of the Sacred Heart, which seem to be a refuge to birds. At least, the thrushes sing there sweetly--yellowhammers, too--on the high wall. There is another resort of birds, opposite the Convent, on the Stanford Estate, on which persons are warned not to shoot or net small birds. A little shrubbery there in April and May is full of thrushes, blackbirds, and various finches, happily singing, and busy at their nests. Here the birds sing both sides of the highway, despite the reproach that Brighton is bare of trees; they pass from the shrubbery to and from the Convent gardens. It is to be wished that these notices not to shoot or net small birds were more frequently seen. Brighton is still a bird-catching centre, and before the new close season commences acres of ground are covered with the nets of the bird-catchers. Pity they could not be confined a little while in the same manner as they confine their miserable feathery victims (in cages just to fit the bird, say six inches square) in cells where movement or rest would be alike impossible. Yet goldfinches are still to be seen close to the town; they are fond of the seeds which they find wherever there is a waste place, and on the slopes of unfinished roads. Each unoccupied house, and many occupied, has its brood of starlings; a starling the other day was taking insects from the surface of a sheep pond on the hill, flying out to the middle of the pond and snatching the insects from the water During the long weeks of rain and stormy weather in the spring of 1883, the Downs looked dreary indeed; open, unsheltered, the grass so short as scarcely to be called grass wet and slippery. But a few glimpses of sunshine soon brought a change. Where the furze bushes had been cut down, the stems of furze began to shoot, looking at a little distance like moss on the ground. Among these there were broad violet patches--scentless violets, nothing to gather, but pleasant to see--colouring the earth. Presently the gorse flowered, miles of it, and the willow wrens sang plaintively among it. The brightest bird on the Downs was then the stonechat. Perched on a dead thistle, his blackest of black heads, the white streak by his neck, and the brilliance of his colouring contrasted with the yellow gorse around. In the hedges on the northern slopes of the Downs, towards the Weald, or plain, the wayfaring tree grows in large shrubs, blooming among the thorns. The banks by Brighton in early spring are purple with the flowers of ground ivy, which flowers with exceptional freedom. One bank, or waste spot, that was observed was first of all perfectly purple with ground ivy; by degrees these flowers faded, and the spot became a beautiful blue with veronica, or bird's-eye; then, again, these disappeared, and up came the larger daisies on stalks a foot high, whose discs touched each other from end to end of the bank. Here was a succession of flowers as if designed, one taking the other's place. Meantime the trifolium appeared like blood spilt among the grass. The thin, chalky soil of Sussex is singularly favourable to poppies and charlock--the one scarlet, the other a sharp yellow; they cover acres. Wild pansies flowered on the hillside fallows, high up among the wind, where the notes of the cuckoo came faint from the wood in the Weald beneath. The wind threw back the ringing notes, but every now and then, as the breeze ebbed, they came, having travelled a full mile against the current of air. There is no bird with so powerful a voice as the cuckoo; his cry can be heard almost as far as a clarion. The wild pansies were very thick--little yellow petals streaked with black lines. In a western county the cottagers call them "Loving Idols," which may perhaps be a distortion of the name they bore in Shakespeare's time--"Love in Idleness." It appears as if the rabbits on the chalk are of a rather greyish hue, perceptibly less sandy in colour than those living in meadows on low ground. Though Brighton is bare of trees, there is a large wood at a short distance. It is principally of beech. In this particular wood there is a singular absence of the jays which elsewhere make so much noise. Early in the spring there did not seem a jay in it. They make their appearance in the nesting season and are then trapped. A thrush's nest with eggs in it having been found, a little platform of sticks is built before the nest and a trap placed on it. The jay is so fond of eggs he cannot resist these; he alights on the platform in front of the nest, and is so captured. The bait of an egg will generally succeed in drawing a jay to his destruction. A good deal of poaching goes on about Brighton at Christmas time, when the coverts are full of game. The Downs as they trend along the coast now recede and now approach, now sink in deans, then rise abruptly, topped with copses which, like Lancing Clump, are visible many miles both at sea and on land. Between them and the beach there lies a rich alluvial belt, narrow and flat, much of which appears to have been reclaimed by drainage from the condition of marsh, and which, in fact, presents a close similitude to the fens. Here, in the dykes, the aquatic grasses reach a great height, and the flowering rush grows. It is said that this land is sought after among agriculturists, and that those who occupy it have escaped better than the majority from the pressure of bad seasons. Somewhat away from the present coast-line, where the hills begin--perhaps the sea came as far inland once--may be found ancient places, still ports, with histories running back into the mythic period. Passing through such a place on a sunny day in the earlier part of the year, the extreme quiet and air of silence were singularly opposite to the restlessness of the great watering-place near. It was but a few steps out into the wooded country. Yellow wallflowers grew along the high wall, and flowered against the sky; swallows flew to and fro the warm space sheltered from the wind, beneath them. In the lane a blackbird was so occupied among the arums at the roots of the trees that he did not stir till actually obliged. Blackbirds and thrushes are fond of searching about where the arums grow thickest. In the park a clump of tall aspens gleamed like silk in the sunshine. The calls of moorhens came up from a lake in a deep valley near, beeches grow down the steep slope to the edge of the water, and the wind which rippled it drew in a strong draught up the hill. From that height the glance saw to the bottom of the clear water, to which the waves and the wind gave a translucent green. The valley winds northward, curving like a brook, and in the trough a narrow green band of dark grass follows the windings, a pathlike ribbon as deeply coloured as a fairy ring, and showing between the slopes of pale turf. On this side are copses of beech, and on that of fir; the fir copses are encircled by a loose hedge of box, fading and yellowish, while the larch tops were filled with sweet and tender green. Like the masts and yards of a ship, which are gradually hidden as the sails are set, so these green sails unfurling concealed the tall masts and taper branches of the fir. Afar the great hills were bare, wind-swept and dry. The glass-green river wound along the plain, and the sea bloomed blue under the sun, blue by the distant shore, darkening like a level cloud where a dim ship marked the horizon. A blue sky requires greensward and green woods--the sward is pale and the woods are slow; the cuckoo calls for his leaves. Farther along the edge of the valley the beeches thicken, and the turf is covered by the shrunken leaves of last year. Empty hulls of beechmast crunch under foot, the brown beech leaves have drifted a foot deep against the trunk of a felled tree. Beech leaves lie at rest in the cover of furze, sheltered from the wind; suddenly a little cloud of earth rises like dust as a startled cock pheasant scrambles on his wings with a scream. A hen follows, and rises steadily in a long-drawn slanting line till near the tops of the beeches, then rockets sharp up over the highest branches, and descends in a wide sweeping curve along the valley. In the glade among the beeches the furze has grown straight up ten feet high, like, sapling trees, and flowers at the top, golden bloom on a dry pole. There are more pheasants in the furze, so that, not to disturb them, it is best to walk round and not enter it. Every now and then there is a curious, half-finished note among the trees--yuc, yuc. This great hawthorn has a twisted stem; the wood winds round itself in a spiral. The bole of a beech in the sunshine h spotted like a trout by the separate shadows of its first young leaves. Tall bushes--almost trees--of blackthorn are in full white flower; the dark, leafless boughs make it appear the whiter. Among the blackthorn several tits are busy, searching about on the twigs, and pecking into the petals; calling loudly as they do so. A willow-wren is peering into the bloom too, but silent for the moment. The blackthorn is much lichened, the lichen which is built into the domed nest of the long-tailed titmouse. Yuc--yuc, again. Stalks of spurge, thickening towards the top, and then surrounded with leaves, and above these dull yellow-green flowers, grow in shrub-like bunches in more open ground. Among the shrunken leaves on the turf here and there are the white flowers of the barren strawberry. A green woodpecker starts from a tree, and can be watched between the trunks as he flies; his bright colour marks him. Presently, on rounding some furze, he rises again, this time from the ground, and goes over the open glade; flying, the green woodpecker appears a larger bird than would be supposed if seen when still. He has been among the beeches all the time, and it was his "Yuc, yuc" which we heard. Where the woodpecker is heard and seen, there the woods are woods and wild--a sense of wildness accompanies his presence. Across the valley the straight shadows of firs rise up the slope, all drawn in the same direction, parallel on the sward. Far in a hollow of the rounded hill a herd of deer are resting; the plain lies beneath them, and beyond it the sea. Though they rest in a hollow the green hill is open above and below them; they do not dread the rifle, but if they did they would be safe there. Returning again through the woods, there are some bucks lying on a pleasant sunny slope. Almost too idle to rise, they arch their backs, and stretch their legs, as much as to say, Why trouble us? The wind rushes through the trees, and draws from them strange sounds, now a groan, now almost a shriek, as the boughs grind against each other and wear the bark away. From a maple a twisted ivy basket hangs filled with twigs, leaves, and tree dust, big as three rooks' nests. Only recently a fine white-tailed eagle was soaring over the woods, he may have followed the line of the sea down from the Hebrides. Up from the sea comes the wind, drawing swifter between the beech trunks, resting a little in the sunny glades, On again into the woods. The glass-green river yonder coloured by the wind runs on seaward, there are thin masts of ships visible at its mouth miles away, the wind whistles in their shrouds; beyond the blue by the shore, far, far distant on the level cloud, the dim ship has sailed along the horizon. It dries the pale grass, and rustles the restless shrunken leaves on the ground; it dries the grey lichen on the beech trunks; it swings the fledglings in the rooks' nests, and carries the ringdove on a speedier wing. Blackbirds whistle all around, the woods are full of them; willow-wrens plaintively sing in the trees; other birds call--the dry wind mingles their notes. It is a hungry wind--it makes a wanderer as hungry as Robin Hood; it drives him back to the houses, and there by a doorstep lies a heap of buck's-horns thrown down like an armful of wood. SEA, SKY, AND DOWN In the cloudless January sky the sun at noonday appears high above the southern horizon, and there is a broad band of sky between it and the line of the sea. This sense of the sun's elevation is caused by the level plain of water, which affords no contrast. Inland the hills rise up, and even at midday the sun in winter does not seem much above their ridges. But here by the shore the sun hangs high, and does not look as if he descended so low in his winter curve. There is little wind, and the wavelets swing gently rather than roll, illumined both in their hollows and on their crests with a film of silver. Three or four miles away a vessel at anchor occasionally sways, and at each movement flashes a bright gleam from her wet side like a mirror. White gulls hawk to and fro by the strand, darting on floating fragments and rising again; their plumage is snowy white in the sunshine. Brown nets lie on the pebbles; brown nets are stretched from the mastheads of the smacks to the sea-wall; brown and deeply wrinkled sails are hoisted to dry in the sun and air. The broad red streaks on the smacks' sides stand out distinctly among the general pitchy hues of gunwales and great coils of rope. Men in dull yellow tan frocks are busy round about among them, some mending nets some stooping over a boat turned bottom upwards, upon which a patch is being placed. It needs at least three or four men to manage this patch properly. These tan frocks vary from a dull yellow to a copperish red colour. A golden vane high overhead points to the westward, and the dolphin, with open mouth, faces the light breeze. Under the groynes there is shadow as in summer; once and again the sea runs up and breaks on the beach, and the foam, white as the whitest milk, hisses as it subsides among the pebbles; it effervesces and bubbles at the brim of the cup of the sea. Farther along the chalk cliffs stand up clear and sharp, the green sea beneath, and the blue sky above them. There is a light and colour everywhere, the least fragment of colour is brought out, even the worn red tiles washed smooth by the tides and rolled over and over among the pebbles, the sea gleams, and there is everything of summer but the heat. Reflected in the plate-glass windows of the street the sea occupies the shop front, covering over the golden bracelets and jewellery with a moving picture of the silvery waves. The day is lengthened by the light, and dark winter driven away, till, the sun's curve approaching the horizon, misty vapours begin to thicken in the atmosphere where they had not been suspected. The tide is out, and for miles the foam runs in on the level sands, forming a long succession of graceful curves marked with a white edge. As the sun sinks, the wet sands are washed with a brownish yellow, the colour of ripe wheat if it could be supposed liquid. The sunset, which has begun with pale hues, flushes over a rich violet, soon again overlaid with orange, and succeeded in its turn by a deep red glow--a glow which looks the deeper the more it is gazed at, like a petal of peony. There are no fair faces in the street now, they are all brunettes, fair complexions and dark skins are alike tinted by the sunset; they are all swarthy. On the sea a dull redness reaches away and is lost in the vapour on the horizon; eastwards great vapours, tinged rosy, stand up high in the sky, and seem to drift inland, carrying the sunset with them; presently the atmosphere round the houses is filled with a threatening light, like a great fire reflected over the housetops. It fades, and there is nothing left but a dark cloud at the western horizon, tinted blood-red along its upper edge. Next morning the sun rises, a ball of orange amid streaks of scarlet. But sometimes the sunset takes other order than this, and after the orange there appears a rayed scarlet crown, such as one sees on old coins--rays of scarlet shoot upward from a common centre above where the sun went down. Sometimes, instead of these brilliant hues, there is the most delicate shading of pearly greys and nameless silver tints, such tints as might be imagined were the clouds like feathers, the art of which is to let the under hue shine through the upper layer of the plumage. Though not so gaudy or at first so striking, these pearl-greys, and silvers, and delicate interweaving of tints are really as wonderful, being graduated and laid on with a touch no camel's hair can approach. Sometimes, again, the sunset shows a burnished sky, like the surface of old copper burnt or oxidised--the copper tinted with rose, or with rose and violet. During the prevalence of the scarlet and orange hues, the moon, then young, shining at the edge of the sunset, appeared faintly green and people remarked how curious a green moon looked on a blue sky, for it was just where the sunset vapour melted into the upper sky. At the same moment the gas-lamps burned green--rows and rows of pale green lights. As the sunset faded both the moon and gas-lamps took their proper hue; hence it appeared as if the change of colour were due to contrast. The gas-lamps had looked greenish several evenings before the new moon shone, and in their case there can be no doubt the tint was contrast merely. One night, some hours after sunset, and long after the last trace of it had disappeared, the moon was sailing through light white clouds, which only partly concealed her, and was surrounded by the ordinary prismatic halo. But outside this halo there was a green circle, a broad green band, very distinct--a pale emerald green. Beautiful and interesting as these sunsets have been, I cannot subscribe to the opinion that they surpass all that have been observed; for I distinctly remember sunsets equally brilliant, and some even more so, which occurred not so very long ago. To those who are in the habit of observing out-of-door phenomena a beautiful sunset is by no means uncommon. Sometimes the sea disappears under the haze of the winter's day: it is fine, but hazy, and from the hills, looking southwards, the sea seems gone, till, the sun breaking out, two or three horizontal streaks reflected suddenly reveal its surface. Another time the reflection of the sun's rays takes the form of a gigantic and exaggerated hour-glass; by the shore the reflection widens out, narrows as it recedes to a mere path, and again at the horizon widens and fills a mile or more. Then at the horizon the lighted sea seems raised above the general level. Rain is approaching, and then by the beach the sea becomes yellowish, beyond that green, and a hard blue at the horizon; there is one lovely streak of green on the right; in front a broad spot of sunlight where the clouds have parted. The wind sings, and a schooner is working rapidly out to windward for more room. During changeable weather the sky between the clouds occasionally takes a pale yellow hue, like that of the tinted paper used for drawing. This colour is opaque, and evidently depends upon the presence of thin vapour. It is seen when the wind is in the act of changing its direction, and the clouds, arrested in their march, are thrown out of rank. That which was the side becomes the rear of the cloud, and is banked up by the sudden pressure. Clouds coming in from the sea are met with a land wind, and so diverted. The effect of mist on the sea in the dark winter days is to increase distances, so that a ship at four or five miles appears hull down, and her shadowy sails move in vapour almost as thick as the canvas. At evening there is no visible sunset, but presently the whole sky, dull and gloomy, is suffused with a redness, not more in one part than another, but over the entire heavens. So in the clouded mornings, a deep red hue fills the whole dome. But if the sun rises clear, the rays light up the yellow sand of the quarries inland, the dark brown ploughed fields, and the black copses where many a bud is sleeping and waiting for the spring. A haze lies about the Downs and softens their smooth outline as in summer, if you can but face the bleak wind which never rests up there. The outline starts on the left hand fairly distinguished against the sky. As it sweeps round, it sinks, and is lost in the bluish haze; gradually it rises again, and is visible on the right, where the woods stand leafless on the ridge. Or the vapour settles down thicker, and the vast expanse becomes gloomy in broad day. The formless hills loom round about, the roads and marks of civilisation seem blotted out, it may be some absolute desert for aught that appears. An immense hollow filled with mist lies underneath. Presently the wind drifts the earth-cloud along, and there by a dark copse are three or four horsemen eagerly seeking a way through the plantation. They are two miles distant, but as plainly visible as if you could touch them. By-and-by one finds a path, and in single file the troop rides into the wood. On the other side there is a long stretch of open ploughed field, and about the middle of it little white dots close together, sweeping along as if the wind drove them. Horsemen are galloping on the turf at the edge of the arable, which is doubtless heavy going. The troop that has worked through the wood labours hard to overtake; the vapour follows again, and horsemen and hounds are lost in the abyss. On a ridge closer at hand, and above the mist, stand two conical wheat ricks sharply defined--all that a draughtsman could seize on. Still, even in winter there is about the hills the charm of outline, and the uncertain haze produces some of the effects of summer, but it is impossible to stay and admire, the penetrating wind will permit of nothing except hard exercise. Looking back now and then, the distant hollows are sometimes visible and sometimes filled; great curtains of mist sweep along illumined by the sunlight above them; the woods are now brown, now dark, and now faintly blue, as the light changes. Over the range-and down in the valley where the hursts or woods are situated, surrounded by meads and cornfields, there are other notes of colour to be found. In the leafless branches of the oak sometimes the sunshine plays on the bark of the smaller boughs, and causes a sense of light and colour among them. The slender boughs of the birch, too, reflect the sunshine as if polished. Beech leaves still adhere to the lower branches, spots of bright brown among the grey and ash tint of the underwood. If a woodpecker passes, his green plumage gleams the more from the absence of the abundant foliage which partly conceals even him in summer. The light-coloured wood-pigeons show distinctly against the dark firs; the golden crest of the tiny wren is to be seen in the furze or bramble. All broader effects of colour must in winter be looked for in the atmosphere, as the light changes, as the mist passes, as the north wind brings down a blackness, or the gust dries up the furrow; as the colour of the air alters, for it is certain that the air is often full of colour. To the atmosphere we must look for all broader effects. Specks of detail may be sometimes discerned, one or two in a walk, as the white breasts of the lapwings on the dark ploughed ridges; yellow oat-straw by the farm, still retaining the golden tint of summer; if fortunate, a blue kingfisher by the brook, and always dew flashing emerald and ruby. JANUARY IN THE SUSSEX WOODS The lost leaves measure our years; they are gone as the days are gone, and the bare branches silently speak of a new year, slowly advancing to its buds, its foliage, and fruit. Deciduous trees associate with human life as this yew never can. Clothed in its yellowish-green needles, its tarnished green, it knows no hope or sorrow; it is indifferent to winter, and does not look forward to summer. With their annual loss of leaves, and renewal, oak and elm and ash and beech seem to stand by us and to share our thoughts. There is no wind at the edge of the wood, and the few flakes of snow that fall from the overcast sky flutter as they drop, now one side higher and then the other, as the leaves did in the still hours of autumn. The delicacy of the outer boughs of the great trees visible against the dark background of cloud is as beautiful in its own way as the massed foliage of summer. Each slender bough is drawn out to a line; line follows line as shade grows under the pencil, but each of these lines is separate. Great boles of beech, heavy timber at the foot, thus end at their summits in the lightest and most elegant pencilling. Where the birches are tall, sometimes the number and closeness of these bare sprays causes a thickening almost as if there were leaves there. The leaves, in fact, when they come, conceal the finish of the trees; they give colour, but they hide the beautiful structure under them. Each tree at a distance is recognisable by its particular lines; the ash, for instance, grows with its own marked curve. Some flakes of snow have remained on this bough of spruce, pure white on dull green. Sparingly dispersed, the snow can be seen falling far ahead between the trunks; indeed, the white dots appear to increase the distance the eye can penetrate; it sees farther because there is something to catch the glance. Nothing seems left for food in the woods for bird or animal. Some ivy berries and black privet berries remain, a few haws may be found; for the rest, it is gone; the squirrels have had the nuts, the acorns were taken by the jays, rooks, and pheasants. Bushels of acorns, too, were collected by hand as food for the fallow deer in the park. A great fieldfare rises, like a lesser pigeon; fieldfares often haunt the verge of woods, while the redwing thrushes go out into the meadows. It can scarcely be doubted that both these birds come over to escape the keener cold of the winters in Norway, or that the same cause drives the blackbirds hither. In spring we listen to Norwegian songs--the blackbird and the thrush that please us so much, if not themselves of Scandinavian birth, have had a Scandinavian origin. Any one walking about woods like these in January can understand how, where there are large flocks of birds, they must find the pressure of numbers through the insufficiency of food. They go then to seek a warmer climate and more to eat; more particularly probably for sustenance. The original and simple theory that the majority of birds migrate for food or warmth is not overthrown by modern observations. That appears to be the primary impulse, though others may be traced or reasonably imagined. To suppose, as has been put forward, that birds are endowed with a migratory instinct for the express purpose of keeping down their numbers, in order, that is, that they may perish in crossing the sea, is really too absurd for serious consideration. If that were the end in view, it would be most easily obtained by keeping them at home, where snow would speedily starve them. On the contrary, it will appear to any one who walks about woods and fields that migration is essential to the preservation of these creatures. By migration, in fact, the species is kept in existence, and room is found for life. Apart from the necessity of food, movement and change is one of the most powerful agencies in renewing health. This we see in our own experience; the condition of the air is especially important, and it is well within reasonable supposition that some birds and animals may wish to avoid certain states of atmosphere. There is, too, the question of moulting and change of plumage, and the possibility that this physiological event may influence the removal to a different climate. Birds migrate principally for food and warmth; secondly, on account of the pressure of numbers (for in good seasons they increase very fast); thirdly, for the sake of health; fourthly, for sexual reasons; fifthly, from the operation of a kind of prehistoric memory; sixthly, from choice. One or other of these causes will explain almost every case of migration. Birds are lively and intellectual, imaginative and affectionate creatures, and all their movements are not dictated by mere necessity. They love the hedge and bush where they were born, they return to the same tree, or the same spot under the eave. On the other hand, they like to roam about the fields and woods, and some of them travel long distances during the day. When the pleasurable cares of the nest are concluded, it is possible that they may in some cases cross the sea solely for the solace of change. Variety of food is itself a great pleasure. By prehistoric memory is meant the unconscious influence of ancient habit impressed upon the race in times when the conformation of land and sea and the conditions of life were different. No space is left for a mysterious agency; migration is purely natural, and acts for the general preservation. Try to put yourself in a bird's place, and you will see that migration is very natural indeed. If at some future period of the world's history men should acquire the art of flying, there can be no doubt that migration would become the custom, and whole nations would change their localities. Man has, indeed, been always a migratory animal. History is little beyond the record of migrations, how one race moved on and overcame the race in front of it. In ancient days lots were cast as to who should migrate, and those chosen by this conscription left their homes that the rest remaining might have room and food. Checking the attempted migration of the Helvetii was the beginning of Caesar's exploits. What men do only at intervals birds do frequently, having greater freedom of movement. Who can doubt that the wild fowl come south because the north is frozen over? The Laplander and the reindeer migrate together; the Tartars migrate all the year through, crossing the steppes in winding and devious but fixed paths, paths settled for each family, and kept without a map, though invisible to strangers. It is only necessary to watch the common sparrow. In spring his merry chirp and his few notes of song are heard on the roof or in the garden; here he spends his time till the broods are reared and the corn is ripe. Immediately he migrates into the fields. By degrees he is joined by those left behind to rear second broods, and at last the stubble is crowded with sparrows, such flocks no one would believe possible unless they had seen them. He has migrated for food, for his food changes with the season, being mainly insects in spring, and grain and seeds in autumn. Something may, I venture to think, in some cases of migration, be fairly attributed to the influence of a desire for change, a desire springing from physiological promptings for the preservation of health. I am personally subject twice a year to the migratory impulse. I feel it in spring and autumn, say about March, when the leaves begin to appear, and again as the corn is carried, and most strongly as the fields are left in stubble. I have felt it every year since boyhood, often so powerfully as to be quite unable to resist it. Go I must, and go I do, somewhere; if I do not I am soon unwell. The general idea of direction is southerly, both spring and autumn; no doubt the reason is because this is a northern country. Some little green stays on the mounds where the rabbits creep and nibble the grasses. Cinquefoil remains green though faded, and wild parsley the freshest looking of all; plantain leaves are found under shelter of brambles, and the dumb nettles, though the old stalks are dead, have living leaves at the ground. Grey-veined ivy trails along, here and there is a frond of hart's-tongue fern, though withered at the tip, and greenish grey lichen grows on the exposed stumps of trees. These together give a green tint to the mound, which is not so utterly devoid of colour as the season of the year might indicate. Where they fail, brown brake fern fills the spaces between the brambles; and in a moist spot the bunches of rushes are composed half of dry stalks, and half of green. Stems of willow-herb, four feet high, still stand, and tiny long-tailed tits perch sideways on them. Above, on the bank, another species of willow-herb has died down to a short stalk, from which springs a living branch, and at its end is one pink flower. A dandelion is opening on the same sheltered bank; farther on the gorse is sprinkled with golden spots of bloom. A flock of greenfinches starts from the bushes, and their colour shows against the ruddy wands of the osier-bed over which they fly. The path winds round the edge of the wood, where a waggon track goes up the hill; it is deeply grooved at the foot of the hill. These tracks wear deeply into the chalk just where the ascent begins. The chalk adheres to the shoes like mortar, and for some time after one has left it each footstep leaves a white mark on the turf. On the ridge the low trees and bushes have an outline like the flame of a candle in a draught--the wind has blown them till they have grown fixed in that shape. In an oak across the ploughed field a flock of wood-pigeons have settled; on the furrows there are chaffinches, and larks rise and float a few yards farther away. The snow has ceased, and though there is no wind on the surface, the clouds high above have opened somewhat, not sufficient for the sun to shine, but to prolong the already closing afternoon a few minutes. If the sun shines to-morrow morning the lark will soar and sing, though it is January, and the quick note of the chaffinch will be heard as he perches on the little branches projecting from the trunks of trees below the great boughs. Thrushes sing every mild day in December and January, entirely irrespective of the season, also before rain. A curious instance of a starling having a young brood at this time of the year, recently recorded, seems to suggest that birds are not really deceived by the passing mildness of a few days, but are obliged to prepare nests, finding themselves in a condition to require them. The cause, in short, is physiological, and not the folly of the bird. This starling had had two previous broods, one in October, and now again in December-January. The starling was not, therefore, deceived by the chance of mild weather; her own bodily condition led her to the nest, and had she been a robin or thrush she would have built one instead of resorting to a cranny. It is certain that individuals among birds and animals do occasionally breed at later periods than is usual for the generality of their species. Exceptionally prolific individuals among birds continue to breed into the winter. They are not egregiously deceived any more than we are by a mild interval; the nesting is caused by their individual temperament. The daylight has lingered on longer than expected, but now the gloom of the short January evening is settling down fast in the wood. The silent and motionless trees rise out of a mysterious shadow, which fills up the spaces between their trunks. Only above, where their delicate outer branches are shown against the dark sky, is there any separation between them. Somewhere in the deep shadow of the underwood a blackbird calls "ching, ching" before he finally settles himself to roost. In the yew the lesser birds are already quiet, sheltered by the evergreen spray; they have also sought the ivy-grown trunks. "Twit, twit," sounds high overhead as one or two belated little creatures, scarcely visible, pass quickly for the cover of the furze on the hill. The short January evening is of but a few minutes' duration; just now it was only dusky, and already the interior of the wood is impenetrable to the glance. There rises a loud though distant clamour of rooks and daws, who have restlessly moved in their roost-trees. Darkness is almost on them, yet they cannot quite settle. The cawing and dawing rises to a pitch, and then declines; the wood is silent, and it is suddenly night. BY THE EXE The whortleberry bushes are almost as thick as the heather in places on the steep, rocky hills that overlook the Exe. Feeding on these berries when half ripe is said to make the heath poults thin (they are acid), so that a good crop of whortleberries is not advantageous to the black game. Deep in the hollow the Exe winds and bends, finding a crooked way among the ruddy rocks. Sometimes an almost inaccessible precipice rises on one shore, covered with firs and ferns, which no one can gather; while on the other is a narrow but verdant strip of mead. Coming down in flood from the moors the Exe will not wait to run round its curves, but rushes across the intervening corner, and leaves behind, as it subsides, a mass of stones, flat as slates or scales, destroying the grass. But the fly-fisherman seeks the spot because the water is swift at the angle of the stream and broken by a ledge of rock. He can throw up stream--the line falls soft as silk on the slow eddy below the rock, and the fly is drawn gently towards him across the current. When a natural fly approaches the surface of running water, and flutters along just above it, it encounters a light air, which flows in the same direction as the stream. Facing this surface breeze, the fly cannot progress straight up the river, but is carried sideways across it. This motion the artificial fly imitates; a trout takes it, and is landed on the stones. He is not half a pound, yet in the sunshine has all the beauty of a larger fish. Spots of cochineal and gold dust, finely mixed together, dot his sides; they are not red nor yellow exactly, as if gold dust were mixed with some bright red. A line is drawn along his glistening greenish side, and across this there are faintly marked lozenges of darker colour, so that in swimming past he would appear barred. There are dark spots on the head between the eyes, the tail at its lower and upper edges is pinkish; his gills are bright scarlet. Proportioned and exquisitely shaped, he looks like a living arrow, formed to shoot through the water. The delicate little creature is finished in every detail, painted to the utmost minutiae, and carries a wonderful store of force, enabling him to easily surmount the rapids. Exe and Earle are twin streams, parted only by a ridge of heather-grown moor. The Earle rises near a place called Simons' Bath, about which there is a legend recalling the fate of Captain Webb. There is a pool at Simons' Bath, in which is a small whirlpool. The stream running in does not seem of much strength; but the eddy is sufficient to carry a dog down. By report the eddy is said to be unfathomable. A long time since a man named Simons thought he could swim through the whirlpool, much as Captain Webb thought he could float down the rapids of Niagara; only in this case Simons relied on the insignificant character of the eddy. He made the attempt, was sucked down and drowned, and hence the spot has been since known as Simons' Bath. So runs the tradition in the neighbourhood, varied in details by different narrators, but not so apocryphal, perhaps, as the story of the two giants, or demons, who amused themselves one day throwing stones, to see which could throw farthest. Their stones were huge boulders; the first pitched his pebble across the Bristol Channel into Wales; the second's foot slipped, and his boulder dropped on Exmoor, where it is known as White Stones to this day. The antiquarians refer Simons' Bath to one Sigmund, but the country-side tradition declares it was named from a man who was drowned. Exe and Earle presently mingle their streams by pleasant oak woods. At the edge of one of these woods the trench, in the early summer, was filled with ferns, so that, instead of thorns and brambles, the wood was fenced with their green fronds. Among these ferns were some buttercups, at least so they looked in passing; but a slight difference of appearance induced me to stop, and on getting across the trench the buttercups were found to be yellow Welsh poppies. The petals are larger than those of the buttercup, and a paler yellow, without the metallic burnish of the ranunculus. In the centre is the seed vessel, somewhat like an urn; indeed, the yellow poppy resembles the scarlet field poppy, though smaller in width of petal and much more local in habitat. So concealed were the stalks by the ferns that the flowers appeared to grow on their fronds. On the mounds grew corn marigolds, so brilliantly yellow that they seemed to shine in the sunlight, and on a wall moth-mullein flowered high above the foxgloves. It was curious to hear the labouring people say, "There's the guckoo," when the cuckoo cried. They said he called "guckoo"; so cuckoo sounded to their ears. There are numbers of birds of prey in the oak woods which everywhere grow on the slopes of the Exmoor hills. The keeper who wishes to destroy a whole brood of jays (which take the eggs of game) waits till the young birds are fledged. He then catches one, or wounds it, and, hiding himself in the bushes, pinches it till the bird cries "scaac, scaac." At the sound the old birds come, and are shot as they approach. The fledglings could, of course, be easily destroyed; the object is to get at the wary old jays, and prevent their returning next year. Now and then a buzzard is shot, and if it be only wounded the gunner conceals himself and pinches it till it calls, when the bird's partner presently appears, and is also killed. Stoats are plentiful. They have their young in burrows, or in holes and crevices among the stones, which are found in quantities in the woods. As any one passes such a heap of stones the young stoats peep from the crevices and cry "yac, yac," like barking, and so betray their presence. Three or four traps are set in a circle round the spot, baited with pieces of rabbit, in which the old stoats are soon caught. The young stoats in a day or two, not being fed, come out of the stones, and are shot, or knocked on the head. The woods are always on the sheltered slopes of the hills, the moors on the summits are bare of trees; yet it would seem that trees once grew there, trunks of oak being occasionally dug up from the peat. Both the peaty turf and the heather are used for fuel; the heather is pulled up, the turf cut with a particular kind of spade, heart-shaped and pointed, not unlike the traditional spade used by the gravedigger in "Hamlet," but with a very long curved handle. Vipers are sometimes encountered among the heather where it is sandy. A viper will sometimes wind itself round the stem of a thorn bush, and thus, turning its head in every direction, defy a dog. Whichever side the dog approaches, the viper turns its venomous head. Dogs frequently kill them, and are sometimes bitten, generally in the face, when the dog's head swells in a few minutes to twice its natural size. Salad oil is the remedy relied on, and seldom known to fail. The effect of anger on the common snake is marked. The skin, if the creature is annoyed, becomes bristly and colder; sometimes there is a strong snake-like smell emitted. It is singular that the goat-sucker, or fern owl, often stuffed when shot and preserved in glass cases, does not keep; the bird looks draggled and falling to pieces. So many of them are like this. Some of the labouring people who work by the numerous streamlets say that the wagtail dives, goes right under water like a diver now and then--a circumstance I have not noticed myself. There is a custom of serving up water-cress with roast fowl; it is also sometimes boiled like a garden vegetable. Sometimes a man will take cider with his tea--a cup of tea one side and a mug of cider on the other. The German bands, who wander even into these extreme parts of the country, always ask for cider, which they say reminds them of their own wines at home--like hock, or Rhenish. Though the junction of Earle and Exe is a long way from the sea (as the Exe winds), salmon come far up above that to the moors. Salmon-fishing is preserved, but poachers take them at night with gaffs. There are water-bailiffs, who keep a good look-out, or think they do, but occasionally find heads of salmon nailed to their doors in derision. The missel-thrush is called the "holm-screech." The missel-thrushes, I know, have a difficulty to defend their young against crows; but last spring I found a jackdaw endeavouring to get at a missel-thrush's nest. The old birds were screeching loudly, and trying to drive the jackdaw away. The chaffinch appears to be called "woodfinch," at least the chaffinch answered nearest to the bird described to me as a "woodfinch." In another county it is called the piefinch. One summer evening I was under a wood by the Exe. The sun had set, and from over the wooded hill above bars of golden and rosy cloud stretched out across the sky. The rooks came slowly home to roost, disappearing over the wood, and at the same time the herons approached in exactly the opposite direction, flying from Devon into Somerset, and starting out to feed as the rooks returned home. The first heron sailed on steadily at a great height, uttering a loud "caak, caak" at intervals. In a few minutes a second followed, and "caak, caak" sounded again over the river valley. The third was flying at a less height, and as he came into sight over the line of the wood he suddenly wheeled round, and, holding his immense wings extended, dived as a rook will downwards through the air. He twisted from side to side like a coin partly spun round by the finger and thumb, as he came down, rushing through the air head first. The sound of his great vanes pressing and dividing the air was plainly audible. He looked unable to manage his descent; but at the right moment he recovered his balance, and rose a little up into a tree on the summit, drawing his long legs into the branches behind him. The fourth heron fetched a wide circle, and so descended into the wood; two more passed on over the valley--altogether six herons in about a quarter of an hour. They intended, no doubt, to wait in the trees till it was dusky, and then to go down and fish in the river. Herons are called cranes, and heronies are craneries. A determined sportsman, who used to eat every heron he could shoot in revenge for their ravages among the trout, at last became suspicious, and examining one, found in it the remains of a rat and of a toad, after which he did not eat any more. Another sportsman found a heron in the very act of gulping down a good-sized trout, which stuck in the gullet. He shot the heron and got the trout, which was not at all injured, only marked on each side where the beak had cut it. The fish was cooked and eaten. This summer evening the bars of golden and rosy cloud gradually lost their bright colour, but retained some purple in the vapour for a long time. If the red sunset clouds turn black, the country people say it will rain; if any other colour, it will be fine. The path from the river led beside the now dusky moor, and the curlew's weird whistle came out of the increasing darkness. Wild as the curlew is in early summer (when there are young birds), he will fly up within a short distance of the wayfarer, whistling, and alight on the burnt, barren surface of the moor. There he stalks to and fro, grey and upright. He looks a large bird so close. His head nods at each step, and every now and then his long bill, curved like a sabre, takes something from the ground. But he is not feeding, he is watching you. He utters his strange, crying whistle from time to time, which draws your attention from the young birds. By these rivers of the west otters are still numerous, and are regularly hunted. Besides haunting the rivers, they ascend the brooks, and even the smallest streamlets, and are often killed a long way from the larger waters. There are three things to be chiefly noticed in the otter--first, the great width of the upper nostril; secondly, the length and sharpness of the hold-fast teeth; and, thirdly, the sturdiness and roundness of the chest or barrel, expressive of singular strength. The upper nostril is so broad that when the mouth is open the lower jaw appears but a third of its width--a mere narrow streak of jaw, dotted, however, with the sharpest teeth. This distension of the upper jaw and narrowness of the lower gives the impression of relentless ferocity. His teeth are somewhat cat-like, and so is his manner of biting. He forces his teeth to meet through whatever he takes hold of, but then immediately repeats the bite somewhere else, not holding what he has, but snapping again and again like a cat, so that his bite is considered even worse than that of the badger. Now and then, in the excitement of the hunt, a man will put his hand into the hole occupied by the otter to draw him out. If the huntsman sees this there is some hard language used, for if the otter chance to catch the hand, he might so crush and mangle it that it would be useless for life. Nothing annoys the huntsman more than anything of this kind. The otter's short legs are deceptive; it does not look as if a creature so low down could be very serious to encounter or difficult to kill. His short legs are, in fact, an addition to his strength, which is perhaps greater than that of any other animal of proportionate size. He weighs nearly as heavy as a fox, and is even as hard to kill fairly. Unless speared, or knocked heavily on the head, the otter-hounds can rarely kill him in the water; when driven to land at last or to a shallow he is often rather crushed and pressed to death than anything else, and the skin sometimes has not got a single toothmark in it. Not a single hound has succeeded in biting through, but there is a different story to tell on the other side. A terrier has his jaw loose and it has to be bound up, such a crushing bite has he had. There are torn shoulders, necks, and limbs, and specks of blood on the nostrils and coats of the other hounds. A full-grown otter fights like a lion in the water; if he gets in a hole under the bank where it is hollow, called a "hover," he has to be thrust out with a pole. He dives under the path of his enemies as they yelp in the water, and as he goes attacks one from beneath, seizes him by the leg, and drags him down, and almost drowns him before he will let go. The air he is compelled to emit from his lungs as he travels across to another retreat shows his course on the surface, and by the bubbles he is tracked as he goes deep below. He tries up the stream, and finds at the place where a ledge of rocks crosses it eight or ten men armed with long staves standing waiting for him. If there was but one deep place at the side of the ledge of rocks he could beat them still and slip by, but the water is low for want of rain, and he is unable to do so. He turns and tries at the sides of the river lower down. Behind matted roots, and under the bank, with a rocky fragment at one side, he faces his pursuers. The hounds are snapped at as they approach in front. He cannot be struck with a staff from above because the bank covers him. Some one must wade across and strike him with a pole till he moves, or carry a terrier or two and pitch them in the hole, half above and half under water. Next he tries the other bank, then baffles all by doubling, till some one spies his nostril as he comes up to breathe. The rocky hill at hand resounds with the cries of the hounds, the sharp bark of the terriers, the orders of the huntsman, and the shouts of the others. There are ladies in the mead by the river's edge watching the hunt. Met in every direction, the otter swims down stream; there are no rocks there, he knows, but as he comes he finds a net stretched across. He cannot go down the river for the net, nor up it for the guarded ledge of rocks; he is enclosed in a pool without a chance of escape from it, and all he can do is to prolong the unequal contest to the last moment. Now he visits his former holes or "hovers," to be again found out; now he rests behind rocky fragments, now dives and doubles or eludes all for a minute by some turn. So long as his wind endures or he is not wounded he can stop in the water, and so long as he is in the water he can live. But by degrees he is encircled; some wade in and cut off his course; hounds stop him one way and men the other, till, finally forced to land or to the shallow, he is slain. His webbed feet are cut off and given as trophies to the ladies who are present. The skin varies in colour--sometimes a deep brown, sometimes fawn. The otter is far wilder than the fox; for the fox a home is found and covers are kept for him, even though he makes free with the pheasants; but the otter has no home except the river and the rocky fastnesses beside it. No creature could be more absolutely wild, depending solely upon his own exertions for existence. Of olden time he was believed to be able to scent the fish in the water at a considerable distance, as a hound scents a fox, and to go straight to them. If he gets among a number he will kill many more than he needs. For this reason he has been driven by degrees from most of the rivers in the south where he used to be found, but still exists in Somerset and Devon. Not even in otter-hunting does he get the same fair play as the fox. No one strikes a fox or puts a net across his course. That, however, is necessary, but it is time that a strong protest was made against the extermination of the otter in rivers like the Thames, where he is treated as a venomous cobra might be on land; The truth is the otter is a most interesting animal and worth preservation, even at the cost of what he eats. There is a great difference between keeping the number of otters down by otter-hunting within reasonable limits and utterly exterminating them. Hunting the otter in Somerset is one thing, exterminating them in the Thames another, and I cannot but feel a sense of deep regret when I hear of fresh efforts towards this end. In the home counties, and, indeed, in many other counties, the list of wild creatures is already short enough, and is gradually decreasing, and the loss of the otter would be serious. This animal is one of the few perfectly wild creatures that have survived without any protection from the ancient forest days. Despite civilisation, it still ventures, occasionally, within a few miles of London, and well inside that circle in which London takes its pleasure. It would be imagined that its occurrence so near the metropolis would be recorded with pride; instead of which, no sooner is the existence of an otter suspected than gun and trap are eagerly employed for its destruction. I cannot but think that the people of London at large, if aware of these facts, would disapprove of the attempt to exterminate one of the most remarkable members of their fauna. They should look upon the inhabitants of the river as peculiarly their own. Some day, perhaps, they will take possession of the fauna and flora within a certain compass of their city. Every creature that could be kept alive within such a circle would be a gain, especially to the Thames, that well-head of the greatest city in the world. I marvel that they permit the least of birds to be shot upon its banks. Nothing at present is safe, not so much as a reed-sparrow, not even the martins that hover over the stormy reaches. Where is the kingfisher? Where are the water-fowl? Where soon will be the water-lilies? But if London extended its strong arm, how soon would every bush be full of bird-life, and the osier-beds and eyots the haunt of wild creatures! At this moment, it appears, so bitter is the enmity to the otter, that a reward is set on his head, and as much as two guineas is sometimes paid for the destruction of a full-grown one. Perhaps the following list of slaughter may call attention to the matter:--Three killed by Harlingham Weir in three years. On the 22nd of January, at East Molesey, opposite the Gallery at Hampton Court, in a field, a fine otter was shot, weighing twenty-six pounds, and measuring fifty-two inches. On the 26th of January 1884, a small otter was killed at Thames Ditton. Both these were close to London from a sporting or natural history point of view. In February or March 1884, an otter was killed at Cliefden Springs, Maidenhead; it measured fifty-one inches. Here, then, are six in a short period, and it is not a complete list; I have a distinct memory of one caught in a trap by Molesey Weir within the last two or three years, and then beaten to death with a spade. THE WATER-COLLEY The sweet grass was wet with dew as I walked through a meadow in Somerset to the river. The cuckoo sang, the pleasanter perhaps because his brief time was nearly over, and all pleasant things seem to have a deeper note as they draw towards an end. Dew and sweet green grass were the more beautiful because of the knowledge that the high hills around were covered by sun-dried, wiry heather. River-side mead, dew-laden grass, and sparkling stream were like an oasis in the dry desert. They refreshed the heart to look upon as water refreshes the weary. The shadows were more marked and defined than they are as day advances, the hues of the flowers brighter, for the dew was to shadow and flower as if the colours of the artist were not yet dry. Humblebees went down with caution into the long grass, not liking to wet their wings. Butterflies and the brilliant moths of a hot summer's morn alight on a dry heated footpath till the dew is gone. A great rock rising from the grass by the river's edge alone looked arid, and its surface already heated, yet it also cast a cool shadow. By a copse, two rabbits--the latest up of all those which had sported during the night--stayed till I came near, and then quietly moved in among the ferns and foxgloves. In the narrowest part of the wood between the hedge and the river a corncrake called his loudest "crake, crake," incessantly. The cornncrake or landrail is difficult even to see, so closely does he conceal himself in the tall grasses, and his call echoed and re-echoed deceives those who try to find him. Yet by great patience and watchful skilfulness the corncrake is sometimes caught by hand. If tracked, and if you can see him--the most difficult part--you can put your hand on him. Now and then a corncrake is caught in the same way by hand while sitting on her nest on the ground. It is not, however, as easy as it reads. Walking through the grass, and thinking of the dew and the beautiful morning sunshine, I scarcely noticed the quantity of cuckoo-flowers, or cardamine, till presently it occurred to me that it was very late in the season for cuckoo-flowers and stooping I picked one, and in the act saw it was an orchis--the early purple. The meadow was coloured, or rather tinted, with the abundance of the orchis, palest of pale pink, dotted with red, the small narrow leaves sometimes with black spots. They grew in the pasture everywhere, from the river's side in the deep valley to the top of the hill by the wood. As soon as the surface of the river was in sight I stood and watched, but no ripple or ring of wavelets appeared; the trout were not feeding. The water was so low that the river consisted of a series of pools, connected by rapids descending over ledges of stones and rocky fragments. Illumined to the very bottom, every trout was visible, even those under the roots of trees and the hollow of the bank. A cast with the fly there was useless; the line would be seen; there was no ripple to hide it. As the trout, too, were in the pools, it might be concluded that those worth taking had fed, and only the lesser fish would be found in the eddies, where they are permitted by the larger fish to feed after they have finished. Experience and reason were all against the attempt, yet so delightful is the mere motion and delicate touch of the fly-line on the water that I could not but let myself enjoy that at least. The slender lancewood rod swayed, the line swished through the air, and the fly dropped a few inches too high up the rapid among the stones--I had meant it to fall farther across in the dark backwater at the foot of the fall. The swift rush of the current carried the fly instantly downwards, but not so quick as to escape a troutlet; he took it, and was landed immediately. But to destroy these under-sized fish was not sport, and as at that moment a water-colley passed I determined to let the trout alone, and observe his ways. Colley means a blackbird; water-colley, the water-blackbird or water-ousel--called the dipper in the North. In districts where the bird is seldom seen it is occasionally shot and preserved as a white blackbird. But in flight and general appearance the water-colley is almost exactly like a starling with a white neck. His colour is not black or brown--it is a rusty, undecided brown, at a distance something the colour of a young starling, and he flies in a straight line, and yet clumsily, as a young starling does. His very cry, too, sounds immature, pettish, and unfinished, as if from a throat not capable of a full note. There are usually two together, and they pass and re-pass all day as you fish, but if followed are not to be observed without care. I came on the colley too suddenly the first time, at a bend of the river; he was beneath the bank towards me, and flew out from under my feet, so that I did not see him till he was on the wing. Away he flew with a call like a young bird just tumbled out of its nest, following the curves of the stream. Presently I saw him through an alder bush which hid me; he was perched on a root of alder under the opposite bank. Worn away by the stream the dissolved earth had left the roots exposed, the colley was on one of them; in a moment he stepped on to the shore under the hollow, and was hidden behind the roots under a moss-grown stole. When he came out he saw me, and stopped feeding. He bobbed himself up and down as he perched on the root in the oddest manner, bending his legs so that his body almost touched his perch, and rising again quickly, this repeated in quick succession as if curtsying. This motion with him is a sign of uncertainty--it shows suspicion; after he had bobbed to me ten times, off he went. I found him next on a stone in the middle of the river; it stood up above the surface of a rapid connecting two pools. Like the trout, the colley always feeds at the rapids, and flies as they swim, from fall to fall. He was bobbing up and down, his legs bent, and his rusty brown body went up and down, but as I was hidden by a hedge he pained confidence, suspended his curtsying, and began to feed. First he looked all round the stone, and then stepped to another similar island in the midst of the rushing water, pushing his head over the edge into it. Next he stepped into the current, which, though shallow, looked strong enough to sweep him away. The water checked against him rose to the white mark on his breast. He waded up the rapid, every now and then thrusting his head completely under the water; sometimes he was up to his neck, sometimes not so deep; now and then getting on a stone, searching right and left as he climbed the cascade. The eddying water shot by his slender legs, but he moved against it easily, and soon ascended the waterfall. At the summit a second colley flew past, and he rose and accompanied his friend. Upon a ledge of rock I saw him once more, but there was no hedge to hide me, and he would not feed; he stood and curtsied, and at the moment of bobbing let his wings too partly down, his tail drooping at the same time. Calling in an injured tone, as if much annoyed, he flew, swept round the meadow, and so to the river behind me. His friend followed. On reaching the river at a safe distance down, he skimmed along the surface like a kingfisher. They find abundance of insect life among the stones at the falls, and everywhere in shallow water. Some accuse them of taking the ova of trout, and they are shot at trout nurseries; but it is doubtful if they are really guilty, nor can they do any appreciable injury in an open stream, not being in sufficient numbers. It is the birds and other creatures peculiar to the water that render fly-fishing so pleasant; were they all destroyed, and nothing left but the mere fish, one might as well stand and fish in a stone cattle-trough. I hope all true lovers of sport will assist in preserving rather than in killing them. NOTES ON LANDSCAPE PAINTING I The earth has a way of absorbing things that are placed upon it, of drawing from them their stiff individuality of newness, and throwing over them something of her own antiquity. As the furrow smooths and brightens the share, as the mist eats away the sharpness of the iron angles, so, in a larger manner, the machines sent forth to conquer the soil are conquered by it, become a part of it, and as natural as the old, old scythe and reaping-hook. Thus already the new agriculture has grown hoar. The oldest of the modern implements is the threshing-machine, which is historic, for it was once the cause of rural war. There are yeomanry men still living who remember how they rode about at night after the rioters, guided by the blazing bonfires kindled to burn the new-fangled things. Much blood--of John Barleycorn--was spilt in that campaign; and there is many a farmer yet hearty who recollects the ale-barrels being rolled up into the rickyards and there broached in cans and buckets, that the rebels, propitiated with plentiful liquor, might forbear to set fire to the ricks or sack the homestead. Such memories read strange to the present generation, proving thereby that the threshing-machine has already grown old. It is so accepted that the fields would seem to lack something if it were absent. It is as natural as the ricks: things grow old so soon in the fields. On the fitful autumn breeze, with brown leaves whirling and grey grass rustling in the hedges, the hum of the fly-wheel sounds afar, travelling through the mist which hides the hills. Sometimes the ricks are in the open stubble, up the Down side, where the wind comes in a long, strong rush, like a tide, carrying away the smoke from the funnel in a sweeping trail; while the brown canvas, stretched as a screen, flaps and tears, and the folk at work can scarce hear each other speak, any more than you can by the side of the sea. Vast atmospheric curtains--what else can you call them?--roll away, opening a view of the stage of hills a moment, and, closing again, reach from heaven to earth around. The dark sky thickens and lowers as if it were gathering thunder, as women glean wheatears in their laps. It is not thunder; it is as if the wind grew solid and hurled itself--as a man might throw out his clenched fist--at the hill. The inclined plane of the mist-clouds again reflects a grey light, and, as if swept up by the fierce gale, a beam of sunshine comes. You see it first long, as it is at an angle; then overhead it shortens, and again lengthens after it has passed, somewhat like the spoke of a wheel. In the second of its presence a red handkerchief a woman wears on the ricks stands out, the brass on the engine glows, the water in the butt gleams, men's faces brighten, the cart-horse's coat looks glossy, the straw a pleasant yellow. It is gone, and lights up the backs of the sheep yonder as it runs up the hill swifter than a hare. Swish! The north wind darkens the sky, and the fly-wheel moans in the gloom; the wood-pigeons go a mile a minute on the wind, hardly using their wings; the brown woods below huddle together, rounding their shoulders to the blast; a great air-shadow, not mist, a shadow of thickness in the air looms behind a tiled roof in the valley. The vast profound is full of the rushing air. These are days of autumn; but earlier than this, when the wheat that is now being threshed was ripe, the reaping-machine went round and round the field, beginning at the outside by the hedges. Red arms, not unlike a travelling windmill on a small scale, sweep the corn as it is cut and leave it spread on the ground. The bright red fans, the white jacket of the man driving, the brown and iron-grey horses, and yellow wheat are toned--melted together at their edges--with warm sunlight. The machine is lost in the corn, and nothing is visible but the colours, and the fact that it is the reaping, the time of harvest, dear to man these how many thousand years! There is nothing new in it; it is all old as the hills. The straw covers over the knives, the rims of the wheels sink into pimpernel, convolvulus, veronica; the dry earth powders them, and so all beneath is concealed. Above the sunlight (and once now and then the shadow of a tree) throws its mantle over, and, like the hand of an enchanter softly waving, surrounds it with a charm. So the cranks, and wheels, and knives, and mechanism do not exist--it was a machine in the workshop, but it is not a machine in the wheat-field. For the wheat-field you see is very, very old, and the air is of old time, and the shadow, the flowers, and the sunlight, and that which moves among them becomes of them. The solitary reaper alone in the great field goes round and round, the red fans striking beside him, alone with the sunlight, and the blue sky, and the distant hills; and he and his reaper are as much of the corn-field as the long-forgotten sickle or the reaping-hook. The sharp rattle of the mowing-machine disturbs the corncrake in the meadow. Crake! crake! for many a long day since the grass began to grow fast in April till the cowslips flowered, and white parsley flourished like a thicket, blue scabious came up, and yonder the apple trees drop their bloom. Crake! crake! nearly day and night; but now the rattle begins, and the bird must take refuge in the corn. Like the reaper, the mowing-machine is buried under the swathe it cuts, and flowers fall over it--broad ox-eye daisies and red sorrel. Upon the hedge June roses bloom; blackbirds whistle in the oaks; now and again come the soft hollow notes of the cuckoo. Angles and wheels, cranks and cogs, where are they? They are lost; it is not these we see, but the flowers and the pollen on the grass. There is an odour of new-made hay; there is the song of birds, and the trees are beautiful. As for the drill in spring-time, it is ancient indeed, and ancients follow it--aged men stepping after over the clods, and watching it as if it were a living thing, that the grains may fall each in its appointed place. Their faces, their gait, nay, the very planting of their heavy shoes' stamp on the earth, are full of the importance of this matter. On this the year depends, and the harvest, and all our lives, that the sowing be accomplished in good order, as is meet. Therefore they are in earnest, and do not turn aside to gaze at strangers, like those do who hoe, being of no account. This is a serious matter, needing men of days, little of speech, but long of experience. So the heavy drill, with its hanging rows of funnels, travels across the field well tended, and there is not one who notes the deep azure of the March sky above the elms. Still another step, tracing the seasons backwards, brings in the steam-plough. When the spotted arum leaves unfold on the bank, before the violets or the first celandine, while the "pussies" hang on the hazel, the engines roll into the field, pressing the earth into barred ruts. The massive wheels leave their imprint, the footsteps of steam, behind them. By the hedges they stand, one on either side, and they hold the field between them with their rope of iron. Like the claws of some prehistoric monster, the shares rout up the ground; the solid ground is helpless before them; they tear and rend it. One engine is under an oak, dark yet with leafless boughs, up through which the black smoke rises; the other overtops a low hedge, and is in full profile. By the panting, and the humming, and the clanking as the drum revolves, by the smoke hanging in the still air, by the trembling of the monster as it strains and tugs, by the sense of heat, and effort, and pent-up energy bubbling over in jets of steam that struggle through crevices somewhere, by the straightened rope and the jerking of the plough as it comes, you know how mighty is the power that thus in narrow space works its will upon the earth. Planted broadside, its four limbs--the massive wheels--hold the ground like a wrestler drawing to him the unwilling opponent. Humming, panting, trembling, with stretched but irresistible muscles, the iron creature conquers, and the plough approaches. All the field for the minute seems concentrated in this thing of power. There are acres and acres, scores of acres around, but they are surface only. This is the central spot: they are nothing, mere matter. This is force--Thor in another form. If you are near you cannot take your eyes off the sentient iron, the wrestler straining. But now the plough has come over, and the signal given reverses its way. The lazy monotonous clanking as the drum unwinds on this side, the rustling of the rope as it is dragged forth over the clods, the quiet rotation of the fly-wheel--these sounds let the excited thought down as the rotating fly-wheel works off the maddened steam. The combat over, you can look round. It is the February summer that comes, and lasts a week or so between the January frosts and the east winds that rush through the thorns. Some little green is even now visible along the mound where seed-leaves are springing up. The sun is warm, and the still air genial, the sky only dotted with a few white clouds. Wood-pigeons are busy in the elms, where the ivy is thick with ripe berries. There is a feeling of spring and of growth; in a day or two we shall find violets; and listen, how sweetly the larks are singing! Some chase each other, and then hover fluttering above the hedge. The stubble, whitened by exposure to the weather, looks lighter in the sunshine, and the distant view is softened by haze. A water-tank approaches, and the cart-horse steps in the pride of strength. The carter's lad goes to look at the engine and to wonder at the uses of the gauge. All the brazen parts gleam in the bright sun, and the driver presses some waste against the piston now it works slowly, till it shines like polished silver. The red glow within, as the furnace-door is opened, lights up the lad's studious face beneath like sunset. A few brown leaves yet cling to one bough of the oak, and the rooks come over cawing happily in the unwonted warmth. The low hum and the monotonous clanking, the rustling of the wire rope, give a sense of quiet. Let us wander along the hedge, and look for signs of spring. This is to-day. To-morrow, if we come, the engines are half hidden from afar by driving sleet and scattered snow-flakes fleeting aslant the field. Still sternly they labour in the cold and gloom. A third time you may find them, in September or bright October, with acorns dropping from the oaks, the distant sound of the gun, and perhaps a pheasant looking out from the corner. If the moon be full and bright they work on an hour or so by her light, and the vast shadows of the engines are thrown upon the stubble. II Among the meadows the buttercups in spring are as innumerable as ever and as pleasant to look upon. The petal of the buttercup has an enamel of gold; with the nail you may scrape it off, leaving still a yellow ground, but not reflecting the sunlight like the outer layer. From the centre the golden pollen covers the fingers with dust like that from the wing of a butterfly. In the bunches of grass and by the gateways the germander speedwell looks like tiny specks of blue stolen, like Prometheus' fire, from the summer sky. When the mowing-grass is ripe the heads of sorrel are so thick and close that at a little distance the surface seems as if sunset were always shining red upon it. From the spotted orchis leaves in April to the honeysuckle-clover in June, and the rose and the honeysuckle itself, the meadow has changed in nothing that delights the eye. The draining, indeed, has made it more comfortable to walk about on, and some of the rougher grasses have gone from the furrows, diminishing at the same time the number of cardamine flowers; but of these there are hundreds by the side of every tiny rivulet of water, and the aquatic grasses flourish in every ditch. The meadow-farmers, dairymen, have not grubbed many hedges--only a few, to enlarge the fields, too small before, by throwing two into one. So that hawthorn and blackthorn, ash and willow, with their varied hues of green in spring, briar and bramble, with blackberries and hips later on, are still there as in the old, old time. Bluebells, violets, cowslips--the same old favourite flowers--may be found on the mounds or sheltered near by. The meadow-farmers have dealt mercifully with the hedges, because they know that for shade in heat and shelter in storm the cattle resort to them. The hedges--yes, the hedges, the very synonym of Merry England--are yet there, and long may they remain. Without hedges England would not be England. Hedges, thick and high, and full of flowers, birds, and living creatures, of shade and flecks of sunshine dancing up and down the bark of the trees--I love their very thorns. You do not know how much there is in the hedges. We have still the woods, with here and there a forest, the beauty of the hills, and the charm of winding brooks. I never see roads, or horses, men, or anything when I get beside a brook. There is the grass, and the wheat, the clouds, the delicious sky, and the wind, and the sunlight which falls on the heart like a song. It is the same, the very same, only I think it is brighter and more lovely now than it was twenty years ago. Along the footpath we travel slowly; you cannot walk fast very long in a footpath; no matter how rapidly at first, you soon lessen your pace, and so country people always walk slowly. The stiles--how stupidly they are put together. For years and years every one who has passed them, as long as man can remember, has grumbled at them; yet there they are still, with the elms reaching high above, and cows gazing over--cows that look so powerful, but so peacefully yield the way. They are a better shape than the cattle of the ancient time, less lanky, and with fewer corners; the lines, to talk in yachtsman's language, are finer. Roan is a colour that contrasts well with meadows and hedges. The horses are finer, both cart-horse and nag. Approaching the farmsteads, there are hay-ricks, but there are fewer corn-ricks. Instead of the rows on rows, like the conical huts of a savage town, there are but a few, sometimes none. So many are built in the fields and threshed there "to rights," as the bailiff would say. It is not needful to have them near home or keep them, now the threshing-machine has stayed the flail and emptied the barns. Perhaps these are the only two losses to those who look at things and mete them with the eye--the corn-ricks and the barns. The corn-ricks were very characteristic, but even now you may see plenty if you look directly after harvest. The barns are going by degrees, passing out of the life of farming; let us hope that some of them will be converted into silos, and so saved. At the farmsteads themselves there are considerations for and against. On the one hand, the house and the garden is much tidier, less uncouth; there are flowers, such as geraniums, standard roses, those that are favourites in towns; and the unsightly and unhealthy middens and pools of muddy water have disappeared from beside the gates. But the old flowers and herbs are gone, or linger neglected in corners, and somehow the gentle touch of time has been effaced. The house has got a good deal away from farming. It is on the farm, but disconnected. It is a residence, not a farmhouse. Then you must consider that it is more healthy, sweeter, and better for those who live in it. From a little distance the old effect is obtainable. One thing only I must protest against, and that is the replacing of tiles with slates. The old red tiles of the farmhouses are as natural as leaves; they harmonise with the trees and the hedges, the grass, the wheat, and the ricks. But slates are wrong. In new houses, even farmhouses, it does not matter so much; the owners cannot be found fault with for using the advantages of modern times. On old houses where tiles were once, to put slates is an offence, nothing less. Every one who passes exclaims against it. Tiles tone down and become at home; they nestle together, and look as if you could be happily drowsy and slumber under them. They are to a house what leaves are to a tree, and leaves turn reddish or brown in the autumn. Upon the whole, with the exception of the slates--the hateful slates--the farmsteads are improved, for they have lost a great deal that was uncouth and even repulsive, which was slurred over in old pictures or omitted, but which was there. The new cottages are ugly with all their ornamentation; their false gables, impossible porches, absurd windows, are distinctly repellent. They are an improvement in a sanitary sense, and we are all glad of that, but we cannot like the buildings. They are of no style or time; only one thing is certain about them--they are _not_ English. Fortunately there are plenty of old cottages, hundreds of them (they show little or no sign of disappearing), and these can be chosen instead. The villages are to outward appearance much as they used to be, but the people are very different. In manners, conversation, and general tone there is a great change. It is, indeed, the people who have altered more than the surface of the country. Hard as the farmer may work, and plough and sow with engine and drill, the surface of the land does not much vary; but the farmer himself and the farmer's man are quite another race to what they were. Perhaps it was from this fact that the impression grew up that modern agriculture has polished away all the distinctive characteristics of the country. But it has not done so any more than it has removed the hills. The truth is, as I have endeavoured to explain, innovations so soon become old in the fields. The ancient earth covers them with her own hoar antiquity, and their newness disappears. They have already become so much a part of the life of the country that it seems as if they had always been there, so easily do they fit in, so easily does the eye accept them. Intrinsically there is nothing used in modern agriculture less symmetrical than what was previously employed. The flails were the simplest of instruments, and were always seen with the same accompaniment--the interior of a barn. The threshing-machine is certainly not less interesting; it works in the open air, often with fine scenic surroundings, and the number of people with it impart vivacity. In reaping with the reaping-hook there were more men in the wheat, but the reaping-machine is not without colour. Scythes are not at all pleasant things; the mowing-machine is at least no worse. As for the steam-plough, it is very interesting to watch. All these fit in with trees and hedges, fields and woods, as well, and in some cases in a more striking manner than the old instruments. The surface of the ground presents more varied colours even than before, and the sunlight produces rich effects. Nor have all the ancient aspects disappeared as supposed--quite the reverse. In the next field to the steam-plough the old ploughs drawn by horses may be seen at work, and barns still stand, and the old houses. In hill districts oxen are yet yoked to the plough, the scythe and reaping-hook are often seen at work, and, in short, the old and the new so shade and blend together that you can hardly say where one begins and the other ends. That there are many, very many things concerning agriculture and country life whose disappearance is to be regretted I have often pointed out, and having done so, I feel that I can with the more strength affirm that in its natural beauty the country is as lovely now as ever. It is, I venture to think, a mistake on the part of some who depict country scenes on canvas that they omit these modern aspects, doubtless under the impression that to admit them would impair the pastoral scene intended to be conveyed. So many pictures and so many illustrations seem to proceed upon the assumption that steam-plough and reaping-machine do not exist, that the landscape contains nothing but what it did a hundred years ago. These sketches are often beautiful, but they lack the force of truth and reality. Every one who has been fifty miles into the country, if only by rail, knows while looking at them that they are not real. You feel that there is something wanting, you do not know what. That something is the hard, perhaps angular fact which at once makes the sky above it appear likewise a fact. Why omit fifty years from the picture? That is what it usually means--fifty years left out; and somehow we feel as we gaze that these fields and these skies are not of our day. The actual fields, the actual machines, the actual men and women (how differently dressed to the conventional pictorial costumes!) would prepare the mind to see and appreciate the colouring, the design, the beauty--what, for lack of a better expression, may be called the soul of the picture--far more than forgotten, and nowadays even impossible accessories. For our sympathy is not with them, but with the things of our own time. VILLAGE MINERS "Right so, the hunter takes his pony which has been trained for the purpose, and stalks the deer behind him; the pony feeds towards the herd, so that they do not mind his approach, and when within a hundred yards, the hunter kneels down in the grass and fixes his iron rest or fork in the ground. He rests his Winchester rifle in the fork, and aims under the pony (which stands quite still) at his game. He generally kills one dead at the first shot, and wounds two or three more, firing rapidly after the first discharge so as to get as many shots as possible before the herd is out of range." So writes a friend in the wilds of Texas, adding that the hides fetch a few dollars. "Right so, departed Sir Launcelot."... "Right so, Sir Launcelot, his father, dressed his spear."... "Right so, he heard a voice that said;"--so runs the phrase in the "Mort d'Arthur," that ancient history of the Round Table, which was published nearly four hundred years ago. The coincidence of phrase indicates some resemblance in the circumstances, though so wide apart in time and distance. In England, in those old days, men lived in the woods and forests--out-of-doors--and were occupied with manual works. They had no opportunities of polishing their discourse, or their literary compositions. At this hour, in remote parts of the great continent of America, the pioneers of modern civilisation may be said to live amid medieval surroundings. The vast forests and endless prairies give a romance to common things. Sometimes pathos and sometimes humour arises in the log-cabin, and when the history of these simple but deeply human incidents comes to be told in this country, we are moved by the strange piquancy of event and language. From the new sounds and scenes, these Anglo-Saxons hewing a way through pine and hemlock now, as their ancestors hewed a way into England, have added fresh words and phrases to our common tongue. These words are not slang, they are pure primeval language. They express the act, or the scene, or the circumstance, as exactly as if it was painted in sound. For instance, the word "crack" expresses the noise of a rifle; say "crack," and you have the very sound; say "detonation," and it gives no ear-picture at all. Such a word is "ker-chunk." Imagine a huge log of timber falling from rock to rock, or a wounded opossum out of a tree, the word expresses the sound. There are scores of such examples, and it is these pure primitive words which put so much force into the narratives of American pathos and humour. Now, the dwellers in our own villages and country places in their way make use of just such expressions, that is, of words which afford the ear a picture of the act or circumstance, hieroglyphs of sound, and often, both in language and character, exhibit a close parallelism with the Californian miners. Country people say "fall" for autumn; "fall" is the usual American term for that season, and fall is most appropriate for the downward curve of time, the descent of the leaf. A slender slip of womanhood in the undeveloped period is alluded to in the villages as a "slickit" of a girl. "Slickit" means thin, slender, a piece that might be whittled off a stick with a knife, not a shaving, for a shaving curls, but a "slickit," a long thin slice. If any one be carving awkwardly with the left wrist doubled under, the right arm angularly extended, and the knife sawing at a joint, our village miners and country Californians call it "cack-" or "cag-handed." Cag-handed is worse than back-handed; it means awkward, twisted, and clumsy. You may see many a cag-handed person hacking at a fowl. Hamlet folk are very apt to look a gift horse in the mouth, and if any one should receive a present not so large as expected, it would be contemptuously described as a "footy" little thing. "Footy" pronounced with a sneering expression of countenance conveys a sense of despicableness, even to those who do not know its exact definition, which may be taken as mean. Suppose a bunch of ripe nuts high up and almost out of reach; by dint of pressing into the bushes, pulling at the bough, and straining on tiptoe, you may succeed in "scraambing" it down. "Scraambing," or "scraambed," with a long accent on the aa, indicates the action of stretching and pulling downwards. Though somewhat similar in sound, it has no affinity with scramble; people scramble for things which have been thrown on the ground. In getting through hedges the thorns are apt to "limm" one's clothes, tearing a jagged hole in the coat. Country children are always "limming" their clothes to pieces; "limm," or "limb," expresses a ragged tear. Recently, fashion set the example of ladies having their hair shorn as short as men. It is quite common to see young ladies, the backs of whose heads are polled, all the glory of hair gone, no plait, no twist, but all cut close and somewhat rough. If a village Californian were to see this he would say, "they got their hair hogged off." "Hogged" means cut off short so as to stand up like bristles. Ponies often have hogs' manes; all the horses in the Grecian sculpture have their manes hogged. In bitter winter weather the servants in the dairies who have much to do with buckets of water, and spend the morning in splashing--for dairies need much of that kind of thing--sometimes find that the drops have frozen as they walk, and discover that their aprons are fringed with "daglets," _i.e._ icicles. Thatched roofs are always hung with "daglets" in frost; thatch holds a certain amount of moisture, as of mist, and this drips during the day and so forms stalactites of ice, often a foot or more in length. "Clout" is a "dictionary word," a knock on the head, but it is pronounced differently here; they say a "clue" in the head. Stuttering and stammering each express well-known conditions of speech, but there is another not recognised in dictionary language. If a person has been made a butt of, laughed at, joked, and tormented till he hesitates and fumbles as it were with his words, he is said to be in a state of "hacka." "Hacka" is to have to think a minute before he can say what he wants to. "Simmily" is a word of little interest, being evidently a mere provincialism and distortion of "seemingly," as "summat" of "something," or "somewhat," indifferently. Occasionally a person is seized with a giggling fit, laughs on the least, or without any, provocation--a rather idiotic state--which he is quite conscious of but cannot stop. Presently some one will ask, "Have you found a wicker's nest?" which is a biting sarcasm, though the precise meaning seems uncertain, unless it bears some relation to mare's nest. Mares wicker, so do goats; giggling is wickering. The first work a boy does is to go out with a clapper, or his own strong voice, to scare birds from the corn all day; this we call bird-keeping, but the lads themselves, with an appreciation of the other side of the case, call it bird-starving. Forage is often used in a general sense of food, or in the more particular sense of green food, as clover, or vetches. Fodder, on the other hand, indicates dry food, such as hay; the labourers go twice a day in winter to fodder the cattle, that is, to carry them their hay. Many of these labourers before they start out to work, in their own words, "fodder" their boots. Some fine soft hay is pushed into the boots, forming a species of sock. Should either of them have a clumsy pair, they say his boots are like a seed-lip, which is a vessel like a basket used in sowing corn, and would be a very loose fit. They have not yet forgotten the ancient superstition about Easter Sunday, and the girls will not go out without a new ribbon at least; they must have something new on that day, if the merest trifle. The backwoodsmen have found out many ways of curing cuts, wounds, bruises and injuries, rough methods, but effectual, and use the herbs and leaves much as their English forefathers did a century ago. For the most part in villages the knowledge and use of herbs has died out, and there are not many who resort to them. Elder-flower ointment, however, keeps its ground, and is, I think, still made for sale in the shops of towns. But the true country elder-flower ointment contains a little piece of adder's-tongue fern, which is believed to confer magical virtue. So curious a plant may naturally have had a mysterious value attached to it in old times. It is the presence of this touch of home-lore in the recipe which makes the product so different from the "ointment of the apothecary," manufactured by scale and weight and prosaic rule. Upon some roofs the houseleek still grows, though it is now often torn away as injurious. Where it grows it is usually on outhouses attached to the main building, sloping lean-tos. It does not present so glowing an appearance as the stonecrop, which now and then flourishes on houses, and looks like a brilliant golden cushion against the red tiles. The houseleek, however, is a singular plant, worthy of examination; it has an old-world look, as if it had survived beyond its date into the nineteenth century. It hides in odd places and gables like a relic of witchcraft, and a black cat and an aged woman with a crutch-handled stick would be its appropriate owner. The houseleek is still used for the cure of wounds and cuts. A leaf--the leaves are rather like portions of the plant than mere leaves--is bruised to pulp, and the juice and some of the pulp mixed with cream. They say it is efficacious. They call it "silgreen." In old English singreen means evergreen. Silgreen and singreen seem close congeners. Possibly sil or sin may be translated "through" as much as "ever," for the leaf of the plant is thick, and green all through, if broken like a tough cake. I think I would rather use it than the tobacco juice which the mowers and reapers are now so fond of applying to the cuts they frequently get. They appear to have quite forsaken the ancient herbal remedies, as the sickle-herb, knotted figwort, and so on. Tobacco juice does not seem a nice thing for a bleeding wound; probably it gets well rather in spite of it than because of it. If any one wanted a tonic in old farmhouses, it used to be the custom, and till quite lately, to put a nail in sherry, making an iron wine, which was believed to be very restorative. Now, one of the recent additions to the wine merchants' lists is a sherry from Australia, Tintara, which is recommended on account of its having been extracted from grapes growing on an ironstone soil. So the old things come up again in another form. There are scores of iron tonics of various kinds sold in the shops; possibly the nail in sherry was almost as good. Those who did not care to purchase sherry, put their nail in cider. A few odd names of plants may yet be heard among the labourers, such as "loving-andrews" for the blue meadow geranium; "loggerums" for the hard knapweed, and also for the scabious; "Saturday night's pepper" for the spurge, which grows wild in gardens; and there is a weed called "good-neighbour," but as to which it is I am ignorant. The spotted-leaf orchis flowers, which grow in moist and shady meads, lifting their purplish heads among the early spring grass, are called by the children "gran'fer goslings." To express extreme lack--as of money--they will say their purses are as bare as a toad is of feathers. In these days it is the fashion to praise mattresses and to depreciate the feather-bed. Nothing so healthy as a mattress, nothing so good in every way. Mattresses are certainly cheaper, and there it ends. I maintain that no modern invention approaches the feather-bed. People try to persuade me to eat the coarsest part of flour--actually the rejected part--and to sleep on a mattress; that is to say, to go back about twenty thousand years in civilisation. But I decline. Having some acquaintance with wheat, I prefer the fine white flour, which is the very finest of all the products of the earth; having slept on all sorts of beds, sitting on a pole, lying on turf leaning against a tree, and so forth, no one will ever persuade me that any couch is equal to a feather-bed. But should any desire a yet cheaper mattress than those advertised, I can put them in the way to obtain it. Among my hamlet Californians it is not unusual to find beds in use stuffed with the "hucks" of oats, _i.e._ the chaff. Like the backwoodsmen, they have to make shift with what they can get. Their ancestors steamed their arrows so as to soften the wood, when it was bound to a rigid rod and hung up in the chimney to dry perfectly straight. The modern cottager takes a stout stick and boils it in the pot till it becomes flexible. He then bends it into the shape of a hook, ties it with string in that curve, and suspends it in his chimney corner to dry crooked. This crooked stick is the fagging hook used to pull the wheat towards the reaper with the left hand, while he cuts it with the reap-hook in the right. Suppose some one wavers and cannot make up his mind. Now he will do this and now he will do that, uncertain and unstable, putting his hand to the plough and removing it again, my Californian at home would call him "wivel-minded." "Wivelly" means undecided, wavering, not to be depended on. It sounds like it. If the labourer gets his clothes soaked, he says they are "sobbled." The sound of boots or dress saturated with rain very nearly approximates to sobbled. But "gaamze" is the queerest word, perhaps, of all--it is to smear as with grease. Beans are said to be "cherky," which means dry. Doubtless the obese old gentleman in Boccaccio who was cured of his pains--the result of luxurious living--by a diet which forced him to devour beans for very hunger, did think them dry and cherky. They have come up again now in the shape of lentils, which are nothing but beans. It is not generally known that Boccaccio was the inventor of the bean cure. Cat's claws are notoriously apt to scratch. Should a savage cat tear out a piece of flesh from the hand, she is said to "dawk" it out. "Dawk" expresses a ferocious dab and tear combined. A sharp iron nail unseen might "dawk" the skin off an unwary hand. In ancient days when women quarrelled and fought, they are said to have "dawked" fragments from each other's faces with their finger-nails. Such incidents are now obsolete. It has often been pointed out that many names of places are reduplications. New layers of population, Saxon, Dane, or Norman, added their words with the same meaning to the former term. There is a hill called "Up-at-a-Peak." "Up" itself signifies high, as in the endless examples in which it forms the first syllable. "Peak," of course, is point. This is a modern reduplication, not an archaeological one. If any one hacks and haws in speaking, it is called "hum-dawing." Some very prominent persons of the present day are much given to "hum-dawing," which is often a species of conversational hedging. Are "horse-stepple" and "stabbling" purely provincial, or known in towns? "Stepple" is the mark or step of a horse; "stabbling" is poaching up the turf or ground from continual movement of feet, whether human, equine, or otherwise. The ground near gateways in fields is often "stabbled" to such a degree in wet weather as to appear impassable. A piece of wood falling into water, gradually absorbs the liquid into its pores, and swells. The same thing happens in wet weather to gates and even doors; the wood swells, so that if they fitted at all tightly before, they can then scarcely be opened. Anything that swells in this manner by absorption is said to "plim." A sponge does not "plim"; it is not apparently larger when full of water than previously, and it is still limp. To "plim" up implies a certain amount of enlargement, and consequent tightness or firmness. Snow-flakes are called "blossoms." The word snow-flake is unknown. A big baby is always a thing to be proud of, and you may hear an enthusiastic aunt describing the weight and lumpiness of the youngster, and winding up with the declaration, "He's a regular nitch." A chump of wood, short, thick, and heavy, is said to be a "nitch," but it seems gone out of use a good deal for general weights, and to be chiefly used in speaking of infants. There is a word of somewhat similar sound common among the fishermen of the south coast. Towards the stern of a fishing smack there is a stout upright post with a fork at the top, into which fork the mast is lowered while they are engaged with the nets at sea. It is called the "mitch," or "match," but though I mention it as similar in sound, I do not think it has any other affinity. Of old time, crab-apples were usually planted in or near rickyards or elsewhere close to farmhouses. The custom is now gone out; no crab-apples are planted, and so in course of years there will be but few. Crab-apple is not nearly so plentiful as anciently, either in hedges or enclosures. The juice of the crab-apple, varges, used to be valued as a cure for sprains. The present generation can hardly understand that there was a time when matches were not known. To such a period must be traced the expression still common in out-of-the-way places, of a "handful of fire." A cottager who found her fire out would go to a neighbour and bring home some live embers to light up again. When the fire chances to be nearly out, the expression is still heard both in cottages and farmhouses, "There is hardly a handful of fire." Such a mere handful is of course easily "douted." An extinguisher "douts" a candle; the heel of a boot "douts" a match thrown down. But the exact definition of "dout" is to smother, or extinguish by beating. In the days when wood fires were universal, as the wood burned, quantities of a fine white powder or ash collected, which at intervals, when the servant cleaned the hearth, was swept up into a corner. At night, if any embers remained glowing, a few shovelfuls of this heap of white ash were thrown over them before retiring, and so the fire was "douted." To smother with such ashes precisely conveys the meaning of "dout." Incipient fires in grass, straw, or other material, are often beaten out as with bushes; this too is "douting." Stick your heels in the ground, arch your spine, and drag with all your might at a rope, and then you would be said to "scaut." Horses going uphill, or straining to draw a heavily laden waggon through a mud hole, "scaut" and tug. At football there is a good deal of "scauting." The axle of a wheelbarrow revolving without grease, and causing an ear-piercing sound, is said to be giving forth a "scrupeting" noise. What can be more explicit, and at the same time so aggravating, as to be told that you are a "mix-muddle"? A person who mixes up his commissions may feel a little abashed. A person who muddles his affairs may not be altogether proud of his achievements. But to be a mix-muddle, to both mix and muddle, to morally fumble without tact, and display a totally imbecile wandering; I shall get mixed myself if I try to describe such a state. Mixed in this sense is American too. Take a duster, dexterously swing it, and remove a fleck of dust from a table or books, and you will understand the verb to "flirk," which is nearly the same as to flick. "Pansherds" are "potsherds." Here is a country recipe for discovering whether a lover is faithful or not. Take a laurel leaf, scratch his name on it, or the initials, and put it in the bosom of the dress. If it turns brown, he is true; if not, he'll deceive you. The character of a girl, according to the following couplets, is to be learned from the colour of her eyes:-- "Brown eyes, beauty, Do your mother's duty. Blue eyes--pick-a-pie, Lie a-bed and tell a lie. Grey eyes--greediness, Gobble all the world up." The interpretation is, that brown eyes indicate a gentle and dutiful disposition. Blue eyes show three guilty tendencies--to pick-a-pie, that is, to steal; to lie a-bed, that is, to be idle; and to tell a lie. As for grey eyes, their selfish greediness and ambition could not be contented with less than the whole world. No one but a woman could have composed this scandal on the sex. Sometimes the green lanes are crossed by gates, over which the trees in the hedges each side form a leafy arch. On the top bar of such a gate, rustic lovers often write love messages to their ladies, with a fragment of chalk. Unable from some cause or other to keep the appointed rendezvous, they leave a few explanatory words in conspicuous white letters, so that the gate answers the same purpose as the correspondence column in the daily papers. When a gate is not available, they thrust a stick in the ground near the footpath, split the upper end, and place a piece of paper in it with the message. The hamlet forge is not yet quite extinct, and the blacksmith's hammer sounds among the oaks. He frequently has to join two pieces of iron together, say to lengthen a rod. He places both ends in the fire, heats them to a certain point, and then presses the one against the other. By this simple means of touching they unite, the metal becomes one almost like a chemical union, and so complete is it, that, with a little polishing to remove the marks of fire, the join is not perceptible to an ordinary eye. This is the most perfect way of joining metal, and when accomplished, the pieces are said to be "butt-shut." The word has passed from the forge into conversation, and the expression is often heard, "That won't butt-shut." If any one be telling a tale, or giving an account of something of which his hearers are incredulous, they say it will not butt-shut--one part of the story will not agree and dovetail with the rest; there is a break in the continuity of the evidence, which does not unite and make one rod. Such a term is true miners' language. Indeed, the American backwoodsmen, miners, and so on, are really only English farmers and labourers transplanted to a freer and larger life. MIND UNDER WATER The thud, thud of a horse's hoof does not alarm fish. Basking in the sun under the bank, a jack or pike lying close to the surface of the water will remain unmoved, however heavy the sound may be. The vibrations reach the fish in several ways. There is what we should ourselves call the noise as conveyed by the air, and which in the case of a jack actually at the surface may be supposed to reach him direct. Next there is the vibration passing through the water, which is usually pronounced to be a good medium. Lastly, there is the bodily movement of the substance of the water. When the bank is hard and dry this latter amounts only to a slight shaking, but it frequently happens that the side of a brook or pond is soft, and "gives" under a heavy weight. Sometimes the edge is even pushed into the water, and the brook in a manner squeezed. You can see this when cattle walk by the margin the grassy edge is pushed out, and in a minute way they may be said to contract the stream. It is in too small a degree to have the least apparent effect upon the water, but it is different with the sense of hearing, which is so delicate that the bodily movement thus caused may be reasonably believed to be very audible indeed to the jack. The wire fences which are now so much used round shrubberies and across parks give a very good illustration of the conveyance of sound. Strung tight by a spanner, the strands of twisted wire resemble a stringed instrument. If you place your hand on one of the wires and get a friend to strike it with his stick, say, thirty or forty yards away, you will distinctly feel it vibrate. If the ear is held close enough you will hear it, vibration and sound being practically convertible terms. To the basking jack three such wires extend, and when the cart-horse in the meadow puts down his heavy hoof he strikes them all at once. Yet, though fish are so sensitive to sound, the jack is not in the least alarmed, and there can be little doubt that he knows what it is. A whole herd of cattle feeding and walking about does not disturb him, but if the light step--light in comparison--of a man approach, away he goes. Poachers, therefore, unable to disguise their footsteps, endeavour to conceal them, and by moving slowly to avoid vibrating the earth, and through it the water. In poaching, the intelligence of the man is backed against the intelligence of the fish or animal, and the poacher tries to get himself into the ways of the creature he means to snare. That is what really takes place as seen by us as lookers-on; to the poacher himself, in nine out of ten cases, it is merely an acquired knack learned from watching others, and improved by practice. But to us, as lookers-on, this is what occurs: the man fits himself to the ways of the creature, and for the time it becomes a struggle between them. It is the same with the Red Indians, and the white trappers and hunters in wild regions, who depend much more on their knowledge of the ways and habits of the fur-bearing animals than upon their skill with the rifle. A man may be an excellent shot with gun or rifle, and yet be quite incapable of coping on comparatively equal terms with wild creatures. He is a sportsman, depending on skill, quick sight, and ready hand--not a hunter. Perhaps the nearest approach to it in legitimate, English sport is in fly-fishing and salmon fishing, when the sportsman relies upon his own unassisted efforts. Deer-stalking, where the sportsman has to reckon on the wind, and its curious twists and turns in valleys and round rocks, would be a very near approach to it did the stalker stalk alone. But all this work is usually done for him by an attendant, a native Highlander; and this man really does pit his intelligence against that of the stag. The Highlander actually is a Red Indian, or hunter, and in this sense struggles with the wild animal. The poacher is the hunter on illegitimate ground, and with arts which it has been mutually agreed shall not be employed. Considered in this sense it is interesting to observe to what extent the intelligence even of a fish reaches--and I think upon reflection it will be found that the fish is as clever as any creature could be in its position. I deny altogether that the cold-blooded fish--looked on with contempt so far as its intellectual powers are concerned--is stupid, or slow to learn. On the contrary, fish are remarkably quick, not only under natural conditions, but quick at accommodating themselves to altered circumstances which they could not foresee, and the knowledge how to meet which could not have been inherited. The basking jack is not alarmed at the cart-horse's hoofs, but remains quiet, let them come down with ever so heavy a thud. He has observed that these vibrations never cause him any injury. He hears them at all periods of the day and night, often with long intervals of silence and with every possible variation. Never once has the sound been followed by injury or by anything to disturb his peace. So the rooks have observed that passing trains are harmless, and will perch on the telegraph wires or poles over the steam of the roaring locomotive. Observation has given them confidence. Thunder of wheels and immense weight in motion, the open furnace and glaring light, the faces at the long tier of windows--all these terrors do not ruffle a feather. A little boy with a wooden clapper can set a flock in retreat immediately. Now the rooks could not have acquired this confidence in the course of innumerable generations; it is not hereditary; it is purely what we understand by intelligence. Why are the rooks afraid of the little boy with the clapper? Because they have noticed his hostile intent. Why is the basking jack off the instant he hears the light step of a man? He has observed that after this step there have often followed attempts to injure him; a stone has been flung at him, a long pole thrust into the water; he has been shot at, or felt the pinch of a wire. He remembers this, and does not wait for the attempt to be repeated, but puts himself into safety. If he did not realise that it was a man--and a possible enemy--he would not trouble. The object consequently of the tricks of the poacher is to obliterate himself. If you can contrive to so move, and to so conduct yourself that the fish shall not recognise you as his enemy, you can do much as you please with him, and in varying degrees it is the same with animals. Think a moment by what tokens a fish recognises a man. First, his light, and, compared with other animals, brisk step--a two-step instead of a four-step, remember; two feet, not four hoofs. There is a difference at once in the rhythm of the noise. Four hoofs can by no possibility produce the same sound, or succession of sounds, as is made even by four feet--that is, by two men. The beats are not the same. Secondly, by his motions, and especially the brisk motions of the arms. Thirdly, by this briskness itself; for most animals, except man, move with a slow motion--paradox as it may seem--even when they are going along fast. With them it is usually repose in action. Fourthly, and this is rather curious--experience seems to show that fish, and animals and birds certainly, recognise man by his hat or cap, to which they have a species of superstitious dislike. Hats are generally of a different hue to the rest of the suit, for one thing; and it was noted, a century ago, that wild creatures have a particular objection to a black hat. A covering to the head at all is so Opposite to their own ideas that it arouses suspicion, for we must remember that animals look on our clothes as our skin. To have a black skin over the hair of the head is somewhat odd. By all these signs a fish knows a man immediately, and as certainly as any creature moving on land would know him. There is no instinctive or hereditary fear of man at all--it is acquired by observation (which a thousand facts demonstrate); so that we are quite justified in believing that a fish really does notice some or all of these attributes of its enemy. What the poacher or wild hunter has to do is to conceal these attributes. To hide the two-step, he walks as slowly as possible, not putting the foot down hard, but feeling the ground first, and gradually pressing it. In this way progress may be made without vibration. The earth is not shaken, and does not communicate the sound to the water. This will bring him to the verge of the place where the fish is basking. Very probably not only fish, but animals and some birds hear as much by the vibration of the earth as by the sound travelling in the atmosphere, and depend as much upon their immediate perception of the slightest tremor of the earth as upon recognition by the ear in the manner familiar to ourselves. When rabbits, for instance, are out feeding in the grass, it is often possible to get quite close to them by walking in this way, extremely slowly, and carefully placing the foot by slow degrees upon the ground. The earth is then merely pressed, and not stepped upon at all, so that there is no jar. By doing this I have often moved up within gunshot of rabbits without the least aid from cover. Once now and then I have walked across a field straight at them. Something, however, depends on the direction of the wind, for then the question of scent comes in. To some degree it is the same with hares. It is certainly the case with birds, as wood-pigeons, a flock of them, will remain feeding only just the other side of the hedge; but, if you stamp the earth, will rise instantly. So will rooks, though they will not fly far if you are not armed. Partridges certainly secure themselves by their attention to the faint tremor of the ground. Pheasants do so too, and make off, running through the underwood long before any one is in sight. The most sensitive are landrails, and it is difficult to get near them, for this reason. Though the mowing-grass must conceal an approaching person from them as it conceals them from him, these birds change their positions, no matter how quietly he walks. Let him be as cunning as he will, and think to cut off corners and cross the land-rail's retreat, the bird baffles him nine times in ten. That it is advised of the direction the pursuer takes by the vibration of the surface is at least probable. Other birds sit, and hope to escape by remaining still, till they detect the tremor coming direct towards them, when they rise. Rain and dry weather change the susceptibility of the surface to vibrate, and may sometimes in part account for the wildness or apparent tameness of birds and animals. Should any one doubt the existence of such tremors, he has only to lie on the ground with his ear near the surface; but, being unused to the experiment, he will at first only notice the heavier sounds, as of a waggon or a cart-horse. In recent experiments with most delicate instruments devised to show the cosmic vibration of the earth, the movements communicated to it by the tides, or by the "pull" of the sun and moon, it has been found almost impossible as yet to carry out the object, so greatly are these movements obscured by the ceaseless and inexplicable vibrations of the solid earth. There is nothing unreasonable in the supposition that, if an instrument can be constructed to show these, the ears of animals and birds--living organisms, and not iron and steel--should be able to discover the tremors of the surface. The wild hunter can still further check or altogether prevent observation by moving on hands and knees, when his weight is widely distributed. In the particular instance of a fish he endeavours to come to the margin of the water at the rear of the fish, whose eyes are so placed that it can see best in front. When he has arrived at the margin, and has to rear himself up, if from hands and knees, or, if already upright, when he commences his work, he tries to conceal his arms, or, rather, to minimise their peculiar appearance as much as practicable by keeping them close to his sides. All this time I am supposing that you are looking at the poacher from the fish. To a fish or any wild animal the arms of a man are suspicious. No other creature that they know possesses these singular appurtenances, which move in almost any direction, and yet have nothing to do with locomotion. You may be sure that this great difference in the anatomical construction of a man is recognised by all wild animals once they are compelled for their own safety to observe him. Arms are so entirely opposite to all the varieties of limb possessed by the varieties of living creatures. Can you put yourselves in the position of either of these creatures--moving on all-fours, on wings, or by the aid of a membraneous tail and fins, and without arms, and imagine how strange the arms of a man must look? Suppose yourself with your arms tucked to your sides under the fur of an animal; something of the idea may be gathered by putting on a cloak without sleeves or armholes. At once it will be apparent how helpless all creatures are in comparison with man. It is true that apes are an exception; yet their arms are also legs, and they are deficient in the power of the thumb. Man may be defined as an animal with arms. While the creatures of the field or the water have no cause to fear him they do not observe him, but the moment they learn that he is bent on their destruction they watch him narrowly, and his arms are, above all, the part which alarms them. To them these limbs are men's weapons--his tusks, and tusks which strike and wound afar. From these proceed an invisible force which can destroy where it would seem the intervening distance alone would afford safety. The sharp shot, the keen hook, the lacerating wire, the spear--everything which kills or wounds, comes in some manner or other from the arms, down to the stone or the primitive knob-kerrie. Consequently animals, birds, and fishes not only in our own, but in the wildest countries, have learned to watch and to dread man's arms. He raises his arms, and in an instant there shoots forth a bright flash of flame, and before the swift wings can beat the air again the partridge is dashed to the ground. So long as a gun is carried under the arm--that is, with the arms close to the sides--many birds will let the sportsman approach. Rabbits will do the same. Rabbits have one advantage (and perhaps only one): being numerous and feeding out by daylight, all kinds of experiments can be tried on them, while hares are not so easily managed. Suppose a rabbit feeding, and any one with a gun creeping up beside the hedge, while the gun is kept down and the arms down the rabbit remains still; the instant the arms are lifted to point the gun, up he sits, or off he goes. You have only to point your arm at a rook, without any gun, to frighten him. Bird-keepers instinctively raise their arms above their heads, when shouting, to startle birds. Every creature that has ever watched man knows that his arms are dangerous. The poacher or wild hunter has to conceal his arms by reducing their movements to a minimum, and by conducting those movements as slowly as possible. To thoroughly appreciate the importance which animals of all kinds put on the motions of the upper limbs, and to put one's self quite in their position, one has only to recall to mind the well-known trick of the Australian bushrangers. "Bail up!" is their order when they suddenly produce their revolvers; "Bail up!" they shout to the clerks of the bank they are about to sack, to the inmates of a house, or to the travellers they meet on the road. "Hold your arms above your head" is the meaning; and, if it is not immediately obeyed, they fire. They know that every man has a pistol in his pocket or belt; but he cannot use it if compelled to keep his arms high over his head. One or more of the band keep a sharp look-out on the upheld arms while the rest plunder; and, if any are lowered--bang! Like the animals, they know the extreme danger to be apprehended from movements of the human arms. So long as the human arms are "bailed" (though in this case in an opposite direction, i.e. held down), animals are not afraid. Could they make us "bail up," we should be helpless to injure them. Moving his arms as gently as possible, with the elbows close to his sides, the poacher proceeds to slowly push his rod and wire loop towards the basking jack. If he were going to shoot partridges at roost on the ground, he would raise his gun in an equally slow and careful manner. As a partridge is a small bird, and stands at about a shilling in the poacher's catalogue, he does not care to risk a shot at one, but likes to get several at once. This he can do in the spring, when the birds have paired and remain so near together, and again in the latter part of the summer, when the coveys are large, not having yet been much broken up by the sportsmen. These large coveys, having enjoyed an immunity from disturbance all through the summer, wandering at their own will among clover and corn, are not at all difficult to approach, and a shot at them through a gap in a hedge will often bring down four or five. Later on the poacher takes them at roost. They roost on the ground in a circle, heads outwards, much in the same position as the eggs of a lapwing. The spot is marked; and at night, having crept up near enough, the poacher fires at the spot itself rather than at the birds, with a gun loaded with a moderate charge of powder, but a large quantity of shot, that it may spread wide. On moderately light nights he can succeed at this game. It is in raising the arms to point the gun that the risk of alarming the birds has to be met; and so with a hare sitting in a form in daytime. Lift your arms suddenly, and away she goes; keep your arms still, and close to your side, and she will sit till you have crept up actually to her very side, and can pounce on her if you choose. Sometimes, where fish have not been disturbed by poachers, or loafers throwing stones and otherwise annoying them, they will not heed a passer-by, whose gentle walk or saunter does not affright them with brisk emotion, especially if the saunterer, on espying them, in no degree alters his pace or changes his manner. That wild creatures immediately detect a change of manner, and therefore of mood, any one may demonstrate for himself They are as quick to see it as the dog, who is always with his master, and knows by the very way he puts a book on the table what temper he is in. When a book goes with a bang on the table the dog creeps under it. Wild creatures, too, catch their manners from man. Walk along a lane with your hands in your pockets, and you will see twice as much of the birds and animals, because they will not set themselves to steadfastly watch you. A quick movement sets wings quickly beating. I have noticed that even horses in stables do not like visitors with jerky, brisk, angular ways of moving. A stranger entering in a quiet, easy manner is not very objectionable, but if he comes in in a bustling, citizen-like style, it is quite probable that one or other horse will show a wicked white corner in his eye. It roughs them up the wrong way. Especially all wild creatures dislike the shuffling, mincing step so common in towns. That alone will disturb everything. Indeed, I have often thought that a good and successful wild hunter--like the backwoods man, or the sportsman in African bush or Indian jungle--is really made as much by his feet as his eyes or hands. Unconsciously he feels with his feet; they come to know the exact time to move, whether a long or short stride be desirable, and where to put down, not to rustle or cause a cracking sound, and accommodate themselves to the slope of the ground, touching it and holding it like hands. A great many people seem to have no feet; they have boots, but no feet. They stamp or clump, or swing their boots along and knock the ground at every step; this matters not in most callings, but if a man wish to become what I have called a wild hunter, he must let his feet learn. He must walk with hands in his boots. Now and then a person walks like this naturally, and he will come in and tell you that he has seen a fish basking, a partridge, a hare, or what not, when another never gets near anything. This is where they have not been much disturbed by loafers, who are worse than poachers. As a rule, poachers are intermittent in their action, and they do not want to disturb the game, as it makes it wild and interferes with their profits. Loafers are not intermittent--they are always about, often in gangs, and destroy others' sports without having any themselves. Near large towns there are places where the fish have to be protected with hurdles thrown across the stream on poles, that the stones and brickbats hurled by every rascal passing may not make their very life a burden. A rural poacher is infinitely preferable. The difference in the ways of fish when they have been much disturbed and when they have been let alone is at at once discerned. No sooner do you approach a fish who has been much annoyed and driven than he strikes, and a quick-rotating curl on the surface shows with what vehemence his tail was forced against it. In other places, if a fish perceives you, he gives himself so slight a propulsion that the curl hardly rises, and you can see him gliding slowly into the deeper or overshadowed water. If in terror he would go so quickly as to be almost invisible. In places where the fish have been much disturbed the poacher, or any one who desires to watch their habits, has to move as slowly as the hands of a clock, and even then they will scarcely bear the very sight of a man, sometimes not at all. The least briskness of movement would send them into the depths out of sight. Cattle, to whom they are accustomed, walk slowly, and so do horses left to themselves in the meads by water. The slowest man walking past has quicker, perhaps because shorter, movements than those of cattle and horses, so that, even when bushes intervene and conceal his form, his very ways often proclaim him. Most people will only grant a moderate degree of intelligence to fish, linking coldness of blood to narrowness of intellect, and convinced that there can be but little brain in so small a compass as its head. That the jack can compete with the dog, of course, is out of the question: but I am by no means prepared to admit that fish are so devoid of sense as supposed. Not long since an experiment was tried with a jack, an account of which appeared in the papers. The jack was in a tank, and after awhile the tank was partly divided by inserting a plate of glass. He was then hunted round, and notes taken of the number of times he bumped his head against the plate of glass, and how long it took him to learn that there was something to obstruct his path. Further statistics were kept as to the length of his memory when he had learnt the existence of the glass--that is, to see if he would recollect it several days afterwards. The fish was some time learning the position of the glass; and then, if much alarmed, he would forget its position and dash against it. But he did learn it, and retained his memory some while. It seems to me that this was a very hard and unfair test. The jack had to acquire the idea of something transparent, and yet hard as wood. A moment's thought will show how exactly opposite the qualities of glass are to anything either this particular fish or his ancestors could have met with--no hereditary intelligence to aid him, no experience bearing, however slightly, upon the subject. Accustomed all his life to transparent water, he had also been accustomed to find it liquid, and easily parted. Put suddenly face to face with the transparent material which repelled him, what was he to think? Much the same effect would be produced if you or I, having been accustomed, of course, all our lives, to the fluidity of air, which opens for our passage, were opposed by a solid block of transparent atmosphere. Imagine any one running for a train, and striking his head with all his might against such a block. He would rise, shake himself together, and endeavour to pursue his journey, and be again repelled. More than likely he would try three times before he became convinced that it really was something in the air itself which stopped him. Then he would thrust with his stick and feel, more and more astounded every moment, and scarcely able to believe his own senses. During the day, otherwise engaged, he would argue himself into the view that he had made a mistake, and determine to try again, though more cautiously. But so strong is habit that if a cause for alarm arose, and he started running, he might quite probably go with tremendous force up to the solid block of transparent air, to be hurled back as the jack was. These are no mere suppositions, for quite recently I heard of a case which nearly parallels the conduct of the jack. A messenger was despatched by rail to a shop for certain articles, and was desired to return by a certain time. The parcel was made up, the man took it, heard an engine whistle, turned to run, and in his haste dashed himself right through a plate-glass window into the street. He narrowly escaped decapitation, as the great pieces of glass fell like the knife of a guillotine. Cases of people injuring themselves by walking against plate-glass are by no means uncommon; when the mind is preoccupied it takes much the same place as the plate of glass in the water and the jack. Authorities on mythology state that some Oriental nations had not arrived at the conception of a fluid heaven--of free space; they thought the sky was solid, like a roof. The fish was very much in the same position. The reason why fish swim round and round in tanks, and do not beat themselves against the glass walls, is evidently because they can see where the water ends. A distinction is apparent between it and the air outside; but when the plate of glass was put inside the tank the jack saw water beyond it, or through it. I never see a fish in a tank without remembering this experiment and the long train of reflections it gives rise to. To take a fish from his native brook, and to place him suddenly in the midst of such, to him, inconceivable conditions, is almost like watching the actual creation of mind. His mind has to be created anew to meet it, and that it did ultimately meet the conditions shows that even the fish--the cold-blooded, the narrow-brained--is not confined to the grooves of hereditary knowledge alone, but is capable of wider and novel efforts. I thought the jack came out very well indeed from the trial, and I have mentioned the matter lest some should think I have attributed too much intelligence to fish. Other creatures besides fish are puzzled by glass. One day I observed a robin trying to get in at the fanlight of a hall door. Repeatedly he struck himself against it, beat it with his wings, and struggled to get through the pane. Possibly there was a spider inside which tempted him; but allowing that temptation, it was remarkable that the robin should so strive in vain. Always about houses, he must have had experience of the properties of glass, and yet forgot it so soon. His ancestors for many generations must have had experience of glass, still it did not prevent him making many trials. The slowness of the jack to learn the impenetrable nature of the glass plate and its position is not the least indication of lack of intelligence. In daily life we constantly see people do things they have observed injure them, and yet, in spite of experience, go and do the same again. The glass experiment proves to me that the jack, like all other creatures, really has a latent power of intelligence beyond that brought into play by the usual circumstances of existence. Consider the conditions under which the jack exists--the jack we have been approaching so carefully. His limits are the brook, the ponds it feeds, and the ditches that enter it. He can only move a short distance up the stream because there is a high hatch, nor can he go far down because of a mill; if he could, the conditions would be much the same; but, as a matter of fact, the space he has at his command is not much. The running water, the green flags, the lesser fishes, the water-rats, the horses and cattle on the bank--these are about all the things that he is likely to be interested in. Of these only the water, the lesser fishes, the flags, and the bottom or sides of the brook, are actually in his touch and complete understanding. As he is unable to live out of water, the horse on the bank, in whose very shadow he sometimes lies, might be a mile away for aught it concerns him. By no possible means can he discover anything about it. The horse may be itself nothing more than a shadow, unless in a shallow place he steps in and splashes. Night and day he knows, the cool night, and the sunbeams in which he basks; but he has no way of ascertaining the nature of anything outside the water. Centuries spent in such conditions could add but little to his experience. Does he hear the stream running past him? Do the particles of water, as they brush his sides and fins, cause a sound, as the wind by us? While he lurks beneath a weed in the still pool, suddenly a shoal of roach rush by with a sound like a flock of birds whose wings beat the air. The smooth surface of the still water appears to cover an utter silence, but probably to the fish there are ceaseless sounds. Water-fowl feeding in the weedy corners, whose legs depend down into the water and disturb it; water-rats diving and running along the bottom; water-beetles moving about; eels in the mud; the lower parts of flags and aquatic grasses swinging as the breeze ruffles their tips; the thud, thud of a horse's hoofs, and now and then the more distant roll of a hay-laden waggon. And thunder--how does thunder sound under the surface? It seems reasonable to suppose that fish possess a wide gamut of hearing since their other senses are necessarily somewhat curtailed, and that they are peculiarly sensitive to vibratory movements is certain from the destruction a charge of dynamite causes if exploded under water. Even in the deep sea the discharge of a torpedo will kill thousands of herrings. They are as it were killed by noise. So that there are grounds for thinking that my quiet jack in the pool, under the bank of the brook, is most keenly alive by his sense of hearing to things that are proceeding both out and in the water. More especially, no doubt, of things in the water itself. With all this specialised power of hearing he is still circumscribed and limited to the groove of the brook. The birds fly from field to field, from valley to mountain, and across the sea. Their experience extends to whole countries, and their opportunities are constant. How much more fortunate in this respect than the jack! A small display of intelligence by the fish is equivalent to a large display by the bird. When the jack has been much disturbed no one can do more than obtain a view of him, however skilfully he may conceal himself. The least sign of further proceedings will send the jack away; sometimes the mere appearance of the human form is sufficient. If less suspicious, the rod with the wire attached--or if you wish to make experiments, the rod without the wire--can be placed in the water, and moved how you choose. SPORT AND SCIENCE Kingfisher Corner was the first place I made for when, as a lad, I started from home with my gun. The dew of September lies long on the grass, and by the gateway I often noticed wasps that had spent the night in the bunches, numbed and chilled, crawling up the blades bent into an arch by the weight of the drops. Thence they got on the gate, where, too, the flies congregated at that time in the morning; for while it was still cool at the surface on the ground, the dry wood soon absorbed the heat of the sun. This warmth brought them to life again, and after getting well charged with it, the insects flew off to any apples they could discover. These heavy dews, as the summer declines, keep the grass fresh and green, and maintain the leaves on hedge and tree; yet they do not reach the earth, which remains dry. It is a different dew to the spring dew, or acts in another manner: the spring dews moisten the earth, and from the arable lands as the sun shines forth you may see the vapour rise and drift along the surface, like the smoke of a gun on a damp day. The mottled geometrical giant spiders find their webs thick with this September dew, which seems as if a little unctuous. Stepping through the gateway with the morning sun behind me, I saw at each step a fresh circle of dewdrops gleam, some ruby, some emerald, some brightly white, at the same distance in front. The angle of refraction advanced as I moved; there was a point at which the dewdrop shot back a brilliant ray, and then became invisible, or appeared a mere drop of dull water. By moonlight there is thus formed a semicircle of light on the grass, which continually moves before you; it is a halo on the grass-tips. I noticed this as a boy, and tried all sorts of experiments respecting it, but never met with any mention of it in books till quite lately, in Benvenuto Cellini's "Autobiography." He says, "There appeared a resplendent light over my head, which has displayed itself conspicuously to all I have thought proper to show it to, but those were very few. This shining light is to be seen in the morning over my shadow till two o'clock in the afternoon, and it appears to the greatest advantage when the grass is moist with dew; it is likewise visible in the evening at sunset. This phenomenon I took notice of in Paris, because the air is exceedingly clear in that climate, so that I could distinguish it there much plainer than in Italy, where mists are much more frequent; but I can still see it even here, and show it to others, though not to the same advantage as in France." Benvenuto thought this one of the most extraordinary things that had happened to him; and records it after a wonderful dream, as if it, too, were supernatural. It is, however, possible that some eyes are so constituted as not to be able to see this phenomenon in their own case; at least, I have sometimes tried in vain to get other people to see it. I should not have noticed it had I not been about at all hours with my gun as a boy. It is much more visible by moonlight, when the rabbits' white tails go dot, dot, lightly over the grass, and you are just as likely to shoot at their shadows as at their bodies. As the scythe of the mower mows a swathe before him, so the semicircle of light moves in front over the dew, and the grass appears another tint, as it does after a roller has passed. In a scientific publication not long since, a letter was published describing what the writer supposed was indeed something extraordinary. He had seen a fragment of rainbow--a square piece, as it were--by itself in the sky, some distance to one side of the sun. In provincial papers such letters may often be found, and even, until lately, in papers issued in London; now with accurate accounts of an ordinary halo about the sun, now with a description of a prismatic cloud round the moon, and one day some one discovered that there were two currents of air, as the clouds went in two directions. Now, it is clear enough that none of these writers had ever been out with a gun or a rod; I mean out all day, and out in the full sense of the phrase. They had read books of science; from their language they were thoroughly educated, and felt a deep interest in natural phenomena. Yet what a marvel was here made out of the commonest incidents of the sky! Halos about the sun happen continually; the prismatic band or cloud about the moon is common; so is the detached rainbow; as for the two currents of air, the clouds often travel in three directions, occasionally in four. These incidents are no more surprising to a sportsman than the sunset. I saw them, as a boy, almost day by day, and recorded the meteors in the evening. It seems to me that I used to see scores of meteors of various degrees of brightness. Once the path, the woods, the fields, and the distant hills were lit as if with a gigantic electric light; I was so interested in tracing the well-known scene so suddenly made apparent in the darkness that it was not for some seconds I thought of looking for the bolide, but even then I was in time to see it declining just before extinction. Others who have been out with their guns have, of course, seen exactly the same things; I do not mention them to claim for myself any special powers of observation, but as instances of the way in which sport brings one in contact with nature. Other sportsmen, too, must have smiled at the marvel made of such appearances by clever and well-educated, but indoor, people. This very spring (1883), as I walked about a town in the evening, I used to listen to find if I could hear any one mention the zodiacal light, which, just after sunset, was distinctly visible for a fortnight at a time. It was more than usually distinct, a perfect cone, reaching far up into the sky among the western stars. No one seemed to observe it, though it faced them evening after evening. Here was an instance in the opposite direction--a curious phenomenon, even now rather the subject of hypothesis than of demonstration, entirely overlooked. The common phenomenon made a marvel, and the unexplained phenomenon unnoticed. Both in the eyes of a thoughtful person are equally wonderful; but that point of view is apart from my present object, which is to show that sport trains the eye. As a boy, roving about the hedges with my gun, it was my especial delight to see Mercury, because one of the great astronomers had never seen that planet, and because in all the books it was stated as difficult to see. The planet was favourably situated, and I used to see it constantly after sunset then, pale, and but just outside the sunset glow, only a little way above the distant hills. Now it is curious, to remark in passing, that as the sun sets behind a hill the slope of the hill towards you is often obscured by his light. It appears a luminous misty surface, rosy-tinted, and this luminous mist hides the trees upon it, so that the slope is apparently nothing but a broad sweep of colour; while those hills opposite the sun, even if twice as distant, are so clearly defined that the smallest object is evident upon them. Sometimes, instead of the mist on the western hill, there is a blood-like purple almost startling in its glory of light. There have been few things I have read of, or studied, which in some manner or other I have not seen illustrated in this country while out in the fields. It is said that in the Far West, on the level prairies, when the snow covers them, you see miles and miles away, a waggon stopping; you hurry on, and in half a day's journey overtake it, to find the skull of an ox--so greatly has distance and the mirage of the snow magnified its apparent size. But a few days since I saw some rooks on the telegraph wires against a bright sky, but as I approached they flew and resolved into starlings, so much had the brilliant light deceived me. A hare sometimes, on the open ground, looks at a distance, in the sunny days of May when hares are often abroad in daylight, as big as a good-sized dog, and, except by the leap and the absence of visible tail, can hardly be told from a dog. The bamboo fishing-rods, if you will glance at the bamboo itself as you fish, seem the most singular of growths. There is no wood in the hedge like it, neither ash, hazel, oak, sapling, nor anything; it is thoroughly foreign, almost unnatural. The hard knots, the hollow stem, the surface glazed so as to resist a cut with a knife and nearly turn the steel--this is a tropical production alone. But while working round the shore presently you come to the sedges, and by the sedges stands a bunch of reeds. A reed is a miniature bamboo, the same shape, the same knots, and glazy surface; and on reference to any intelligent work of botany, it appears that they both belong to the same order of inward-growing Endogens, so that a few moments bestowed on the reed by the waters give a clear idea of the tropical bamboo, and make the singular foreign production home-like and natural. I found, while I was shooting every day, that the reeds, and ferns, and various growths through which I pushed my way, explained to me the jungles of India, the swamps of Central Africa, and the backwoods of America; all the vegetation of the world. Representatives exist in our own woods, hedges, and fields, or by the shore of inland waters. It was the same with flowers. I think I am scientifically accurate in saying that every known plant has a relative of the same species or genus, growing wild in this country. The very daisy, the commonest of all, contains a volume of botany; so do the heaths, and the harebells that hang so heavily under the weight of the September dew. The horse-tails by the shore carry the imagination further back into the prehistoric world when relations of these plants flourished as trees. The horse-tails by ponds are generally short, about a foot or eighteen inches high, more or less, but in ditches occasionally there are specimens of the giant horse-tail as high as the waistcoat, with a stem as thick as a walking-stick. This is a sapling from which the prehistoric tree can readily be imagined. From our southern woods the wild cat has been banished, but still lives in the north as an English representative of that ferocious feline genus which roams in tropical forests. We still have the deer, both wild and in parks. Then there are the birds, and these, in the same manner as plants, represent the inhabitants of the trackless wilds abroad. Happily the illustration fails mostly in reptiles, which need not be regretted; but even these, in their general outline as it were, are presented. It has long been one of my fancies that this country is an epitome of the natural world, and that if any one has come really into contact with its productions, and is familiar with them, and what they mean and represent, then he has a knowledge of all that exists on the earth. It holds good even of Australia; for palaeontologists produce fossil remains of marsupials or kangaroos. As for the polar conditions, when going round for snipes I constantly saw these in miniature. The planing action of ice was shown in the ditches, where bridges of ice had been formed; these slipping, with a partial thaw, smoothed the grasses and mars of teazles in the higher part of the slope, and then lower down, as the pressure increased, cut away the earth, exposing the roots of grasses, and sometimes the stores of acorns laid up by mice. Frozen again in the night, the glacier stayed, and crumbling earth, leaves, fibres, acorns, and small dead boughs fell on it. Slipping on as the wind grew warmer, it carried these with it and deposited them fifty yards from where they originated. This is exactly the action of a glacier. The ice-mist was often visible over the frozen water-meadows, where I went for duck, teal, and at intervals a woodcock in the adjacent mounds. But it was better seen in the early evening over a great pond, a mile or more long; where, too, the immense lifting power of water was exemplified, as the merest trickle of a streamlet flowing in by-and-by forced up the thick ice in broad sheets weighing hundreds of tons. Then, too, breathing-holes formed just as they are described in the immense lakes of North America, Lakes Superior or Michigan, and in the ice of the Polar circle. These were never frozen over, and attracted wild-fowl. In August, when there were a few young ducks about, the pond used to remind me in places of the tropical lakes we heard so much of after the explorers got through the portentous continent, on account of the growth of aquatic weeds, the quantity and extent of which no one would credit who had not seen them. No wonder the explorers could not get through the papyrus-grown rivers and lakes, for a boat could hardly be forced through these. Acres upon acres of weeds covered the place, some coming up from a depth of twelve feet. Some fish are chiefly on the feed in the morning, and any one who has the courage to get up at five will find them ravenous. We often visited the place a little after that hour. A swim was generally the first thing, and I mention a swim because it brings me to the way in which this mere pond illustrated the great ocean which encircles the world. For it is well known that the mighty ocean is belted with currents, the cold water of the Polar seas seeking the warmth of the Equator, and the warm water of the Equator floating--like the Gulf Stream--towards the Pole, floating because (I think I am right) the warm water runs on the surface. The favourite spot for swimming in our pond was in such a position that a copse cast a wide piece of water there into deep shadow all the morning up till ten o'clock at least. At six in the morning this did not matter, all the water was of much the same temperature; having been exposed to the night everywhere, it was cold of course. But after ten the thing was different; by that time the hot reaper's sun had warmed the surface of the open water on which the rays fell almost from the moment the sun rose. Towards eleven o'clock the difference in temperature was marked; but those who then came to bathe, walking along the shore or rowing, dipped their hands in and found the water warm, and anticipated that it would be equally so at the bathing-place. So it was at the surface, for the warm water had begun to flow in, and the cold water out, rather deeper, setting up, in fact, an exact copy of the current of the ocean, the shadowed part by the copse representing the Polar area. Directly any one began to swim he found the difference, the legs went down into cold water, and in many cases cramp ensued with alarming results and danger. Down to the chest it was warm, quite warm, while the feet were very cold. Not much imagination is needed to conceive the effect on persons not used to rough bathing, and even a strong man might suffer. People insisted that these chills and cramps were caused by cold springs rising at the bottom, and could not be argued out of that belief. As a matter of fact there was not a single spring over the whole extent of the bottom. That part in particular was often dry, not from dry weather, but as the water of the pond was drawn away. Let it rain as much as it would, no spring ever broke up there. The cold currents were produced by the shadow of the copse, and, had the trees been felled, would have disappeared. That would have been like letting the sun of the Equator shine on the Polar seas. After a storm of wind the lee shore was marked with a dark-green line of weeds and horse-tails, torn up and drifted across, which had been thrown up by the little breakers beyond the usual level of the water. A mass of other weeds and horse-tails, boughs and leaves, remained floating; and now was seen a reversal of the habits of fishes. Every one knows that fishes seek the windward shore in a breeze for the insects blown in; but now, while the gale, though subsiding, still rippled the water, the best place to fish was on the lee shore, just at the edge of the drifted weeds. Various insects probably were there washed away from the green raft to which they had clung. The water being often lowered by drawing hatches, the level changed frequently; and as storms of wind happened at different levels, so there were several little raised beaches showing where the level had been, formed of washed gravel and stones--the counterpart, in fact, of the raised beaches of the geologists. When the water was almost all drawn off, then there was a deep winding channel in the mud of the bottom, along which trickled a little streamlet which fed the pond. The sun hardening the mud, it was possible by-and-by to walk to the edge of the channel, where it could be seen that the streamlet ran five or six feet deep between precipitous banks of mud. Near where the stream first entered the pond the deposit was much deeper, for this five feet of alluvium had, in fact, been brought down by one small brook in the course of little more than fifty years. The pond had been formed fifty years previously, but already in so short a period, geologically speaking, all that end was silting up, and the little brook was making a delta, and a new land was rising from the depths of the wave. This is exactly what has happened on an immensely larger scale in the history of the earth, and any one who had seen it, and knew the circumstances, could comprehend the enormous effects produced in geological time by rivers like the Ganges, the Amazon, or Nile. Going by with a gun so frequently, one could not help noticing these things, and remembering them when reading Lyell's "Geology," or Maury's book on the sea, or the innumerable treatises bearing on the same interesting questions. Whether en route for the rabbit-ground, or looking for water-fowl, or later for snipe, I never passed by without finding something, often a fragment of fossil washed from the gravel or sand by the last storm. NATURE AND THE GAMEKEEPER The changes in the fauna of the inland counties brought about by the favour shown to certain species are very remarkable. The alterations caused by the preservation of pheasants have reached their limit. No further effects are likely to be produced, even if pheasant-preserving should be carried to a still greater extent, which itself is improbable. One creature at least, the pine-marten, has been exterminated over Southern England, and is now only to be seen--in the stuffed state--in museums. It may be roughly described as a large tree-weasel, and was shot down on account of its habit of seizing pheasants at roost. The polecat is also practically extinct, though occasional specimens are said to occur. These two animals could not be allowed to exist in any preserve. But it is in the list of birds that the change is most striking. Eagles are gone: if one is seen it is a stray from Scotland or Wales; and so are the buzzards, except from the moors. Falcons are equally rare: the little merlin comes down from the north now and then, but the peregrine falcon as a resident or regular visitor is extinct. The hen-harrier is still shot at intervals; but the large hawks have ceased out of the daily life, as it were, of woods and fields. Horned owls are becoming rare; even the barn-owl has all but disappeared from some districts, and the wood-owl is local. The raven is extinct--quite put out. The birds are said to exist near the sea-coast; but it is certain that any one may walk over inland country for years without seeing one. These, being all more or less birds of prey, could not but be excluded from pheasant-covers. All these birds, however, would probably resume their ancient habitations in the course of five-and-twenty years if permitted to do so. They exist plentifully at no great distance--judged as such strong flyers judge distance; and if they found that they were unmolested they would soon come back from the extremities of the land. But even more remarkable than the list of birds driven away is the list of those creatures, birds and animals, which have stood their ground in spite of traps, guns, and dogs. Stoats and weasels are always shot when seen, they are frequently trapped, and in every manner hunted to the death and their litters destroyed--the last the most effectual method of extermination. But in spite of the unceasing enmity directed against them, stoat and weasel remain common. They still take their share of game, both winged and ground. Stoat and weasel will not be killed out. As they are both defenceless creatures, and not even swift of foot, being easily overtaken in the open, their persistent continuance is curious. If any reason can be assigned for it, it must be because they spend much of their time in buries, where they are comparatively safe, and because they do not confine themselves to woods, but roam cornfields and meadows. Certainly, if man has tried to exterminate any creature, he has tried his hardest to get rid of these two, and has failed. It is even questionable whether their numbers show any appreciable diminution. Kept down to the utmost in one place, they flourish in another. Kestrel and sparrowhawk form a parallel among winged creatures. These two hawks have been shot, trapped, and their eggs destroyed unsparingly: they remain numerous just the same. Neither of them choose inaccessible places for their eyries; neither of them rear large broods. The sparrowhawk makes a nest in a tree, often in firs; the kestrel lays in old rooks', crows', or magpies' nests. Both the parents are often shot on or near the nest, and the eggs broken. Sometimes the young are permitted to grow large enough to fly, and are then shot down after the manner of rook-shooting. Nevertheless kestrels are common, and sparrowhawks, if not quite so numerous, are in no degree uncommon. Perhaps the places of those killed are supplied by birds from the great woods, moors, and mountains of the north. A third instance is the crow. Hated by all gamekeepers, and sportsmen, by farmers, and every one who has anything to do with country life, the crow survives. Cruel tyrant as he is to every creature smaller than himself, not a voice is raised in his favour. Yet crows exist in considerable numbers. Shot off in some places, they are recruited again from others where there is less game preservation. The case of the crow, however, is less striking than that of the two hawks; because the crow is a cosmopolitan bird, and if every specimen in the British Isles were destroyed to-day, there would be an influx from abroad in a very short time. The crow is, too, partly a sea-coast feeder, and so escapes. Still, to any one who knows how determined is the hostility to his race shown by all country people, his existence in any number must be considered remarkable. His more powerful congener the raven, as has been pointed out, is practically extinct in southern counties, and no longer attacks the shepherd's weakly lambs. Why, then, does the crow live on? Wherever a pair of ravens do exist the landowner generally preserves them now, as interesting representatives of old times. They are taken care of; people go to see them; the appearance of eggs in the nest is recorded. But the raven does not multiply. Barn-owls live on, though not in all districts. Influenced by the remonstrance of naturalists, many gentlemen have stopped the destruction of owls; but a custom once established is not easily put an end to. Jays and magpies have also been subjected to a bitter warfare of extermination. Magpies are quite shot off some places; in others they exist sparingly; here and there they may be found in fair numbers. Occasionally their nests are preserved--indeed, the growing tendency is to spare. Still, they have been shot off rigorously, and have survived it. So have jays. In large woods--particularly where there is much fir--jays are so numerous that to destroy them seems almost impossible. Another bird that has defied the gun and trap is the green woodpecker, which used to be killed for alleged destruction of timber. Woodpeckers are not now so ceaselessly killed, though the old system of slaying them is common enough. They have defied not only gun and trap, but the cunning noose placed at the mouth of their holes. Twenty creatures, furred and feathered, have undergone severe persecution since the extension of pheasant-covers, and of these the first nine have more or less succumbed--namely, pine-marten, polecat, eagle, buzzard, falcon, kite, horned owl, harrier, and raven. The remaining eleven have survived--namely, stoat, weasel, rat, crow, kestrel, sparrowhawk, brown and barn owl, jay, magpie, and woodpecker. Pheasants of themselves are not responsible for all this warfare and all these changes; but the pheasant-cover means more than pheasants, or rather has done. Rabbits required even more protection from furred enemies; the head of rabbits kept up in many places practically paid the keeper's wages. This warfare in its fiercest form may be roughly said to be coeval with the invention of the percussion gun, and to have raged now for over half a century. The resistance, therefore, of the various species has been fairly tested, and we may reasonably conclude that no further disappearance will take place, unless by the destruction of woods themselves. One new bird only has been introduced into England since the pheasant--the red-legged partridge which seems to be fairly established in some districts, not to the entire satisfaction of sportsmen. One new bird has also been introduced into Scotland--in this case a re-introduction. The magnificent capercailzie is now flourishing again in the north, to the honour of those who laboured for its restoration. In these notes I have not included attempts at acclimatisation, as that of the wild turkey from North America, which has partly succeeded. Beavers, too, have been induced to resume possession of their ancient streams under careful supervision, but they are outside present consideration. While England has thus lost some species and suffered a diminution of several, other countries have been supplied from our streams and woods and hedgerows. England has sent the sparrow to the United States and Australia; also the nightingale, rabbit, salmon, trout, and sweet-briar. It is quite open to argument that pheasant-covers have saved as well as destroyed. Wood-pigeons could scarcely exist in such numbers without the quiet of preserved woods to breed in; nor could squirrels. Nor can the rarity of such birds as the little bearded tit be charged on game. The great bustard, the crane, and bittern have been driven away by cultivation. The crane, possibly, has deserted us wilfully; since civilisation in other countries has not destroyed it. And then the fashion of making natural history collections has much extended of recent years: so much so, that many blame too ardent collectors for the increasing rarity of birds like the crossbill, waxwing, hoopoe, golden oriole, and others which seem to have once visited this country more commonly than at present. THE SACRIFICE TO TROUT How much the breeding of pheasants has told upon the existence of other creatures in fur and feathers I have already shown; and much the same thing is true of the preservation of trout. There is this difference, however: that while the pheasant has now produced its utmost effect, the alterations due to trout are increasing. Trout are now so highly and so widely preserved that the effect cannot but be felt. Their preservation in the numbers now considered necessary entails the destruction of some and the banishment of other creatures. The most important of these is the otter. Guns, dogs, traps set under water so as not to be scented; all modes of attack are pressed into the service, and it is not often that he escapes. When traces of an otter were found, a little while since, in the Kennet--he had left his mark on the back of a trout--the fact was recorded with as much anxiety as if a veritable wolf had appeared. With such animosity has the otter been hunted that he is becoming one of the rarest of wild animals here in the south. He is practically extinct on the majority of southern streams, and has been almost beaten off the Thames itself. But the otter is not likely to be exterminated in the sense that the wolf has been. Otters will be found elsewhere in England long after the last of them has disappeared from the south. Next the pike must be ousted from trout-streams. Special nets have been invented by which pike can be routed from their strongholds. Much hunting about quickens the intelligence of the pike to such a degree that he cannot be secured in the ordinary manner; he baffles the net by keeping close to the bank, behind stones, or by retiring to holes under roots. Perch have to go as well as pike; and then comes the turn of birds. Herons, kingfishers, moorhens, coots, grebes, ducks, teal, various divers, are all proscribed on behalf of trout. Herons are regarded as most injurious to a fishery. As was observed a century ago, a single heron will soon empty a pond or a stretch of brook. As their long necks give them easy command of a wide radius in spying round them, it is rather difficult to shoot them with a shot-gun; but with the small-bore rifles now made no heron is safe. They are generally shot early in the morning. Were it not for the fact that herons nest like rooks, and that heronries are valued appurtenances in parks, they would soon become scarce. Kingfishers prey on smaller fish, but are believed to eat almost as many as herons. Kingfishers resort in numbers to trout nurseries, which are as traps for them: and there they are more than decimated. Owls are known to take fish occasionally, and are therefore shot. The greatest loss sustained in fisheries takes place in the spawning season, and again when the fry are about. Some students of fish-life believe that almost all wild-fowl will swallow the ova and fry of trout. It must be understood that I am not here entering into the question whether all these are really so injurious; I am merely giving a list of the "dogs with a bad name." Moorhens and coots are especially disliked because they are on or near the water day and night, and can clear off large quantities of fry. Grebes (di-dappers or dabchicks) are similar in habit, but less destructive because fewer. Ducks are ravenous devourers; teal are equally hated. The various divers which occasionally visit the streams are also guilty. Lastly, the swan is a well-known trout-pirate. Besides these, the two kinds of rat--land and water--have a black mark against them. Otter, pike, perch, heron, kingfisher, owl, moorhen, coot, grebe, diver, wild-duck, swan, teal, dipper, land-rat, and water-rat--altogether sixteen creatures--are killed in order that one may flourish. Although none of these, even in the south of England--except the otter--has yet been excluded, the majority of them are so thinned down as to be rarely seen unless carefully sought. To go through the list: otters are practically excluded; the pike is banished from trout streams but is plentiful in others; so too with perch; herons, much reduced in numbers; owls, reduced; kingfishers, growing scarce; coots, much less numerous because not permitted to nest; grebes, reduced; wild-duck, seldom seen in summer, because not permitted to nest; teal, same; swan, not permitted on fisheries unless ancient rights protect it; divers, never numerous, now scarcer; moorhens, still fairly plentiful because their ranks are constantly supplied from moats and ponds where they breed under semi-domestic conditions. The draining of marsh-lands and levels began the exile of wild-fowl; and now the increasing preservation of trout adds to the difficulties under which these birds strive to retain a hold upon inland waters. The Thames is too long and wide for complete exclusion; but it is surprising how few moorhens even are to be seen along the river. Lesser rivers are still more empty, as it were, of life. The great osier-beds still give shelter to some, but not nearly so many as formerly. Up towards the spring-heads, where the feeders are mere runlets, the scarcity of wild-fowl has long been noticed. Hardly a wild-duck is now seen; one or two moorhens or a dabchick seem all. Coots have quite disappeared in some places: they are shot on ponds, having an ill reputation for the destruction of the fry of coarse or pond fish, as well as of trout. Not all these changes, indeed, are attributable to trout alone; but the trout holds a sort of official position and leads the van. Other southern rivers, with the exception of the Thames, are for the most part easily preserved. They run through cultivated country, with meadows or cornfields, woods or copses, and rarely far through open, unenclosed land. A stranger, and without permission, would often find it difficult to walk half a mile along the bank of such a stream as this. Consequently, if it is desired to preserve it, the riparian owners can do so to the utmost, and the water-fowl considered injurious to fish can as easily be kept down. It is different in the north, for instance, where the streams have a background of moors, mountains, tarns, and lakes. In these their fastnesses birds find some security. From the coast they are also recruited; while on our southern coasts it is a source of lament that wild-fowl are not nearly so plentiful as formerly. Of course in winter it often happens that a flock of wild-fowl alight in passing; but how long do they stay? The real question is, how many breed? Where trout are carefully preserved, very few indeed; so that it is evident trout are making as much difference as the pheasants. Trout preservation has become much more extended since the fish has been studied and found to be easily bred. Advertisements are even put forward recommending people to keep trout instead of poultry, since they can be managed with certainty. It seems reasonable, therefore, to suppose that the influence of trout on wild creatures will continue to extend for some time yet. Already where trout preservation has been carefully carried out it has produced a visible impression upon their ranks. In ten years, if it were abandoned, most of these creatures would be plentiful again on the waters from which they have been driven; I should myself be very glad to see many of them back again. But if preservation has excluded many creatures, it has also saved many. Badgers, in all probability, would be extinct--really extinct, like the wolf--were it not for the seclusion of covers. Without the protection which hunting affords them, foxes would certainly have disappeared. The stag and fallow-deer are other examples; so, too, the wild white cattle maintained in a few parks. In a measure the rook owes its existence to protection; for although naturalists have pointed out its usefulness, the rook is no favourite with agriculturists. Woodcocks, again, are protected, and are said to have increased, though it is open to question if their increased numbers may not be due to other causes. Cultivation banishes wild geese and snipe, but adds to the numbers of small birds, I fancy, and very probably to the number of mice. When the country was three-fourths champaign--open, unenclosed, and uncultivated--it cannot be supposed that so many grain-eating birds found sustenance as now. The subject is capable of much development Enough, however, has been said to show that Nature at present is under artificial restraints; but her excluded creatures are for the most part ready to return if ever those restraints are removed. THE HOVERING OF THE KESTREL There has lately been some discussion about the hovering of kestrels: the point being whether the bird can or cannot support itself in the air while stationary, without the assistance of one or more currents of air. The kestrel is the commonest hawk in the southern parts of England, so that many opportunities occur to observe his habits; and there ought not to be any doubt in the matter. It is even alleged that it will go far to decide the question of the possibility of flight or of the construction of an aerial machine. Without entering into this portion of the discussion, let us examine the kestrel's habits. This hawk has a light easy flight, usually maintaining an altitude a little lower than the tallest elms, but higher than most trees. He will keep this particular altitude for hours together, and sweep over miles of country, with only occasional variations--excluding, of course, descents for the purpose of taking mice. It is usually at this height that a kestrel hovers, though he is capable of doing it a much greater elevation. As he comes gliding through the atmosphere, suddenly he shoots up a little (say, roughly, two or three feet), and then stops short. His tail, which is broader than it looks, is bent slightly downwards; his wings beat the air, at the first glance, just as if he was progressing. Sometimes he seems to oscillate to one side, sometimes to the other; but these side movements do not amount to any appreciable change of position. If there be little or no wind (note this) he remains beating the air, to the eye at least perfectly stationary, perhaps as much as half a minute or more. He then seems to slip forward about half a yard, as if a pent-up force was released, but immediately recovers himself and hovers again. This alternate hovering and slipping forward may be repeated two or three times: it seems to depend on the bird's judgment as to the chance of prey. If he does not think a mouse is to be had, at the first slip he allows himself to proceed. If the spot be likely, or (what is still more tempting) if it is near a place where he has taken prey previously, he will slip and bring up several times. Now and then he will even fetch a half-circle when his balance or impetus (or both) is quite exhausted, and to return to the same spot and recommence. But this is not often, as a rule, after two or three slips he proceeds on his voyage. He will repeat the same round day after day, if undisturbed, and, if the place be at all infested with mice, he will come to it three or four times a day. There is, therefore, every chance of watching him, if you have once found his route. Should he spy a mouse, down he comes, quick but steady, and very nearly straight upon it. But kestrels do not always descend upon prey actually in view. Unless I am much mistaken, they now and then descend in a likely spot and watch like a cat for a minute or two for mice or beetles. For rest they always seek a tree. Now, having briefly sketched his general manner, let us return and examine the details. In the first place, he usually rises slightly, with outstretched wings, as if about to soar at the moment of commencing hovering. The planes of the wings are then inclined, and meet the air. At the instant of stopping, the tail is depressed. It appears reasonable to conjecture that the slight soaring is to assist the tail in checking his onward course, and to gain a balance. Immediately the wings beat rapidly, somewhat as they do in ordinary flight but with a more forward motion, and somewhat as birds do when about to perch on an awkward ledge, as a swallow at an incomplete nest under an eave. The wings look more, in front, as if attached to his neck. In an exaggerated way ducks beat the air like this, with no intention of rising at all, merely to stretch their wings. The duck raises himself as he stands on the ground, stretches himself to his full height, and flaps his wings horizontally. The kestrel's wings strike downwards and a very little forwards, for his natural tendency is to slip forwards, and the object of slightly reversing his vanes is to prevent this and yet at the same time to support him. His shape is such that if he were rigid with outstretched wings he would glide ahead, just as a ship in a calm slowly forges ahead because of her lines, which are drawn for forward motion. The kestrel's object is to prevent his slip forwards, and the tail alone will not do it. It is necessary for him to "stroke" the air in order to keep up at all; because the moment he pauses gravitation exercises a force much greater than when he glides. While hovering there are several forces balanced: first, the original impetus onwards; secondly, that of the depressed tail dragging and stopping that onward course; thirdly, that of the wing beating downwards; and fourthly, that of the wing a very little reversed beating forwards, like backing water with a scull. When used in the ordinary way the shape of the wing causes it to exert a downward and a backward pressure. His slip is when he loses balance: it is most obviously a loss of balance; he quite oscillates sometimes when it occurs; and now and then I have seen a kestrel unable to catch himself, and obliged to proceed some distance before he could hover again. Occasionally, in the slip he loses a foot or so of elevation, but not always. While actually hovering, his altitude does not vary an inch. All and each of these movements and the considerations to which they give rise show conclusively that the act of hovering is nothing more or less than an act of balancing; and when he has his balance he will rest a moment with outstretched wings kept still. He uses his wings with just sufficient force neither to rise nor fall, and prevents progress by a slightly different stroke. The next point is, Where does he hover? He hovers any and everywhere, without the slightest choice. He hovers over meadows, cornfields; over the tops of the highest downs, sometimes at the very edge of a precipice or above a chalk quarry; over gardens, waste ground; over the highway; over summer and other ricks and thatched sheds, from which he sometimes takes his prey; over stables, where mice abound. He has no preference for one side of a hedge or grove, and cares not the least on which the wind blows. His hovering is entirely determined by his judgment as to the chance of prey. I have seen a kestrel hover over every variety of dry ground that is to be found. Next, as to the wind. If any one has read what has preceded upon his manner of preserving his balance, it must be at once apparent that, supposing a kestrel were hovering in a calm and a wind arose, he would at once face it, else his balance could not be kept. Even on the ground almost all birds face the wind by choice; but the hovering kestrel has no choice. He must hover facing the wind, or it would upset him: just as you may often see a rook flung half aback by a sudden gust. Hence has arisen the supposition that a kestrel cannot hover without a wind. The truth is, he can hover in a perfect calm, and no doubt could do so in a room if it were large enough. He requires no current of any kind, neither a horizontal breeze nor an ascending current. A kestrel can and does hover in the dead calm of summer days, when there is not the faintest breath of wind. He will and does hover in the still, soft atmosphere of early autumn, when the gossamer falls in showers, coming straight down as if it were raining silk. If you puff up a ball of thistledown it will languish on your breath and sink again to the sward. The reapers are sweltering in the wheat, the keeper suffocates in the wood, the carter walks in the shadow cast by his load of corn, the country-side stares all parched and cracked and gasps for a rainy breeze. The kestrel hovers just the same. Could he not do so, a long calm would half starve him, as that is his manner of preying. Having often spent hours in trees for the purpose of a better watch upon animals and birds, I can vouch for it that ascending currents are not frequent--rare, in fact, except in a gale. In a light air or calm there is no ascending current, or it is imperceptible and of no use to the kestrel. Such currents, when they do exist, are very local; but the kestrel's hover is not local: he can hover anywhere. He can do it in the face of a stiff gale, and in a perfect calm. The only weather he dislikes is heavy thunder, rain, or hail, during which he generally perches on a tree; but he can hover in all ordinary rain. He effects it by sheer power and dexterity of wing. Therefore if the fact has any bearing upon the problem of flight, the question of currents may be left out altogether. His facing the wind is, as has been pointed out, only a proof that he is keeping his balance. The kestrel is not the only bird that hovers. The sparrowhawk can. So can all the finches, more or less, when taking seeds from a plant which will not bear their weight or which they cannot otherwise get at; also when taking insects on the wing. Sparrows do the same. Larks hover in their mating season uttering a short song, not the same as when they soar. Numerous insects can hover: the great dragon-fly will stop dead short in his rapid flight, and stay suspended till it suits him to advance. None of these require any current or wind. I do not think that hovering requires so much strength of wing or such an exercise of force as when birds rise almost straight up. Snipes do it, and woodcocks; so also pheasants, rocketing with tremendous effort; so also a sparrow in a confined court, rising almost straight to the slates. Evidently this needs great power. Hovering is very interesting; but not nearly so mysterious as at least one other power possessed by birds. BIRDS CLIMBING THE AIR Two hawks come over the trees, and, approaching each other, rise higher into the air. They wheel about for a little without any apparent design, still rising, when one ceases to beat the air with his wings, stretches them to their full length, and seems to lean aside. His impetus carries him forward and upward, at the same time in a circle, something like a skater on one foot. Revolving round a centre, he rises in a spiral, perhaps a hundred yards across; screwing upwards, and at each turn ascending half the diameter of the spiral. When he begins this it appears perfectly natural, and nothing more than would necessarily result if the wings were held outstretched and one edge of the plane slightly elevated. The impulse of previous flight, the beat of strong pinions, and the swing and rush of the bird evidently suffice for two or three, possibly for four or five, winding movements, after which the retarding effects of friction and gravitation ought, according to theory, to gradually bring the bird to a stop. But up goes the hawk, round and round like a woodpecker climbing a tree; only the hawk has nothing tangible into which to stick his claws and to rest his tail against. Those winding circles must surely cease; his own weight alone must stop him, and those wide wings outstretched must check his course. Instead of which the hawk rises as easily as at first, and without the slightest effort--no beat of wing or flutter, without even a slip or jerk, easily round and round. His companion does the same; often, perhaps always, revolving the opposite way, so as to face the first. It is a fascinating motion to watch. The graceful sweeping curl holds the eye: it is a line of beauty, and draws the glance up into the heights of the air. The darker upper part of one is usually visible at the same time as the lighter under part of the other, and as the dark wheels again the sunlight gleams on the breast and under wing. Sometimes they take regular curves, ascending in an equal degree with each; each curve representing an equal height gained perpendicularly. Sometimes they sweep round in wide circles, scarcely ascending at all. Again, suddenly one will shoot up almost perpendicularly, immediately followed by the other. Then they will resume the regular ascent. Up, like the woodpecker round a tree, till now the level of the rainy scud which hurries over in wet weather has long been past; up till to the eye it looks as if they must soon attain to the flecks of white cloud in the sunny sky to-day. They are in reality far from that elevation; but their true height is none the less wonderful. Resting on the sward, I have watched them go up like this through a lovely morning atmosphere till they seemed about to actually enter the blue, till they were smaller in appearance than larks at their highest ascent, till the head had to be thrown right back to see them. This last circumstance shows how perpendicularly they ascend, winding round a line drawn straight up. At their very highest they are hardly visible, except when the under wing and breast passes and gleams in the light. All this is accomplished with outstretched wings held at full length, without flap, or beat, or any apparent renewal of the original impetus. If you take a flat stone and throw it so that it will spin, it will go some way straight, then rise, turn aside, describe a half-circle, and fall. If the impetus kept in it, it would soar like the hawk, but this does not happen. A boomerang acts much in the same manner, only more perfectly: yet, however forcibly thrown, the impetus soon dies out of a boomerang. A skater gets up his utmost speed, suddenly stands on one foot, and describes several circles; but in two minutes comes to a standstill, unless he "screws," or works his skate, and so renews the impulse. Even at his best he only goes round, and does not raise his weight an inch from the ice. The velocity of a bullet rapidly decreases, and a ball shot from an express rifle, and driven by a heavy charge, soon begins to droop. When these facts are duly considered, it will soon be apparent what a remarkable feat soaring really is. The hawk does not always ascend in a spiral, but every now and then revolves in a circle--a flat circle--and suddenly shoots up with renewed rapidity. Whether this be merely sportive wantonness or whether it is a necessity, is impossible to determine; but to me it does not appear as if the hawk did it from necessity. It has more the appearance of variation: just as you or I might walk fast at one moment and slowly at another, now this side of the street and now the other. A shifting of the plane of the wings would, however, in all probability, give some impetus: the question is, would it be sufficient? I have seen hawks go up in sunny and lovely weather--in fact, they seem to prefer still, calm weather; but, considering the height to which they attain, no one can positively assert that they do or do not utilise a current. If they do, they may be said to sail (a hawk's wings are technically his sails) round half the circle with the wind fair and behind, and then meet it the other half of the turn, using the impetus they have gained to surmount the breeze as they breast it. Granting this mechanical assistance, it still remains a wonderful feat, since the nicest adjustment must be necessary to get the impetus sufficient to carry the birds over the resistance. They do not drift, or very little. My own impression is that a hawk can soar in a perfectly still atmosphere. If there is a wind he uses it; but it is quite as much an impediment as an aid. If there is no wind he goes up with the greater ease and to the greater height, and will of choice soar in a calm. The spectacle of a weight--for of course the hawk has an appreciable weight--apparently lifting itself in the face of gravitation and overcoming friction, is a very striking one. When an autumn leaf parts on a still day from the twig, it often rotates and travels some distance from the tree, falling reluctantly and with pauses and delays in the air. It is conceivable that if the leaf were animated and could guide its rotation, it might retard its fall for a considerable period of time, or even rise higher than the tree. COUNTRY LITERATURE I THE AWAKENING Four hundred years after the first printed book was sent out by Caxton the country has begun to read. An extraordinary reflection that twelve generations should pass away presenting the impenetrable front of indifference to the printing-press! The invention which travelled so swiftly from shore to shore till the remote cities of Mexico, then but lately discovered, welcomed it, for four centuries failed to enter the English counties. This incredible delay must not be supposed to be due to any exceptional circumstances or to inquisitorial action. The cause is found in the agricultural character itself. There has never been any difficulty in obtaining books in the country other than could be surmounted with patience. It is the peculiarity of knowledge that those who really thirst for it always get it. Books certainly came down in some way or other to Stratford-on-Avon, and the great mind that was growing there somehow found a means of reading them. Long, long before, when the printed page had not been dreamed of, the Grecian student, listening at the school, made his notes on oyster-shells and blade-bones. But here the will was wanting. There was no prejudice, for no people admired learning more than the village people, or gave it more willing precedence. It was simple indifference, which was mistaken for a lack of intelligence, but it was most certainly nothing of the kind. How great, then, must be the change when at last, after four hundred years, the country begins to read! To read everything and anything! The cottagers in faraway hamlets, miles from a railway station, read every scrap of printed paper that drifts across their way, like leaves in autumn. The torn newspapers in which the grocer at the market town wraps up their weekly purchases, stained with tallow or treacle, are not burned heedlessly. Some paragraph, some fragment of curious information, is gathered from the pieces. The ploughman at his luncheon reads the scrap of newspaper in which his bread-and-cheese was packed for him. Men read the bits of paper in which they carry their screws of tobacco. The stone-pickers in spring in the meadows, often women, look at the bits of paper scattered here and there before putting them in their baskets. A line here and a line yonder, one to-day, one to-morrow, in time make material equal to a book. All information in our day filters through the newspapers. There is no subject you can name of which you may not get together a good body of knowledge, often superior, because more recent, than that contained in the best volumes, by watching the papers and cutting out the paragraphs that relate to it. No villager does that, but this ceaseless searching for scraps comes to something like the same thing in a more general manner. London newspapers come now to the village and hamlet in all sorts of ways. Some by post, others by milk-cart, by carrier, by travellers; for country folk travel now, and invariably bring back papers bought at the railway bookstalls. After these have been read by the farmers and upper sort of people who purchased them, the fragments get out through innumerable channels to the cottages. The regular labourers employed on the farm often receive them as presents, and take nothing more gladly. If any one wishes to make a cottager a little present to show friendly remembrance, the best thing to send is a bundle of newspapers, especially, of course, if they are illustrated, which will be welcomed, and not a corner of the contents slurred over. Nothing is so contrary to fact as the common opinion that the agricultural labourer and his family are stupid and unintelligent. In truth, there are none who so appreciate information and they are quite capable of understanding anything that may be sent them in print. London papers of various descriptions come to the villages now in greatly increased numbers, probably fifteen or twenty for one that formerly arrived, and all these, or some portion of each, are nearly sure to be ultimately perused by some cottager. At the inns and beer-houses there is now usually a daily paper, unless the distance is farther than general to a station, and then there are weeklies with summaries of everything. So that the London press is accessible at the meanest beer-house, and well bethumbed and besmeared the blackened sheets are, with holes where clumsy fingers have gone through. The shepherd in his hut in the lambing season, when the east wind blows and he needs shelter, is sure to have a scrap of newspaper with him to pore over in the hollow of the windy downs. In summer he reads in the shade of the firs while his sheep graze on the slope beneath. The little country stations are often not stations at all in the urban idea of such a convenience, being quite distant from any town, and merely gathering together the traffic from cross-roads. But the porters and men who work there at times get a good many newspapers, and these, after looking at them themselves, they take or send up to their relatives in the village five or six miles away. Everybody likes to tell another the news; and now that there is such a village demand for papers, to pass on a paper is like passing the news, and gives a pleasure to donor and recipient. So that papers which in days gone by would have stopped where they first arrived now travel on and circulate. If you had given a cottager a newspaper a few years since he would have been silent and looked glum. If you give him one now he says, "Thank you," briskly. He and his read anything and everything; and as he walks beside the waggon he will pick up a scrap of newspaper from the roadside and pore over it as he goes. Girls in service send home papers from London; so do the lads when from home--and so many are away from home now. Papers come from Australia and America; the latter are especial favourites on account of the oddities with which the editors fill the corners. No one ever talks of the Continent in agricultural places; you hear nothing of France or Germany; nothing of Paris or Vienna, which are not so very distant in these days of railways, if distance be measured by miles. London and London news is familiar enough--they talk of London and of the United States or Australia, but particularly of the United States. The Continent does not exist to them; but the United States is a sort of second home, and the older men who have not gone sigh and say, "If I had 'a emigrated, now you see, I should 'a done well." There must be an immense increase in the number of papers passing through country post-offices. That the United States papers do come there is no doubt, for they are generally taken up by the cottage people to the farmhouses to show where the young fellows are who have left the place. But the remarkable fact is not in the increase of the papers, but in the growth of the desire to read them--the demand of the country for something to read. In cottages of the better sort years ago you used to find the most formal of old prints or coloured pictures on the walls, stiff as buckram, unreal, badly executed, and not always decent. The favourites now are cuttings from the _Illustrated London News_ or the _Graphic_, with pictures from which many cottages in the farthest away of the far country are hung round. Now and then one may be entered which is perfectly papered with such illustrations. These pictures in themselves play no inconsiderable part in educating the young, whose eyes become accustomed to correct representations of scenes in distant places, and who learn as much about such places and things as they could do without personally going. Besides which, the picture being found there is evidence that at fourth or fifth, or it may be the tenth hand, the paper itself must have got there, and if it got there it was read. The local press has certainly trebled in recent times, as may be learned by reference to any newspaper list and looking at the dates. The export, so to say, of type, machines, rollers, and the material of printing from London to little country places has equally grown. Now, these are not sent out for nothing, but are in effect paid for by the pennies collected in the crooked lanes and byways of rural districts. Besides the numerous new papers, there are the old-established ones whose circulation has enlarged. Altogether, the growth of the local country press is as remarkable in its way as was the expansion of the London press after the removal of the newspaper stamp. This is conclusive evidence of the desire to read, for a paper is a thing unsaleable unless some one wants to read it. They are for the most part weeklies, and their primary object is the collection of local information; but they one and all have excerpts from London publications, often very well selected, and quite amusing if casually caught up by persons who may have fancied they knew something of London, current gossip, and the world at large. For you must go from home to learn the news; and if you go into a remote hamlet and take up the local paper you are extremely likely to light on some paragraph skilfully culled which will make an impression on you. It is with these excerpts that the present argument is chiefly concerned, the point being that they are important influences in the spread of general information. After the local gossip has been looked at the purchasers of these prints are sure to turn to these pieces, which serve them and theirs the most of the week to absorb. II SCARCITY OF BOOKS Some little traffic in books, or rather pamphlets, goes on now in rural places through the medium of pedlars. There are not so many pedlars as was once the case, and those that remain are not men of such substance as their predecessors who travelled on foot with jewellery, laces, watches, and similar articles. The packmen who walk round the villages for tradesmen are a different class altogether: the pedlar does not confine himself to one district, and he sells for his own profit. In addition to the pins and ribbons, Birmingham jewellery, dream-books, and penny ballads, the pedlar now produces a bundle of small books, which are practically pamphlets, though in more convenient form than the ancient quartos. They are a miscellaneous lot, from fifty to one hundred and fifty pages; little monographs on one subject, tales, and especially such narratives as are drawn up and printed after a great calamity like the loss of the _Atalanta_. It is a curious fact that country people are much attracted to the sea, and the story of a shipwreck known to be true easily tempts the sixpences from their pockets. Dream-books and ballads sell as they always did sell, but for the rest the pedlar's bundle has nothing in it, as a rule, more pernicious than may be purchased at any little shop. Romantic novelettes, reprints of popular and really clever stories, numbers of semi-religious essays and so on--some only stitched and without a wrapper--make up the show he spreads open before the cottage door or the servants at the farmhouse. Often the gipsy women, whose vans go slowly along the main roads while they make expeditions to the isolated houses in the fields, bring with them very similar bundles of publications. The sale of books has thus partly supplanted that of clothes-pegs and trumpery finery. Neither pedlars nor gipsies would carry such articles as books unless there was a demand for them, and they thereby demonstrate the growth of the disposition to read. There are no other persons engaged in circulating books in the actual country than these. In the windows of petty shops in villages it is common to see a local newspaper displayed as a sign that it is sold there; and once now and then, but not often, a few children's story-books, rather dingy, may be found. But the keepers of such shops are not awake to the new condition of things; very likely they cannot read themselves, and it does not occur to them that the people now growing up may have different feelings to those that were general in their own young days. In this inability to observe the change they are not alone. If it was explained to them, again, they would not know how to set about getting in a suitable stock; they would not know what to choose nor where to buy cheaply. Somebody would have to do it all for them. Practically, therefore, in the actual country there are no other traders distributing cheap books than pedlars and gipsy women. Coming in thence to those larger villages which possess a market and are called towns--often only one long street--there is generally a sort of curiosity shop, kept perhaps by a cobbler, a carver and gilder, or brazier, where odds and ends, as old guns and pistols, renovated umbrellas, a stray portmanteau, rusty fenders, and so forth, are for sale. Inside the window are a few old books, with the brown and faded gilt covers so common in days gone by, and on market days these are put outside on the window-sill, or perhaps a plank on trestles forming a bookstall. The stray customers have hardly any connection with the growing taste for reading, being people a little outside the general run--gentlemen with archaeological or controversial tendencies, who never pass a dingy cover without going as far as the title-page--visitors, perhaps, at houses in the neighbourhood wandering round to look at an ancient gateway or sun-dial left from monastic days. Villagers beginning to read do not care for this class of work; like children, they look for something more amusing, and want something to wonder at for their money. At the post-office there is often an assortment of cheap stationery on sale, for where one cottager wrote a letter a few years ago ten write them now. But the shopkeeper--most likely a grocer or storekeeper of some kind--knows nothing of books, and will tell you, if you ask him, that he never sells any or has any orders. How should he sell any, pray, when he does not put the right sort into his window? He does not think people read: he is occupied with moist sugar. So that in these places literature is at a standstill. Proceeding onwards to the larger market town, which really is a town, perhaps a county town, or at least with a railway station, here one or two stationers may be found. One has a fair trade almost entirely with the middle-class people of the town; farmers when they drive in call for stationery, or for books if there is a circulating library, as there usually is. The villagers do not come to this shop; they feel that it is a little above them, and they are shy of asking for three pennyworth of writing-paper and envelopes. If they look in at the window in passing they see many well-bound books from 5s. to 10s., some of the more reputable novels, and educational manuals. The first they cannot afford; for the second they have not yet acquired the taste; the last repel them. This bookseller, though of course quite of a different stamp, and a man of business, would probably also declare that the villagers do not read. They do not come to him, and he is too busy to sit down and think about it. The other stationer's is a more humble establishment, where they sell cheap toys, Berlin wool, the weekly London papers with tales in them, and so on. The villagers who get as far as this more central town call here for their cheap stationery, their weekly London novelette, or tin trumpets for the children. But here, again, they do not order books, and rarely buy those displayed, for exactly the same reason as in the lesser village towns. The shopkeeper does not understand what they want, and they cannot tell him. They would know if they saw it; but till they see it they do not know themselves. There is no medium between the villager who wants to read and the books he would like. There is no machinery between the villager who wants to read and the London publisher. The villager is in utter ignorance of the books in the publisher's warehouse in London. The villager who has just begun to read is in a position almost incomprehensible to a Londoner. The latter has seen books, books, books from boyhood always around him. He cannot walk down a street, enter an omnibus, go on a platform without having books thrust under his eyes. Advertisements a yard high glare at him from every hoarding, railway arch, and end-house facing a thoroughfare. In tunnels underground, on the very roofs above, book advertisements press upon his notice. It is impossible to avoid seeing them, even if he would. Books are everywhere--at home, at the reading-room, on the way to business; and on his return it is books, books, books. He buys a weekly paper, and book advertisements, book reviews, occupy a large part of it. Buy what sort of print he will--and he is always buying some sort from mere habit--books are pushed on him. If he is at all a student, or takes an interest--and what educated Londoner does not?--in some political, scientific, or other question, he is constantly on the watch for publications bearing upon it. He subscribes to or sees a copy of one or other of the purely literary papers devoted to the examination of books, and has not the slightest difficulty in finding what he wants; the reviews tell him precisely the thing he requires to know, whether the volume will suit him or not. The reading Londoner is thus in constant contact with the publisher, as much as if the publisher spoke to him across the breakfast table. But the villager has never heard the publisher's name; the villager never sees a literary review; he has never heard, or, if so, so casually as not to remember, the name of any literary paper describing books. When he gets hold of a London paper, the parts which attract him are certainly not the advertisements; if he sees a book advertised there, it is by chance. Besides which, the advertisements in London papers are, from necessity of cost, only useful to those who frequently purchase books or have some reason for keeping an eye on those that appear. There are thousands of books on publishers' shelves which have been advertised, of course, but are not now ever put in the papers. So that when the villager gets a London paper, as he does now much more frequently, the advertisements, if he sees them, are not designed for his eye and do not attract him. He never sees a gaudy poster stuck on the side of the barn; there are no glazed frames with advertisements in the sheds or hung on the trees; the ricks are not covered, like the walls of the London railway stations, with book advertisements, nor are they conspicuous on the waggons as they are on the omnibuses. When he walks down the village there are no broad windows piled with books higher than his head--books with the backs towards him, books with the ornamented cover towards him, books temptingly open at an illustration: nothing of the sort. There is not a book to be seen. Some few books are advertised in the local press and receive notices--only a few, and these generally of a class too expensive for him. Books of real value are usually dear when first published. If he goes to a stationer's, as already pointed out, for a few sheets of writing paper and a packet of envelopes, he sees nothing displayed there to tempt him. Lastly, he hears no talking about books. Perhaps the most effective of all advertisements in selling a book is conversation. If people hear other people continually alluding to, or quoting, or arguing about a book, they say, "We must have it;" and they do have it. Conversation is the very life of literature. Now, the villager never hears anybody talk about a book. III THE VILLAGER'S TASTE IN READING The villager could not even write down what he would like to read, not yet having reached the stage when the mind turns inwards to analyse itself. If you unexpectedly put a boy with a taste for reading in a large library and leave him to himself, he is at a loss which way to turn or what to take from the shelves. He proceeds by experiment, looking at cover after cover, half pulling out one, turning over a few leaves of another, peeping into this, and so on, till something seizes his imagination, when he will sit down on the steps at once instead of walking across the room to the luxurious easy-chair. The world of books is to the villager far more unknown than to the boy in the library, who has the books before him, while the villager looks into vacancy. What the villager would like can only be gathered from a variety of little indications which hint at the unconscious wishes of his mind. First, the idea that he would require something easy and simple like a horn-book or primer must be dismissed. Villagers are not so simple by any means. Nor do they need something written in the plainest language, specially chosen, as words of one syllable are for children. What is designed for the village must not be written down to it. The village will reject rice and corn-flour--it will only accept strong meat. The subject must be strong, the manner strong, and the language powerful. Like the highest and most cultured minds--for extremes meet--the intelligence of the villagers naturally approves the best literature. Those authors whose works have a world-wide reputation (though totally unknown by name in hamlets sixty miles from London) would be the most popular. Their antiquity matters nothing; they would be new in the hamlet. When a gentleman furnishes a library he chooses representative authors--what are called library-books--first, forming a solid groundwork to the collection. These are the very volumes the country would like. Every one when first exploring the world of books, and through them the larger world of reality, is attracted by travels and voyages. These are peculiarly interesting to country people, to whom the idea of exploration is natural. Reading such a book is like coming to a hill and seeing a fresh landscape spread out before them. There are no museums in the villages to familiarise them with the details of life in distant parts of the earth, so that every page as it is turned over brings something new. They understand the hardships of existence, hard food, exposure, the struggle with the storm, and can enter into the anxieties and privations of the earlier voyagers searching out the coast of America. They would rather read these than the most exciting novels. If they could get geography, without degrees of longitude, geography, or rather ethnography, which deals with the ways of the inhabitants, they would be delighted. All such facts being previously unknown come with the novelty of fiction. Sport, where it battles with the tigers of India, the lions of Africa, or the buffalo in America--with large game--is sure to be read with interest. There does not appear to be much demand for history, other than descriptions of great battles, not for history in the modern sense. A good account of a battle, of the actual fighting without the political movements that led to it, is eagerly read. Almost perhaps more than all these the wonders of science draw country readers. If a little book containing an intelligible and non-technical description of the electric railway were offered in the villages, it would be certain to sell. But it must not be educational in tone, because they dislike to feel that they are being taught, and they are repelled by books which profess to show the reader how to do this or that. Technical books are unsuitable; and as for the goody-goody, it is out of the question. Most of the reading-rooms started in villages by well-meaning persons have failed from the introduction of goody-goody. These are the principal subjects which the villager would select or avoid had he the opportunity to make a choice. As it is, he has to take what chance brings him, and often to be content with nothing, because he does not know what to ask for. If any one ever takes up the task of supplying the country with the sound and thoroughly first-class literature for which it is now ready, he will at least have the certain knowledge that he is engaged in a most worthy propaganda--with the likelihood of a large pecuniary reward. Such profits must of necessity be slow in the beginning, as they are in all new businesses, but they would also be slow in working off. It is a peculiarity of the country to be loyal. If country people believe in a bank, for instance--and they always believe in the first bank that comes among them--they continue to believe, and no effort whatever is necessary to keep the connection. It will be generations in dying out. So with a newspaper, so with an auctioneer--with everything. That which comes first is looked on with suspicion and distrust for a time, people are chary of having anything to do with it; but by-and-by they deal, and, having once dealt, always deal. They remain loyal; competition is of no use, the old name is the one believed in. Whoever acquires a name for the supply of the literature the country wants will retain that name for three-quarters of a century, and with a minimum of labour. At the same time the extent of country is so large that there is certainly room for several without clashing. In working out a scheme for such a supply, it may be taken for granted that books intended for the villages must be cheap. When we consider the low prices at which reprinted books, the copyrights of which have expired, are now often met with, there really seems no difficulty in this. Sixpence, a shilling, eighteenpence; nothing must be more than two shillings, and a shilling should be the general maximum. For a shilling how many clever little books are on sale on London bookstalls! If so, why should not other books adapted to the villager's wishes be on sale at a similar price in the country? Something might, perhaps, be learned in this direction from the American practice. Books in America are often sold for a few cents; good-sized books too. Thousands of books are sold in France at a franc--twopence less than the maximum of a shilling. The paper is poor, the printing nothing to boast of, the binding merely paper, but the text is there. All the villager wants is the text. Binding, the face of the printing, the quality of the paper--to these outside accidents he is perfectly indifferent. If the text only is the object, a book can be produced cheaply. On first thoughts, it appeared that much might be effected in the way of reprinting extracts from the best authors, little handbooks which could be sold at a few pence. Something, indeed, might be done in this way. But upon the whole I think that as a general rule extracts are a mistake. There is nothing so unsatisfactory as an extract. You cannot supply the preceding part nor the following with success. The extract itself loses its force and brilliance because the mind has not been prepared to perceive it by the gradual approach the author designed. It is like a face cut out of a large picture. The face may be pretty, but the meaning is lost. Such fragments of Shakspeare, for instance, as one sometimes still meets with reprinted in this way strike the mind like a fragment of rock hurled at one's head. They stun with rugged grandeur. As a rule, extracts, then, are a mistake--not as a rigid rule, but as a general principle. It would be better for the village reader to have a few books complete as to text, no matter how poorly printed, or how coarsely got up, than numerous partial reprints which lead the thoughts nowhere. There must be no censorship, nothing kept back. The weakness and narrowness of mind which still exists--curious relic of the past--among some otherwise worthy classes who persist in thinking no one must read what they dislike, must not be permitted to domineer the village bookstall. There must be absolute freedom, or the villager will turn away. His mind, though open to receive, is robust like his body, and will not accept shackles. The propaganda should be of the best productions of the highest intellects, independent of creed and party. A practical difficulty arises from the copyrights; you cannot reprint a book of which the copyright still exists without injury to the original publisher and the author. But there are many hundred books of the very best order of which the copyright has expired, and which can be reprinted without injury to any one. Then there are the books which it may be presumed would be compiled on purpose for the object in view when once the scheme was in working order. Thirdly, it is probable that many living authors when about publishing a volume would not object to an arrangement for a production in cheap form after a reasonable time. So that there is no such difficulty here but that it might be overcome. IV PLAN OF DISTRIBUTION When you have got your village library ready, how is it to be sold? How is it to be distributed and placed in the hands of the people? How are these people to be got at? They are scattered far apart, and not within sound of trumpet. Travellers, indeed, could be sent round, but travellers cost money. There is the horse and the man to attend to it, turnpikes, repairs, hotels--all the various expenses so well known in business. Each traveller could only call on a certain number of cottages and country houses per day, comparatively a small number, for they are often at long distances from each other; possibly he might find the garden gate locked and the people in the field. At the best after a long day's work he would only have sold a few dozen cheap books, and his inn bill would cover the profit upon them. Reduced thus to the rigid test of figures, the chance of success vanishes. But so, too, does the chance of success in any enterprise if looked at in this fashion. It must be borne in mind that the few copies of a cheap book sold in a day by a single traveller would not represent the ultimate possible return. The traveller prepares the ground which may yield a hundredfold afterwards. He awakens the demand and shows how it can be supplied. He teaches the villager what he wants, and how to get it. He lays the foundation of business in the future. The few pence he actually receives are the forerunners of pounds. Nothing can be accomplished without preliminary outlay. But conceding that the regulation traveller is a costly instrument, and putting that method upon one side for the present, there are other means available. There is the post. The post is a far more powerful disseminator in the country than in town. A townsman picks up twenty letters, snatches the envelopes open, and casts them aside. The letters delivered in the country have marvellously multiplied, but still country people do not treat letters offhand. The arrival of a letter or two is still an event; it is read twice or three times, put in the pocket, and looked at again. Suburban residents receive circulars by every other post of every kind and description, and cast them contemptuously aside. In the country the delivery of a circular is not so treated. It is certain to be read. Nothing may come of it, but it is certain to be looked over, and more than once. It will be left on the table, or be folded up and put on the mantelpiece: it will not be destroyed. Country people have not yet got into the habit which may be called slur-reading. They really read. The circulars at present delivered in the country are counted by ones and twos where suburban residents get scores and fifties. Almost the only firms who have found out the value of circulars in the country are the great drapery establishments, and their enterprise is richly rewarded. The volume of business thus transacted and brought to the London house by the circular is enormous. There are very few farmhouses in the country which do not contribute orders once or twice a year. Very many families get all their materials in this way, far cheaper, better, and more novel than those on sale in the country towns. Here, then, is a powerful lever ready to the hand of the publisher. Every circular sent to a country house will be read--not slurred--and will ultimately yield a return. Cottagers never receive a circular at all. If a circular came to a cottage by post it would be read and re-read, folded up neatly, and preserved. After a time--for an advertisement is exactly like seed sown in the ground--something would be done. Some incident would happen, and it would be remembered that there was something about it in the circular--some book that dealt with the subject. There is business directly. The same post that brought the original circular, distributing knowledge of books, can bring the book itself. Those who understand the importance attached by country people, and especially by cottagers, to anything that comes by post, will see the use of the circular, which must be regarded as the most effective means of reaching the rural population. Next in value to the circular is the poster. The extent to which posters are used in London, which contains a highly educated population, is proof sufficient of its utility as a disseminator. But in the country the poster has never yet been resorted to as an aid to the bookseller. The auctioneers have found out its importance, and their bills are freely dispersed in every nook and corner. There are no keener men, and they know from experience that it is the cheapest way of advertising sales. Their posters are everywhere--on walls, gate-posts, sign-posts, barns, in the bars of wayside inns. The local drapers in the market towns resort to the poster when they have a sale at "vastly reduced" prices, sending round the bill-sticker to remote hamlets and mere settlements of two or three houses. They, too, know its value, and that by it customers are attracted from the most outlying places. People in villages and hamlets pass the greater part of their time out-of-doors and are in no hurry, so that if in walking down the road to or from their work they see a bill stuck upon a wall, they invariably stop to read it. People on the London railway platforms rather blink the posters displayed around them: they would rather avoid them, though they cannot altogether. It is just the reverse in the hamlet, where the inhabitants lead such monotonous lives, and have so little excitement that a fresh poster is a good subject for conversation. No matter where you put a poster, somebody will read it, and it is only next in value to the circular, appealing to the public as the circular appeals to the individual. Here are two methods of reaching the country and of disseminating a knowledge of books other than the employment of expensive travellers. Even if travellers be called in, circular and poster should precede their efforts. There is then the advertisement column of the local press. The local press has never been used for the advertisement of such books as are suitable to country readers, certainly not for the class hitherto chiefly borne in view and for convenience designated villager. The reason why such books have not been advertised in the local press is probably because the authors and publishers had no idea of the market that exists in the country. For the most part readers in town and the suburbs only glance at the exciting portions of papers, and then cast them aside. Readers in the villages read every line from the first column to the last, from the title to the printer's address. The local papers are ploughed steadily through, just as the horses plough the fields, and every furrow conscientiously followed from end to end, advertisements and all. The brewer's, the grocer's, the draper's, the ironmonger's advertisements (market-town tradesmen), which have been there month after month, are all read, and the slightest change immediately noted. If there were any advertisement of books suitable to their taste it would be read in exactly the same manner. But in advertising for country people one fact must be steadily borne in mind--that they are slow to act; that is, the advertisement must be permanent. A few insertions are forgotten before those who have seen them have made up their minds to purchase. When an advertisement is always there, by-and-by the thought suggested acts on the will, and the stray coin is invested--it may be six months after the first inclination arose. The procrastination of country people is inexplicable to hurrying London men. But it is quite useless to advertise unless it is taken into account. If permanent, an advertisement in the local press will reach its mark. It is this permanency which gives another value to the circular and the poster; the circular is folded up and preserved to be looked at again like a book of reference; the poster remains on the dry wall of the barn, and the ink is legible months after it was first put up. Having now informed the hamlets of the books which are in existence, if complete success is desired, the next step should be to put specimens of those books before the eyes of the residents. To read of them, to know that they exist, and then to actually see them--as Londoners see them in every street--is a logical process leading to purchases. As already pointed out, there are little shops in every village and hamlet where the local paper can be obtained which would gladly expose books for sale if the offer were made to them. The same remark applies to the shops in the market towns. These, too, require to be supplied; they require the thing explained to them, and they would at once try it. Finally, let a traveller once now and then come along, and call at these shops to wake up and stir the business and change the face of the counter. Let him while in the hamlet also call at as many houses and cottages as he can manage in a few hours, leaving circulars--always circulars--behind him. There would then be a complete system of supply. SUNLIGHT IN A LONDON SQUARE [Footnote: The sunlight and the winds enter London, and the life of the fields is there too, if you will but see it.] There are days now and again when the summer broods in Trafalgar Square; the flood of light from a cloudless sky gathers and grows, thickening the air; the houses enclose the beams as water is enclosed in a cup. Sideways from the white-painted walls light is reflected; upwards from the broad, heated pavement in the centre light and heat ascend; from the blue heaven it presses downwards. Not only from the sun--one point--but from the entire width of the visible blue the brilliant stream flows. Summer is enclosed between the banks of houses--all summer's glow and glory of exceeding brightness. The blue panel overhead has but a stray fleck of cloud, a Cupid drawn on the panel in pure white, but made indefinite by distance. The joyous swallows climb high into the illuminated air till the eye, daunted by the glow, can scarce detect their white breasts as they turn. Slant shadows from the western side give but a margin of contrast; the rays are reflected through them, and they are only shadows of shadows. At the edges their faint sloping lines are seen in the air, where a million motes impart a fleeting solidity to the atmosphere. A pink-painted front, the golden eagle of the great West, golden lettering, every chance strip and speck of colour is washed in the dazzling light, made clear and evident. The hands and numerals of the clock yonder are distinct and legible, the white dial-plate polished; a window suddenly opened throws a flash across the square. Eastwards the air in front of the white walls quivers, heat and light reverberating visibly, and the dry flowers on the window-sills burn red and yellow in the glare. Southwards green trees, far down the street, stand, as it seems, almost at the foot of the chiselled tower of Parliament--chiselled in straight lines and perpendicular grooves, each of which casts a shadow into itself. Again, the corners advanced before the main wall throw shadows on it, and the hollow casements draw shadows into their cavities. Thus, in the bright light against the blue sky the tower pencils itself with a dark crayon, and is built, not of stone, but of light and shadow. Flowing lines of water rise and fall from the fountains in the square, drooping like the boughs of a weeping ash, drifted a little to one side by an imperceptible air, and there sprinkling the warm pavement in a sparkling shower. The shower of finely divided spray now advances and now retreats, as the column of water bends to the current of air, or returns to its upright position. By a pillared gateway there is a group in scarlet, and from time to time other groups in scarlet pass and repass within the barrack-court. A cream-tinted dress, a pink parasol--summer hues--go by in the stream of dark-clothed people; a flower fallen on the black water of a river. Either the light subdues the sound, or perhaps rather it renders the senses slumberous and less sensitive, but the great sunlit square is silent--silent, that is, for the largest city on earth. A slumberous silence of abundant light, of the full summer day, of the high flood of summer hours whose tide can rise no higher. A time to linger and dream under the beautiful breast of heaven, heaven brooding and descending in pure light upon man's handiwork. If the light shall thus come in, and of its mere loveliness overcome every aspect of dreariness, why shall not the light of thought, and hope--the light of the soul--overcome and sweep away the dust of our lives? I stood under the portico of the National Gallery in the shade looking southwards, across the fountains and the lions, towards the green trees under the distant tower. Once a swallow sang in passing on the wing, garrulous still as in the time of old Rome and Augustan Virgil. From the high pediments dropped the occasional chatter of sparrows and the chirp of their young in the roofs. The second brood, they were late; they would not be in time for the harvest and the fields of stubble. A flight of blue pigeons rose from the central pavement to the level line of the parapet of the western houses. A starling shot across the square, swift, straight, resolute. I looked for the swifts, but they had gone, earliest of all to leave our sky for distant countries. Away in the harvest field the reaper, pausing in his work, had glanced up at the one stray fleck of cloud in the sky, which to my fancy might be a Cupid on a blue panel, and seeing it smiled in the midst of the corn, wiping his blackened face, for he knew it meant dry weather. Heat, and the dust of the straw, the violent labour had darkened his face from brown almost to blackness--a more than swarthiness, a blackness. The stray cloud was spreading out in filaments, each thread drawn to a fineness that ended presently in disappearance. It was a sign to him of continued sunshine and the prosperity of increased wages. The sun from whose fiery brilliance I escaped into the shadow was to him a welcome friend; his neck was bare to the fierceness of the sun. His heart was gladdened because the sky promised him permission to labour till the sinews of his fingers stiffened in their crooked shape (as they held the reaping-hook), and he could hardly open them to grasp the loaf he had gained. So men laboured of old time, whether with plough or sickle or pruning-hook, in the days when Augustan Virgil heard the garrulous swallow, still garrulous. An endless succession of labour, under the brightness of summer, under the gloom of winter; to my thought it is a sadness even in the colour and light and glow of this hour of sun, this ceaseless labour, repeating the furrow, reiterating the blow, the same furrow, the same stroke--shall we never know how to lighten it, how to live with the flowers, the swallows, the sweet delicious shade, and the murmur of the stream? Not the blackened reaper only, but the crowd whose low hum renders the fountain inaudible, the nameless and unknown crowd of this immense city wreathed round about the central square. I hope that at some time, by dint of bolder thought and freer action, the world shall see a race able to enjoy it without stint, a race able to enjoy the flowers with which the physical world is strewn, the colours of the garden of life. To look backwards with the swallow there is sadness, to-day with the fleck of cloud there is unrest; but forward, with the broad sunlight, there is hope. Except you see these colours, and light, and tones, except you see the blue heaven over the parapet, you know not, you cannot feel, how great are the possibilities of man. At my back, within the gallery, there is many a canvas painted under Italian skies, in glowing Spain, in bright Southern France. There are scenes lit with the light that gleams on orange grove and myrtle; these are faces tinted with the golden hue that floats in southern air. But yet, if any one impartial will stand here outside, under the portico, and forgetting that it is prosaic London, will look at the summer enclosed within the square, and acknowledge it for itself as it is, he must admit that the view--light and colour, tone and shade--is equal to the painted canvas, is full, as it were, to the brim of interest, suggestion, and delight. Before the painted canvas you stand with prepared mind; you have come to see Italy, you are educated to find colour, and the poetry of tone. Therefore you see it, if it is there. Here in the portico you are unprepared, uneducated; no one has ever given a thought of it. But now trace out the colour and the brightness; gaze up into the sky, watch the swallows, note the sparkle of the fountain, observe the distant tower chiselled with the light and shade. Think, then, of the people, not as mere buyers and sellers, as mere counters, but as human beings--beings possessed of hearts and minds, full of the passions and the hopes and fears which made the ancient poets great merely to record. These are the same passions that were felt in antique Rome, whose very name is a section of human life. There is colour in these lives now as then. VENICE IN THE EAST END The great red bowsprit of an Australian clipper projects aslant the quay. Stem to the shore, the vessel thrusts an outstretched arm high over the land, as an oak in a glade pushes a bare branch athwart the opening. This beam is larger than an entire tree divested of its foliage, such trees, that is, as are seen in English woods. The great oaks might be bigger at the base where they swell and rest themselves on a secure pedestal. Five hundred years old an oak might measure more at six feet, at eight, or ten feet from the ground; after five hundred years, that is, of steady growth. But if even such a monarch were taken, and by some enormous mechanic power drawn out, and its substance elongated into a tapering spar, it would not be massive enough to form this single beam. Where it starts from the stem of the vessel it is already placed as high above the level of the quay as it is from the sward to the first branch of an oak. At its root it starts high overhead, high enough for a trapeze to be slung to it upon which grown persons could practise athletic exercises. From its roots, from the forward end of the deck, the red beam rises at a regular angle, diminishing in size with altitude till its end in comparison with the commencement may be called pointed, though in reality blunt. To the pointed end it would be a long climb; it would need a ladder. The dull red of the vast beam is obscured by the neutral tint of the ropes which are attached to it; colour generally gives a sense of lightness by defining shape, but this red is worn and weatherbeaten, rubbed and battered, so that its uncertain surface adds to the weight of the boom. It hangs, an immense arm thrust across the sky; it is so high it is scarcely noticed in walking under it; it is so great and ponderous, and ultra in size, that the eye and mind alike fail to estimate it. For it is a common effect of great things to be overlooked. A moderately large rock, a moderately large house, is understood and mentally put down, as it were, at a certain figure, but the immense--which is beyond the human--cannot enter the organs of the senses. The portals of the senses are not wide enough to receive it; you must turn your back on it and reflect, and add a little piece of it to another little piece, and so build up your understanding. Human things are small; you live in a large house, but the space you actually occupy is very inconsiderable; the earth itself, great as it is, is overlooked, it is too large to be seen. The eye is accustomed to the little, and cannot in a moment receive the immense. Only by slow comparison with the bulk of oak trees, by the height of a trapeze, by the climbing of a ladder, can I convey to my mind a true estimate and idea of this gigantic bowsprit. It would be quite possible to walk by and never see it because of its size, as one walks by bridges or travels over a viaduct without a thought. The vessel lies with her bowsprit projecting over the quay, moored as a boat run ashore on the quiet sandy beach of a lake, not as a ship is generally placed with her broadside to the quay wall or to the pier. Her stern is yonder--far out in the waters of the dock, too far to concern us much as we look from the verge of the wall. Access to the ship is obtained by a wooden staging running out at the side; instead of the ship lying beside the pier, a pier has been built out to fit to the ship. This plan, contrary to preconceived ideas, is evidently founded on good reason, for if such a vessel were moored broadside to the quay how much space would she take up? There would be, first, the hull itself say eighty yards, and then the immense bowsprit. Two or three such ships would, as it were, fill a whole field of water; they would fill a whole dock; it would not require many to cover a mile. By placing each stem to the quay they only occupy a space equal to their breadth instead of to their length. This arrangement, again, tends to deceive the eye; you might pass by, and, seeing only the bow, casually think there was nothing particular in it. Everything here is on so grand a scale that the largest component part is diminished; the quay, broad enough to build several streets abreast; the square, open stretches of gloomy water; and beyond these the wide river. The wind blows across these open spaces in a broad way--not as it comes in sudden gusts around a street corner, but in a broad open way, each puff a quarter of a mile wide. The view of the sky is open overhead, masts do not obstruct the upward look; the sunshine illumines or the cloud-shadows darken hundreds of acres at once. It is a great plain; a plain of enclosed waters, built in and restrained by the labour of man, and holding upon its surface fleet upon fleet, argosy upon argosy. Masts to the right, masts to the left, masts in front, masts yonder above the warehouses; masts in among the streets as steeples appear amid roofs; masts across the river hung with drooping half-furled sails; masts afar down thin and attenuated, mere dark straight lines in the distance. They await in stillness the rising of the tide. It comes, and at the exact moment--foreknown to a second--the gates are opened, and the world of ships moves outwards to the stream. Downwards they drift to the east, some slowly that have as yet but barely felt the pull of the hawser, others swiftly, and the swifter because their masts cross and pass the masts of inward-bound ships ascending. Two lines of masts, one raking one way, the other the other, cross and puzzle the eye to separate their weaving motion and to assign the rigging to the right vessel. White funnels aslant, dark funnels, red funnels rush between them; white steam curls upwards; there is a hum, a haste, almost a whirl, for the commerce of the world is crowded into the hour of the full tide. These great hulls, these crossing masts a-rake, the intertangled rigging, the background of black barges drifting downwards, the lines and ripple of the water as the sun comes out, if you look too steadily, daze the eyes and cause a sense of giddiness. It is so difficult to realise so much mass--so much bulk--moving so swiftly, and in so intertangled a manner; a mighty dance of thousands of tons--gliding, slipping, drifting onwards, yet without apparent effort. Thousands upon thousands of tons go by like shadows, silently, as if the ponderous hulls had no stability or weight; like a dream they float past, solid and yet without reality. It is a giddiness to watch them. This happens, not on one day only, not one tide, but at every tide and every day the year through, year after year. The bright summer sun glows upon it; the red sun of the frosty hours of winter looks at it from under the deepening canopy of vapour the blasts of the autumnal equinox howl over the vast city and whistle shrilly in the rigging; still at every tide the world of ships moves out into the river. Why does not a painter come here and place the real romance of these things upon canvas, as Venice has been placed? Never twice alike, the changing atmosphere is reflected in the hue of the varnished masts, now gleaming, now dull, now dark. Till it has been painted, and sung by poet, and described by writers, nothing is human. Venice has been made human by poet, painter, and dramatist, yet what was Venice to this--this the Fact of our own day? Two of the caravels of the Doge's fleet, two of Othello's strongest war-ships, could scarcely carry the mast of my Australian clipper. At a guess it is four feet through; it is of iron, tubular; there is room for a winding spiral staircase within it; as for its height, I will not risk a guess at it. Could Othello's war-ships carry it they would consider it a feat, as the bringing of the Egyptian obelisk to London was thought a feat. The petty ripples of the Adriatic, what were they? This red bowsprit at its roots is high enough to suspend a trapeze; at its head a ladder would be required to mount it from the quay; yet by-and-by, when the tide at last comes, and its time arrives to move outwards in the dance of a million tons, this mighty bowsprit, meeting the Atlantic rollers in the Bay of Biscay, will dip and bury itself in foam under the stress of the vast sails aloft. The forty-feet billows of the Pacific will swing these three or four thousand or more tons, this giant hull which must be moored even stem to shore, up and down and side to side as a handful in the grasp of the sea. Now, each night as the clouds part, the north star looks down upon the deck; then, the Southern Cross will be visible in the sky, words quickly written, but half a globe apart. What was there in Venice to arouse thoughts such as spring from the sight of this red bowsprit? In two voyages my Australian clipper shall carry as much merchandise as shall equal the entire commerce of Venice for a year. Yet it is not the volume, not the bulk only; cannot you see the white sails swelling, and the proud vessel rising to the Pacific billows, the north star sinking, and the advent of the Southern Cross; the thousand miles of ocean without land around, the voyage through space made visible as sea, the far, far south, the transit around a world? If Italian painters had had such things as these to paint, if poets of old time had had such things as these to sing, do you imagine they would have been contented with crank caravels and tales thrice told already? They had eyes to see that which was around them. Open your eyes and see those things which are around us at this hour. THE PIGEONS AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM The front of the British Museum stands in the sunlight clearly marked against the firm blue of the northern sky. The blue appears firm as if solid above the angle of the stonework, for while looking towards it--towards the north--the rays do not come through the azure, which is therefore colour without life. It seems nearer than the southern sky, it descends and forms a close background to the building; as you approach you seem to come nearer to the blue surface rising at its rear. The dark edges of sloping stone are distinct and separate, but not sharp; the hue of the stone is toned by time and weather, and is so indefinite as to have lost its hardness. Those small rounded bodies upon the cornice are pigeons resting in the sun, so motionless and neutral-tinted that they might be mistaken for some portion of the carving. A double gilt ring, a circle in a circle, at the feet of an allegorical figure gleams brightly against the dark surface. The sky already seems farther away seen between the boles of stone, perpetual shade dwells in their depth, but two or three of the pigeons fluttering down are searching for food on the sunlit gravel at the bottom of the steps. To them the building is merely a rock, pierced with convenient caverns; they use its exterior for their purpose, but penetrate no farther. With air and light, the sunlit gravel, the green lawn between it and the outer railings--with these they are concerned, and with these only. The heavy roll of the traffic in Oxford Street, audible here, is nothing to them; the struggle for money does not touch them, they let it go by. Nor the many minds searching and re-searching in the great Library, this mental toil is no more to them than the lading of the waggons in the street. Neither the tangible product nor the intellectual attainment is of any value--only the air and light. There are idols in the galleries within upon whose sculptured features the hot Eastern sun shone thousands of years since. They were made by human effort, however mistaken, and they were the outcome of human thought and handiwork. The doves fluttered about the temples in those days, full only of the air and light. They fluttered about the better temples of Greece and round the porticos where philosophy was born. Still only the light, the sunlight, the air of heaven. We labour on and think, and carve our idols and the pen never ceases from its labour; but the lapse of the centuries has left us in the same place. The doves who have not laboured nor travailed in thought possess the sunlight. Is not theirs the preferable portion? The shade deepens as I turn from the portico to the hall and vast domed house of books. The half-hearted light under the dome is stagnant and dead. For it is the nature of light to beat and throb; it has a pulse and undulation like the swing of the sea. Under the trees in the woodlands it vibrates and lives; on the hills there is a resonance of light. It beats against every leaf, and, thrown back, beats again; it is agitated with the motion of the grass blades; you can feel it ceaselessly streaming on your face. It is renewed and fresh every moment, and never twice do you see the same ray. Stayed and checked by the dome and book-built walls, the beams lose their elasticity, and the ripple ceases in the motionless pool. The eyes, responding, forget to turn quickly, and only partially see. Deeper thought and inspiration quit the heart, for they can only exist where the light vibrates and communicates its tone to the soul. If any imagine they shall find thought in many books, certainly they will be disappointed. Thought dwells by the stream and sea, by the hill and in the woodland, in the sunlight and free wind, where the wild dove haunts. Walls and roof shut it off as they shut off the undulation of light. The very lightning cannot penetrate here. A murkiness marks the coming of the cloud, and the dome becomes vague, but the fierce flash is shorn to a pale reflection, and the thunder is no more than the rolling of a heavier truck loaded with tomes. But in closing out the sky, with it is cut off all that the sky can tell you with its light, or in its passion of storm. Sitting at these long desks and trying to read, I soon find that I have made a mistake; it is not here I shall find that which I seek. Yet the magic of books draws me here time after time, to be as often disappointed. Something in a book tempts the mind as pictures tempt the eye; the eye grows weary of pictures, but looks again. The mind wearies of books, yet cannot forget that once when they were first opened in youth they gave it hope of knowledge. Those first books exhausted, there is nothing left but words and covers. It seems as if all the books in the world--really books--can be bought for L10. Man's whole thought is purchaseable at that small price, for the value of a watch, of a good dog. For the rest it is repetition and paraphrase. The grains of wheat were threshed out and garnered two thousand years since. Except the receipts of chemists, except specifications for the steam-engine, or the electric motor, there is nothing in these millions of books that was not known at the commencement of our era. Not a thought has been added. Continual threshing has widened out the heap of straw and spread it abroad, but it is empty. Nothing will ever be found in it. Those original grains of true thought were found beside the stream, the sea, in the sunlight, at the shady verge of woods. Let us leave this beating and turning over of empty straw; let us return to the stream and the hills; let us ponder by night in view of the stars. It is pleasant to go out again into the portico under the great columns. On the threshold I feel nearer knowledge than when within. The sun shines, and southwards above the houses there is a statue crowning the summit of some building. The figure is in the midst of the light; it stands out clear and white as if in Italy. The southern blue is luminous--the beams of light flow through it--the air is full of the undulation and life of light. There is rest in gazing at the sky: a sense that wisdom does exist and may be found, a hope returns that was taken away among the books. The green lawn is pleasant to look at, though it is mown so ruthlessly. If they would only let the grass spring up, there would be a thought somewhere entangled in the long blades as a dewdrop sparkles in their depths. Seats should be placed here, under the great columns or by the grass, so that one might enjoy the sunshine after books and watch the pigeons. They have no fear of the people, they come to my feet, but the noise of a door heavily swinging-to in the great building alarms them; they rise and float round, and return again. The sunlight casts a shadow of the pigeon's head and neck upon his shoulder; he turns his head, and the shadow of his beak falls on his breast. Iridescent gleams of bronze and green and blue play about his neck; blue predominates. His pink feet step so near, the red round his eye is visible. As he rises vertically, forcing his way in a straight line upwards, his wings almost meet above his back and again beneath the body; they are put forth to his full stroke. When his flight inclines and becomes gradually horizontal, the effort is less and the wing tips do not approach so closely. They have not laboured in mental searching as we have; they have not wasted their time looking among empty straw for the grain that is not there. They have been in the sunlight. Since the days of ancient Greece the doves have remained in the sunshine; we who have laboured have found nothing. In the sunshine, by the shady verge of woods, by the sweet waters where the wild dove sips, there alone will thought be found. THE PLAINEST CITY IN EUROPE The fixed perspective of Paris neither elongates nor contracts with any change of atmosphere, so that the apparent distance from one point to another remains always the same. Reduced to the simplest elements the street architecture of Paris consists of two parallel lines, which to the eye appear to gradually converge. In sunshine and shade the sides of the street approach in an unvarying ratio; a cloud goes over, and the lines do not soften; brilliant light succeeds, and is merely light--no effect accompanies it. The architecture conquers, and is always architecture; it resists the sun, the air, the rain, being without expression. The geometry of the street can never be forgotten. Moving along it you have merely advanced so far along a perspective, between the two lines which tutors rule to teach drawing. By-and-by, when you reach the other end and look back, the perspective is accurately reversed. This is now the large end of the street, and that which has been left the small. The houses seen from this end present precisely the same facade as they did at starting, so that were it not for the sense of weariness from walking it would be easy to imagine that no movement had taken place. Each house is exactly the same height as the next, the windows are of the same pattern, the wooden outer blinds the same shape; the line of the level roof runs along straight and unbroken, the chimneys are either invisible or insignificant. Nothing projects, no bow window, balcony, or gable; the surface is as flat as well can be. From parapet to pavement the wall descends plumb, and the glance slips along it unchecked. Each house is exactly the same colour as the next, white; the wooden outer blinds are all the same colour, a dull grey; in the windows there are no visible red, or green, or tapestry curtains, mere sashes. There are no flowers in the windows to catch the sunlight. The upper storeys have the air of being uninhabited, as the windows have no curtains whatever, and the wooden blinds are frequently closed. Two flat vertical surfaces, one on each side of the street, each white and grey, extend onwards and approach in mathematical ratio. That is a Parisian street. Go on now to the next street, and you find precisely the same conditions repeated--the streets that cross are similar, those that radiate the same. Some are short, others long, some wide, some narrow; they are all geometry and white paint. The vast avenues, a rifle-shot across, such as the Avenue de l'Opera, differ only in width and in the height of the houses. The monotony of these gigantic houses is too great to be expressed. Then across the end of the avenue they throw some immense facade--some public building, an opera-house, a palace, a ministry, anything will do--in order that you shall see nothing but Paris. Weary of the gigantic monotony of the gigantic houses, exactly alike, your eye shall not catch a glimpse of some distant cloud rising like a snowy mountain (as Japanese artists show the top of Fusiyama); you shall not see the breadth of the sky, nor even any steeple, tower, dome, or gable; you shall see nothing but Paris; the avenue is wide enough for the Grand Army to march down, but the exit to the eye is blocked by this immense meaningless facade drawn across it. No doubt it is executed in the "highest style"; in effect it appears a repetition of windows, columns, and doorways exactly alike, all quite meaningless, for the columns support nothing, like the fronts sold in boxes of children's toy bricks. Perhaps on the roof there is some gilding, and you ask yourself the question why it is there. These facades, of which there are so many, vary in detail; in effect they are all the same, an utter weariness to the eye. Every fresh day's research into the city brings increasing disappointment, a sense of the childish, of feebleness, and weakness exhibited in public, as if they had built in sugar for the top of a cake. The level ground will not permit of any advantage of view; there are none of those sudden views so common and so striking in English towns. Everything is planed, smoothed, and set to an oppressive regularity. Turning round a corner one comes suddenly on a pillar of a dingy, dull hue, whose outline bulges unpleasantly. In London you would shrug your shoulders, mutter "hideous!" and pass on. This is the famous Vendome Column. As for the Column of July, it is so insignificant, so silly (no other word expresses it so well), that a second glance is carefully avoided. The Hotel de Ville, a vast white building, is past description, it is so plain and so repellent in its naked glaring assertion. From about old Notre Dame they have removed every medieval outwork which had grown up around and rendered it lifelike; it now rises perpendicular and abrupt from the white surface of the square. Unless you had been told that it was the Notre Dame of Victor Hugo you would not look at its exterior twice. The interior is another matter. In external form Notre Dame cannot enter into competition with Canterbury. The barrack-like Hotel des Invalides, the tomb of Napoleon--was ever a tomb so miserably lacking in all that should inspire a reverential feeling? The marble tub in which the urn is sunk, the gilded chapel, and the yellow windows--could anything be more artificial and less appropriate? They jar on the senses, they insult the torn flags which were carried by the veterans at Austerlitz, and which now droop, never again to be unfurled to the wind of battle. The tiny Seine might as well flow in a tunnel, being bridged so much. There remains but the Arc de Triomphe, the only piece of architecture in all modern Paris worth a second look. Even this is spoiled by the same intolerable artificiality. The ridiculous sculpture on the face, the figures blowing trumpets, and, above all, the group on the summit, which the tongue of man cannot describe, so utterly hideous is it, destroy the noble lines of the arch, if any one is so imprudent as to approach near it. Receding down the Avenue Friedland--somewhat aslant--the chestnut trees presently conceal the side sculpture; and then by tilting one's hat so that the brim shall hide the group on the summit, it is possible to admire the proportions of the Arc. In the Tuileries gardens there is a spot where distance obliterates the sculpture, and the projecting bough of an elm conceals the group on the top. Here the arch appears noble; but it is no longer French; it is now merely a copy of a Roman original, which any of our own architects could erect for us in Hyde Park. For the most part the vaunted Boulevards are but planted with planes, the least pleasing of trees, whose leaves present an unvarying green, till they drop a dead brown; and the horse-chestnuts in the Champs Elysees are set in straight lines to repeat the geometry of the streets. Thus central Paris has no character. It is without individuality and expressionless. Suppose you said, "The human face is really very irregular; it requires shaping. This nose projects; here, let us flatten it to the level of the cheek. This mouth curves at the corners; let us cut it straight. These eyebrows arch; make them straight. This colour is too flesh-like; bring white paint. Besides, the features move, they laugh, they assume sadness; this is wrong. Here, divide the muscles, that they may hence forth remain in unvarying rigidity." That is what has been done to Paris. It is made straight; it is idealised after Euclid; it is stiff, wearisome, and feeble. Lastly, it has no expression. The distances as observed at the commencement remain always the same, partly because of the obtrusive geometry and the monotony, partly because of the whiteness, and partly because of the peculiarity of the atmosphere, for which of course the Parisian is not responsible, but should have remembered in building. Advantage might surely have been taken of so clear an air in some manner. The colour and tone, the light and shade, the change and variety of London are entirely wanting; in short, Paris is the plainest city in Europe. 
18629	----	NATURE NEAR LONDON BY RICHARD JEFFERIES AUTHOR OF "THE LIFE OF THE FIELDS," "THE OPEN AIR," ETC. [Illustration] FINE-PAPER EDITION LONDON CHATTO & WINDUS 1905 Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. At the Ballantyne Press PREFACE It is usually supposed to be necessary to go far into the country to find wild birds and animals in sufficient numbers to be pleasantly studied. Such was certainly my own impression till circumstances led me, for the convenience of access to London, to reside for awhile about twelve miles from town. There my preconceived views on the subject were quite overthrown by the presence of as much bird-life as I had been accustomed to in distant fields and woods. First, as the spring began, came crowds of chiffchaffs and willow-wrens, filling the furze with ceaseless flutterings. Presently a nightingale sang in a hawthorn bush only just on the other side of the road. One morning, on looking out of window, there was a hen pheasant in the furze almost underneath. Rabbits often came out into the spaces of sward between the bushes. The furze itself became a broad surface of gold, beautiful to look down upon, with islands of tenderest birch green interspersed, and willows in which the sedge-reedling chattered. They used to say in the country that cuckoos were getting scarce, but here the notes of the cuckoo echoed all day long, and the birds often flew over the house. Doves cooed, blackbirds whistled, thrushes sang, jays called, wood-pigeons uttered the old familiar notes in the little copse hard by. Even a heron went over now and then, and in the evening from the window I could hear partridges calling each other to roost. Along the roads and lanes the quantity and variety of life in the hedges was really astonishing. Magpies, jays, woodpeckers--both green and pied--kestrels hovering overhead, sparrow-hawks darting over gateways, hares by the clover, weasels on the mounds, stoats at the edge of the corn. I missed but two birds, the corncrake and the grasshopper lark, and found these another season. Two squirrels one day ran along the palings and up into a guelder-rose tree in the garden. As for the finches and sparrows their number was past calculation. There was material for many years' observation, and finding myself so unexpectedly in the midst of these things, I was led to make the following sketches, which were published in _The Standard_, and are now reprinted by permission. The question may be asked: Why have you not indicated in every case the precise locality where you were so pleased? Why not mention the exact hedge, the particular meadow? Because no two persons look at the same thing with the same eyes. To me this spot may be attractive, to you another; a third thinks yonder gnarled oak the most artistic. Nor could I guarantee that every one should see the same things under the same conditions of season, time, or weather. How could I arrange for you next autumn to see the sprays of the horse-chestnut, scarlet from frost, reflected in the dark water of the brook? There might not be any frost till all the leaves had dropped. How could I contrive that the cuckoos should circle round the copse, the sunlight glint upon the stream, the warm sweet wind come breathing over the young corn just when I should wish you to feel it? Every one must find their own locality. I find a favourite wild-flower here, and the spot is dear to me; you find yours yonder. Neither painter nor writer can show the spectator their originals. It would be very easy, too, to pass any of these places and see nothing, or but little. Birds are wayward, wild creatures uncertain. The tree crowded with wood-pigeons one minute is empty the next. To traverse the paths day by day, and week by week; to keep an eye ever on the fields from year's end to year's end, is the one only method of knowing what really is in or comes to them. That the sitting gambler sweeps the board is true of these matters. The richest locality may be apparently devoid of interest just at the juncture of a chance visit. Though my preconceived ideas were overthrown by the presence of so much that was beautiful and interesting close to London, yet in course of time I came to understand what was at first a dim sense of something wanting. In the shadiest lane, in the still pinewoods, on the hills of purple heath, after brief contemplation there arose a restlessness, a feeling that it was essential to be moving. In no grassy mead was there a nook where I could stretch myself in slumberous ease and watch the swallows ever wheeling, wheeling in the sky. This was the unseen influence of mighty London. The strong life of the vast city magnetised me, and I felt it under the calm oaks. The something wanting in the fields was the absolute quiet, peace, and rest which dwells in the meadows and under the trees and on the hilltops in the country. Under its power the mind gradually yields itself to the green earth, the wind among the trees, the song of birds, and comes to have an understanding with them all. For this it is still necessary to seek the far-away glades and hollow coombes, or to sit alone beside the sea. That such a sense of quiet might not be lacking, I have added a chapter or so on those lovely downs that overlook the south coast. R. J. CONTENTS PAGE Woodlands 1 Footpaths 12 Flocks of Birds 24 Nightingale Road 35 A Brook 48 A London Trout 59 A Barn 70 Wheatfields 80 The Crows 90 Heathlands 101 The River 111 Nutty Autumn 124 Round a London Copse 133 Magpie Fields 147 Herbs 162 Trees About Town 172 To Brighton 181 The Southdown Shepherd 193 The Breeze on Beachy Head 204 NATURE NEAR LONDON WOODLANDS The tiny white petals of the barren strawberry open under the April sunshine which, as yet unchecked by crowded foliage above, can reach the moist banks under the trees. It is then that the first stroll of the year should be taken in Claygate Lane. The slender runners of the strawberries trail over the mounds among the moss, some of the flowers but just above the black and brown leaves of last year which fill the shallow ditch. These will presently be hidden under the grass which is pushing up long blades, and bending over like a plume. Crimson stalks and leaves of herb Robert stretch across the little cavities of the mound; lower, and rising almost from the water of the ditch, the wild parsnip spreads its broad fan. Slanting among the underwood, against which it leans, the dry white "gix" (cow-parsnip) of last year has rotted from its root, and is only upheld by branches. Yellowish green cup-like leaves are forming upon the brown and drooping heads of the spurge, which, sheltered by the bushes, has endured the winter's frosts. The lads pull them off, and break the stems, to watch the white "milk" well up, the whole plant being full of acrid juice. Whorls of woodruff and grass-like leaves of stitchwort are rising; the latter holds but feebly to the earth, and even in snatching the flower the roots sometimes give way and the plant is lifted with it. Upon either hand the mounds are so broad that they in places resemble covers rather than hedges, thickly grown with bramble and briar, hazel and hawthorn, above which the straight trunks of young oaks and Spanish chestnuts stand in crowded but careless ranks. The leaves which dropped in the preceding autumn from these trees still lie on the ground under the bushes, dry and brittle, and the blackbirds searching about among them cause as much rustling as if some animal were routing about. As the month progresses these wide mounds become completely green, hawthorn and bramble, briar and hazel put forth their leaves, and the eye can no longer see into the recesses. But above, the oaks and edible chestnuts are still dark and leafless, almost black by contrast with the vivid green beneath them. Upon their bare boughs the birds are easily seen, but the moment they descend among the bushes are difficult to find. Chaffinches call and challenge continually--these trees are their favourite resort--and yellowhammers flit along the underwood. Behind the broad hedge are the ploughed fields they love, alternating with meadows down whose hedges again a stream of birds is always flowing to the lane. Bright as are the colours of the yellowhammer, when he alights among the brown clods of the ploughed field he is barely visible, for brown conceals like vapour. A white butterfly comes fluttering along the lane, and as it passes under a tree a chaffinch swoops down and snaps at it, but rises again without doing apparent injury, for the butterfly continues its flight. From an oak overhead comes the sweet slender voice of a linnet, the sunshine falling on his rosy breast. The gateways show the thickness of the hedge, as an embrasure shows the thickness of a wall. One gives entrance to an arable field which has been recently rolled, and along the gentle rise of a "land" a cock-pheasant walks, so near that the ring about his neck is visible. Presently, becoming conscious that he is observed, he goes down into a furrow, and is then hidden. The next gateway, equally deep-set between the bushes, opens on a pasture, where the docks of last year still cumber the ground, and bunches of rough grass and rushes are scattered here and there. A partridge separated from his mate is calling across the field, and comes running over the short sward as his companion answers. With his neck held high and upright, stretched to see around, he looks larger than would be supposed, as he runs swiftly, threading his way through the tufts, the docks, and the rushes. But suddenly noticing that the gateway is not clear, he crouches, and is concealed by the grass. Some distance farther there is a stile, sitting upon which the view ranges over two adjacent meadows. They are bounded by a copse of ash stoles and young oak trees, and the lesser of the meads is full of rush bunches and dotted with green ant-hills. Among these, just beyond gunshot, two rabbits are feeding; pausing and nibbling till they have eaten the tenderest blades, and then leisurely hopping a yard or so to another spot. Later on in the summer this little meadow which divides the lane from the copse is alive with rabbits. Along the hedge the brake fern has then grown, in the corner by the copse there is a beautiful mass of it, and several detached bunches away from the hedge among the ant-hills. From out of the fern, which is a favourite retreat with them, rabbits are continually coming, feeding awhile, darting after each other, and back again to cover. To-day there are but three, and they do not venture far from their buries. Watching these, a green woodpecker cries in the copse, and immediately afterwards flies across the mead, and away to another plantation. Occasionally the spotted woodpecker may be seen here, a little bird which, in the height of summer, is lost among the foliage, but in spring and winter can be observed tapping at the branches of the trees. I think I have seen more spotted woodpeckers near London than in far distant and nominally wilder districts. This lane, for some two miles, is lined on each side with trees, and, besides this particular copse, there are several others close by; indeed, stretching across the country to another road, there is a succession of copses, with meadows between. Birds which love trees are naturally seen flitting to and fro in the lane; the trees are at present young, but as they grow older and decay they will be still more resorted to. Jays screech in the trees of the lane almost all the year round, though more frequently in spring and autumn, but I rarely walked here without seeing or hearing one. Beyond the stile, the lane descends into a hollow, and is bordered by a small furze common, where, under shelter of the hollow brambles and beneath the golden bloom of the furze, the pale anemones flower. When the June roses open their petals on the briars, and the scent of new-mown hay is wafted over the hedge from the meadows, the lane seems to wind through a continuous wood. The oaks and chestnuts, though too young to form a complete arch, cross their green branches, and cast a delicious shadow. For it is in the shadow that we enjoy the summer, looking forth from the gateway upon the mowing grass where the glowing sun pours down his fiercest beams. Tall bennets and red sorrel rise above the grass, white ox-eye daisies chequer it below; the distant hedge quivers as the air, set in motion by the intense heat, runs along. The sweet murmuring coo of the turtle dove comes from the copse, and the rich notes of the blackbird from the oak into which he has mounted to deliver them. Slight movements in the hawthorn, or in the depths of the tall hedge grasses, movements too quick for the glance to catch their cause, are where some tiny bird is passing from spray to spray. It may be a white-throat creeping among the nettles after his wont, or a wren. The spot where he was but a second since may be traced by the trembling of the leaves, but the keenest attention may fail to detect where he is now. That slight motion in the hedge, however, conveys an impression of something living everywhere within. There are birds in the oaks overhead whose voice is audible though they are themselves unseen. From out of the mowing grass, finches rise and fly to the hedge; from the hedge again others fly out, and, descending into the grass, are concealed as in a forest. A thrush travelling along the hedgerow just outside goes by the gateway within a yard. Bees come upon the light wind, gliding with it, but with their bodies aslant across the line of current. Butterflies flutter over the mowing grass, hardly clearing the bennets. Many-coloured insects creep up the sorrel stems and take wing from the summit. Everything gives forth a sound of life. The twittering of swallows from above, the song of greenfinches in the trees, the rustle of hawthorn sprays moving under the weight of tiny creatures, the buzz upon the breeze; the very flutter of the butterflies' wings, noiseless as it is, and the wavy movement of the heated air across the field cause a sense of motion and of music. The leaves are enlarging, and the sap rising, and the hard trunks of the trees swelling with its flow; the grass blades pushing upwards; the seeds completing their shape; the tinted petals uncurling. Dreamily listening, leaning on the gate, all these are audible to the inner senses, while the ear follows the midsummer hum, now sinking, now sonorously increasing over the oaks. An effulgence fills the southern boughs, which the eye cannot sustain, but which it knows is there. The sun at its meridian pours forth his light, forgetting, in all the inspiration of his strength and glory, that without an altar-screen of green his love must scorch. Joy in life; joy in life. The ears listen, and want more: the eyes are gratified with gazing, and desire yet further; the nostrils are filled with the sweet odours of flower and sap. The touch, too, has its pleasures, dallying with leaf and flower. Can you not almost grasp the odour-laden air and hold it in the hollow of the hand? Leaving the spot at last, and turning again into the lane, the shadows dance upon the white dust under the feet, irregularly circular spots of light surrounded with umbra shift with the shifting branches. By the wayside lie rings of dandelion stalks carelessly cast down by the child who made them, and tufts of delicate grasses gathered for their beauty but now sprinkled with dust. Wisps of hay hang from the lower boughs of the oaks where they brushed against the passing load. After a time, when the corn is ripening, the herb betony flowers on the mounds under the oaks. Following the lane down the hill and across the small furze common at the bottom, the marks of traffic fade away, the dust ceases, and is succeeded by sward. The hedgerows on either side are here higher than ever, and are thickly fringed with bramble bushes, which sometimes encroach on the waggon ruts in the middle, and are covered with flowers, and red, and green, and ripe blackberries together. Green rushes line the way, and green dragon flies dart above them. Thistledown is pouting forth from the swollen tops of thistles crowded with seed. In a gateway the turf has been worn away by waggon wheels and the hoofs of cart horses, and the dry heat has pulverised the crumbling ruts. Three hen pheasants and a covey of partridges that have been dusting themselves here move away without much haste at the approach of footsteps--the pheasants into the thickets, and the partridges through the gateway. The shallow holes in which they were sitting can be traced on the dust, and there are a few small feathers lying about. A barley field is within the gate; the mowers have just begun to cut it on the opposite side. Next to it is a wheat field; the wheat has been cut and stands in shocks. From the stubble by the nearest shock two turtle doves rise, alarmed, and swiftly fly towards a wood which bounds the field. This wood, indeed, upon looking again, clearly bounds not this field only, but the second and the third, and so far as the eye can see over the low hedges of the corn, the trees continue. The green lane as it enters the wood, becomes wilder and rougher at every step, widening, too, considerably. In the centre the wheels of timber carriages, heavily laden with trunks of trees which were dragged through by straining teams in the rainy days of spring, have left vast ruts, showing that they must have sunk to the axle in the soft clay. These then filled with water, and on the water duck-weed grew, and aquatic grasses at the sides. Summer heats have evaporated the water, leaving the weeds and grasses prone upon the still moist earth. Rushes have sprung up and mark the line of the ruts, and willow stoles, bramble bushes, and thorns growing at the side, make, as it were, a third hedge in the middle of the lane. The best path is by the wood itself, but even there occasional leaps are necessary over pools of dark water full of vegetation. These alternate with places where the ground, being higher, yawns with wide cracks crumbling at the edge, the heat causing the clay to split and open. In winter it must be an impassable quagmire; now it is dry and arid. Rising out of this low-lying spot the lane again becomes green and pleasant, and is crossed by another. At the meeting of these four ways some boughs hang over a green bank where I have often rested. In front the lane is barred by a gate, but beyond the gate it still continues its straight course into the wood. To the left the track, crossing at right angles, also proceeds into the wood, but it is so overhung with trees and blocked by bushes that its course after the first hundred yards or so cannot be traced. To the right the track--a little wider and clearer of bushes--extends through wood, and as it is straight and rises up a gentle slope, the eye can travel along it half a mile. There is nothing but wood around. This track to the right appears the most used, and has some ruts in the centre. The sward each side is concealed by endless thistles, on the point of sending forth clouds of thistledown, and to which presently the goldfinches will be attracted. Occasionally a movement among the thistles betrays the presence of a rabbit; only occasionally, for though the banks are drilled with buries, the lane is too hot for them at midday. Particles of rabbits' fur lie on the ground, and their runs are visible in every direction. But there are no birds. A solitary robin, indeed, perches on an ash branch opposite, and regards me thoughtfully. It is impossible to go anywhere in the open air without a robin; they are the very spies of the wood. But there are no thrushes, no blackbirds, finches, nor even sparrows. In August it is true most birds cease to sing, but sitting thus partially hidden and quiet, if there were any about something would be heard of them. There would be a rustling, a thrush would fly across the lane, a blackbird would appear by the gateway yonder in the shadow which he loves, a finch would settle in the oaks. None of these incidents occur; none of the lesser signs of life in the foliage, the tremulous spray, the tap of a bill cleaned by striking first one side and then the other against a bough, the rustle of a wing--nothing. There are woods, woods, woods; but no birds. Yonder a drive goes straight into the ashpoles, it is green above and green below, but a long watch will reveal nothing living. The dry mounds must be full of rabbits, there must be pheasants somewhere; but nothing visible. Once only a whistling sound in the air directs the glance upwards, it is a wood-pigeon flying at full speed. There are no bees, for there are no flowers. There are no butterflies. The black flies are not numerous, and rarely require a fanning from the ash spray carried to drive them off. Two large dragon-flies rush up and down, and cross the lane, and rising suddenly almost to the tops of the oaks swoop down again in bold sweeping curves. The broad, deep ditch between the lane and the mound of the wood is dry, but there are no short rustling sounds of mice. The only sound is the continuous singing of the grasshoppers, and the peculiar snapping noise they make as they spring, leaping along the sward. The fierce sun of the ripe wheat pours down a fiery glow scarcely to be borne except under the boughs; the hazel leaves already have lost their green, the tips of the rushes are shrivelling, the grass becoming brown; it is a scorched and parched desert of wood. The finches have gone forth in troops to the stubble where the wheat has been cut, and where they can revel on the seeds of the weeds now ripe. Thrushes and blackbirds have gone to the streams, to splash and bathe, and to the mown meadows, where in the short aftermath they can find their food. There they will look out on the shady side of the hedge as the sun declines, six or eight perhaps of them along the same hedge, but all in the shadow, where the dew forms first as the evening falls, where the grass feels cool and moist, while still on the sunny side it is warm and dry. The bees are busy on the heaths and along the hilltops, where there are still flowers and honey, and the butterflies are with them. So the woods are silent, still, and deserted, save by a stray rabbit among the thistles, and the grasshoppers ceaselessly leaping in the grass. Returning presently to the gateway just outside the wood, where upon first coming the pheasants and partridges were dusting themselves, a waggon is now passing among the corn and is being laden with the sheaves. But afar off, across the broad field and under the wood, it seems somehow only a part of the silence and the solitude. The men with it move about the stubble, calmly toiling; the horses, having drawn it a little way, become motionless, reposing as they stand, every line of their large limbs expressing delight in physical ease and idleness. Perhaps the heat has made the men silent, for scarcely a word is spoken; if it were, in the stillness it must be heard, though they are at some distance. The wheels, well greased for the heavy harvest work, do not creak. Save an occasional monosyllable, as the horses are ordered on, or to stop, and a faint rustling of straw, there is no sound. It may be the flood of brilliant light, or the mirage of the heat, but in some way the waggon and its rising load, the men and the horses, have an unreality of appearance. The yellow wheat and stubble, the dull yellow of the waggon, toned down by years of weather, the green woods near at hand, darkening in the distance and slowly changing to blue, the cloudless sky, the heat-suffused atmosphere, in which things seem to float rather than to grow or stand, the shadowless field, all are there, and yet are not there, but far away and vision-like. The waggon, at last laden, travels away, and seems rather to disappear of itself than to be hidden by the trees. It is an effort to awake and move from the spot. FOOTPATHS "Always get over a stile," is the one rule that should ever be borne in mind by those who wish to see the land as it really is--that is to say, never omit to explore a footpath, for never was there a footpath yet which did not pass something of interest. In the meadows, everything comes pressing lovingly up to the path. The small-leaved clover can scarce be driven back by frequent footsteps from endeavouring to cover the bare earth of the centre. Tall buttercups, round whose stalks the cattle have carefully grazed, stand in ranks; strong ox-eye daisies, with broad white disks and torn leaves, form with the grass the tricolour of the pasture--white, green, and gold. When the path enters the mowing grass, ripe for the scythe, the simplicity of these cardinal hues is lost in the multitude of shades and the addition of other colours. The surface of mowing grass is indeed made up of so many tints that at the first glance it is confusing; and hence, perhaps, it is that hardly ever has an artist succeeded in getting the effect upon canvas. Of the million blades of grass no two are of the same shade. Pluck a handful and spread them out side by side and this is at once evident. Nor is any single blade the same shade all the way up. There may be a faint yellow towards the root, a full green about the middle, at the tip perhaps the hot sun has scorched it, and there is a trace of brown. The older grass, which comes up earliest, is distinctly different in tint from that which has but just reached its greatest height, and in which the sap has not yet stood still. Under all there is the new grass, short, sweet, and verdant, springing up fresh between the old, and giving a tone to the rest as you look down into the bunches. Some blades are nearly grey, some the palest green, and among them others, torn from the roots perhaps by rooks searching for grubs, are quite white. The very track of a rook through the grass leaves a different shade each side, as the blades are bent or trampled down. The stalks of the bennets vary, some green, some yellowish, some brown, some approaching whiteness, according to age and the condition of the sap. Their tops, too, are never the same, whether the pollen clings to the surface or whether it has gone. Here the green is almost lost in red, or quite; here the grass has a soft, velvety look; yonder it is hard and wiry, and again graceful and drooping. Here there are bunches so rankly verdant that no flower is visible and no other tint but dark green; here it is thin and short, and the flowers, and almost the turf itself, can be seen; then there is an array of bennets (stalks which bear the grass-seed) with scarcely any grass proper. Every variety of grass--and they are many--has its own colour, and every blade of every variety has its individual variations of that colour. The rain falls, and there is a darker tint at large upon the field, fresh but darker; the sun shines and at first the hue is lighter, but presently if the heat last a brown comes. The wind blows, and immediately as the waves of grass roll across the meadow a paler tint follows it. A clouded sky dulls the herbage, a cloudless heaven brightens it, so that the grass almost reflects the firmament like water. At sunset the rosy rays bring out every tint of red or purple. At noonday, watch as alternate shadow and sunshine come one after the other as the clouds are wafted over. By moonlight perhaps the white ox-eyed daisies show the most. But never will you find the mowing grass in the same field looking twice alike. Come again the day after to-morrow only, and there is a change; some of the grass is riper, some is thicker, with further blades which have pushed up, some browner. Cold northern winds cause it to wear a dry, withered aspect; under warm showers it visibly opens itself; in a hurricane it tosses itself wildly to and fro; it laughs under the sunshine. There are thick bunches by the footpath, which hang over and brush the feet. While approaching there seems nothing there except grass, but in the act of passing, and thus looking straight down into them, there are blue eyes at the bottom gazing up. These specks of blue sky hidden in the grass tempt the hand to gather them, but then you cannot gather the whole field. Behind the bunches where the grass is thinner are the heads of purple clover; pluck one of these, and while meditating draw forth petal after petal and imbibe the honey with the lips till nothing remains but the green framework, like stolen jewellery from which the gems have been taken. Torn pink ragged robins through whose petals a comb seems to have been remorselessly dragged, blue scabious, red knapweeds, yellow rattles, yellow vetchings by the hedge, white flowering parsley, white campions, yellow tormentil, golden buttercups, white cuckoo-flowers, dandelions, yarrow, and so on, all carelessly sown broadcast without order or method, just as negligently as they are named here, first remembered, first mentioned, and many forgotten. Highest and coarsest of texture, the red-tipped sorrel--a crumbling red--so thick and plentiful that at sunset the whole mead becomes reddened. If these were in any way set in order or design, howsoever entangled, the eye might, as it were, get at them for reproduction. But just where there should be flowers there are none, whilst in odd places where there are none required there are plenty. In hollows, out of sight till stumbled on, is a mass of colour; on the higher foreground only a dull brownish green. Walk all round the meadow, and still no vantage point can be found where the herbage groups itself, whence a scheme of colour is perceivable. There is no "artistic" arrangement anywhere. So, too, with the colours--of the shades of green something has already been said--and here are bright blues and bright greens, yellows and pinks, positive discords and absolute antagonisms of tint side by side, yet without jarring the eye. Green all round, the trees and hedges; blue overhead, the sky; purple and gold westward, where the sun sinks. No part of this grass can be represented by a blur or broad streak of colour, for it is not made up of broad streaks. It is composed of innumerable items of grass blade and flower, each in itself coloured and different from its neighbour. Not one of these must be slurred over if you wish to get the same effect. Then there are drifting specks of colour which cannot be fixed. Butterflies, white, parti-coloured, brown, and spotted, and light blue flutter along beside the footpath; two white ones wheel about each other, rising higher at every turn till they are lost and no more to be distinguished against a shining white cloud. Large dark humble bees roam slowly, and honey bees with more decided flight. Glistening beetles, green and gold, run across the bare earth of the path, coming from one crack in the dry ground and disappearing in the (to them) mighty chasm of another. Tiny green "hoppers"--odd creatures shaped something like the fancy frogs of children's story-books--alight upon it after a spring, and pausing a second, with another toss themselves as high as the highest bennet (veritable elm-trees by comparison), to fall anywhere out of sight in the grass. Reddish ants hurry over. Time is money; and their business brooks no delay. Bee-like flies of many stripes and parti-coloured robes face you, suspended in the air with wings vibrating so swiftly as to be unseen; then suddenly jerk themselves a few yards to recommence hovering. A greenfinch rises with a yellow gleam and a sweet note from the grass, and is off with something for his brood, or a starling, solitary now, for his mate is in the nest, startled from his questing, goes straight away. Dark starlings, greenfinch, gilded fly, glistening beetle, blue butterfly, humble bee with scarf about his thick waist, add their moving dots of colour to the surface. There is no design, no balance, nothing like a pattern perfect on the right-hand side, and exactly equal on the left-hand. Even trees which have some semblance of balance in form are not really so, and as you walk round them so their outline changes. Now the path approaches a stile set deep in thorns and brambles, and hardly to be gained for curved hooks and prickles. But on the briars June roses bloom, arches of flowers over nettles, burdock, and rushes in the ditch beneath. Sweet roses--buds yet unrolled, white and conical; roses half open and pink tinted; roses widespread, the petals curling backwards on the hedge, abandoning their beauty to the sun. In the pasture over the stile a roan cow feeds unmoved, calmly content, gathering the grass with rough tongue. It is not only what you actually see along the path, but what you remember to have seen, that gives it its beauty. From hence the path skirts the hedge enclosing a copse, part of which had been cut in the winter, so that a few weeks since in spring the bluebells could be seen, instead of being concealed by the ash branches and the woodbine. Among them grew one with white bells, like a lily, solitary in the midst of the azure throng. A "drive," or green lane passing between the ash-stoles, went into the copse, with tufts of tussocky grass on either side and rush bunches, till farther away the overhanging branches, where the poles were uncut, hid its course. Already the grass has hidden the ruts left by the timber carriages--the last came by on May-day with ribbons of orange, red, and blue on the horses' heads for honour of the day. Another, which went past in the wintry weeks of the early year, was drawn by a team wearing the ancient harness with bells under high hoods, or belfries, bells well attuned, too, and not far inferior to those rung by handbell men. The beat of the three horses' hoofs sounds like the drum that marks time to the chime upon their backs. Seldom, even in the far away country, can that pleasant chime be heard. But now the timber is all gone, the ruts are hidden, and the tall spruce firs, whose graceful branches were then almost yellow with young needles on the tip, are now clothed in fresh green. On the bank there is a flower which is often gathered for the forget-me-not, and is not unlike it at the first glance; but if the two be placed side by side, this, the scorpion grass, is but a pale imitation of the true plant; its petals vary in colour and are often dull, and it has not the yellow central spot. Yet it is not unfrequently sold in pots in the shops as forget-me-not. It flowers on the bank, high above the water of the ditch. The true forget-me-not can hardly be seen in passing, so much does it nestle under flags and behind sedges, and it is not easy to gather because it flowers on the very verge of the running stream. The shore is bordered with matted vegetation, aquatic grass, and flags and weeds, and outside these, where its leaves are washed and purified by the clear stream, its blue petals open. Be cautious, therefore, in reaching for the forget-me-not, lest the bank be treacherous. It was near this copse that in early spring I stayed to gather some white sweet violets, for the true wild violet is very nearly white. I stood close to a hedger and ditcher, who, standing on a board, was cleaning out the mud that the water might run freely. He went on with his work, taking not the least notice of an idler, but intent upon his labour, as a good and true man should be. But when I spoke to him he answered me in clear, well-chosen language, well pronounced, "in good set terms." No slurring of consonants and broadening of vowels, no involved and backward construction depending on the listener's previous knowledge for comprehension, no half sentences indicating rather than explaining, but correct sentences. With his shoes almost covered by the muddy water, his hands black and grimy, his brown face splashed with mud, leaning on his shovel he stood and talked from the deep ditch, not much more than head and shoulders visible above it. It seemed a voice from the very earth, speaking of education, change, and possibilities. The copse is now filling up with undergrowth; the brambles are spreading, the briars extending, masses of nettles, and thistles like saplings in size and height, crowding the spaces between the ash-stoles. By the banks great cow-parsnips or "gix" have opened their broad heads of white flowers; teazles have lifted themselves into view, every opening is occupied. There is a scent of elder flowers, the meadow-sweet is pushing up, and will soon be out, and an odour of new-mown hay floats on the breeze. From the oak green caterpillars slide down threads of their own making to the bushes below, but they are running terrible risk. For a pair of white-throats or "nettle-creepers" are on the watch, and seize the green creeping things crossways in their beaks. Then they perch on a branch three or four yards only from where I stand, silent and motionless, and glance first at me and next at a bush of bramble which projects out to the edge of the footpath. So long as my eyes are turned aside, or half closed, the bird perches on the branch, gaining confidence every moment. The instant I open my eyes, or move them, or glance towards him, without either movement of head, hand, or foot, he is off to the oak. His tiny eyes are intent on mine; the moment he catches my glance he retires. But in half a minute affection brings him back, still with the caterpillar in his beak, to the same branch. Whilst I have patience to look the other way there he stays, but again a glance sends him away. This is repeated four or five times, till, finally, convinced that I mean no harm and yet timorous and fearful of betrayal even in the act, he dives down into the bramble bush. After a brief interval he reappears on the other side of it, having travelled through and left his prey with his brood in the nest there. Assured by his success his mate follows now, and once having done it, they continue to bring caterpillars, apparently as fast as they can pass between the trees and the bush. They always enter the bush, which is scarcely two yards from me, on one side, pass through in the same direction, and emerge on the other side, having thus regular places of entrance and exit. As I stand watching these birds a flock of rooks goes over, they have left the nesting trees, and fly together again. Perhaps this custom of nesting together in adjacent trees and using the same one year after year is not so free from cares and jealousies as the solitary plan of the little white-throats here. Last March I was standing near a rookery, noting the contention and quarrelling, the downright tyranny, and brigandage which is carried on there. The very sound of the cawing, sharp and angry, conveys the impression of hate and envy. Two rooks in succession flew to a nest the owners of which were absent, and deliberately picked a great part of it to pieces, taking the twigs for their own use. Unless the rook, therefore, be ever in his castle his labour is torn down, and, as with men in the fierce struggle for wealth, the meanest advantages are seized on. So strong is the rook's bill that he tears living twigs of some size with it from the bough. The white-throats were without such envy and contention. From hence the footpath, leaving the copse, descends into a hollow, with a streamlet flowing through a little meadow, barely an acre, with a pollard oak in the centre, the rising ground on two sides shutting out all but the sky, and on the third another wood. Such a dreamy hollow might be painted for a glade in the Forest of Arden, and there on the sward and leaning against the ancient oak one might read the play through without being disturbed by a single passer-by. A few steps farther and the stile opens on a road. There the teams travel with rows of brazen spangles down their necks, some with a wheatsheaf for design, some with a swan. The road itself, if you follow it, dips into a valley where the horses must splash through the water of a brook spread out some fifteen or twenty yards wide; for, after the primitive Surrey fashion, there is no bridge for waggons. A narrow wooden structure bears foot-passengers; you cannot but linger half across and look down into its clear stream. Up the current where it issues from the fields and falls over a slight obstacle the sunlight plays and glances. A great hawthorn bush grows on the bank; in spring, white with May; in autumn, red with haws or peggles. To the shallow shore of the brook, where it washes the flints and moistens the dust, the house-martins come for mortar. A constant succession of birds arrive all day long to drink at the clear stream, often alighting on the fragments of chalk and flint which stand in the water, and are to them as rocks. Another footpath leads from the road across the meadows to where the brook is spanned by the strangest bridge, built of brick, with one arch, but only just wide enough for a single person to walk, and with parapets only four or five inches high. It is thrown aslant the stream, and not straight across it, and has a long brick approach. It is not unlike--on a small scale--the bridges seen in views of Eastern travel. Another path leads to a hamlet, consisting of a church, a farmhouse, and three or four cottages--a veritable hamlet in every sense of the word. In a village a few miles distant, as you walk between cherry and pear orchards, you pass a little shop--the sweets, and twine, and trifles are such as may be seen in similar windows a hundred miles distant. There is the very wooden measure for nuts, which has been used time out of mind, in the distant country. Out again into the road as the sun sinks, and westwards the wind lifts a cloud of dust, which is lit up and made rosy by the rays passing through it. For such is the beauty of the sunlight that it can impart a glory even to dust. Once more, never go by a stile (that does not look private) without getting over it and following the path. But they all end in one place. After rambling across furze and heath, or through dark fir woods; after lingering in the meadows among the buttercups, or by the copses where the pheasants crow; after gathering June roses, or, in later days, staining the lips with blackberries or cracking nuts, by-and-by the path brings you in sight of a railway station. And the railway station, through some process of mind, presently compels you to go up on the platform, and after a little puffing and revolution of wheels you emerge at Charing Cross, or London Bridge, or Waterloo, or Ludgate Hill, and, with the freshness of the meadows still clinging to your coat, mingle with the crowd. The inevitable end of every footpath round about London is London. All paths go thither. If it were far away in the distant country you might sit down in the shadow upon the hay and fall asleep, or dream awake hour after hour. There would be no inclination to move. But if you sat down on the sward under the ancient pollard oak in the little mead with the brook, and the wood of which I spoke just now as like a glade in the enchanted Forest of Arden, this would not be possible. It is the proximity of the immense City which induces a mental, a nerve-restlessness. As you sit and would dream a something plucks at the mind with constant reminder; you cannot dream for long, you must up and away, and, turn in which direction you please, ultimately it will lead you to London. There is a fascination in it; there is a magnetism stronger than that of the rock which drew the nails from Sindbad's ship. You are like a bird let out with a string tied to the foot to flutter a little way and return again. It is not business, for you may have none, in the ordinary sense; it is not "society," it is not pleasure. It is the presence of man in his myriads. There is something in the heart which cannot be satisfied away from it. It is a curious thing that your next-door neighbour may be a stranger, but there are no strangers in a vast crowd. They all seem to have some relationship, or rather, perhaps, they do not rouse the sense of reserve which a single unknown person might. Still, the impulse is not to be analysed; these are mere notes acknowledging its power. The hills and vales, and meads and woods are like the ocean upon which Sindbad sailed; but coming too near the loadstone of London, the ship wends thither, whether or no. At least it is so with me, and I often go to London without any object whatever, but just because I must, and, arriving there, wander whithersoever the hurrying throng carries me. FLOCKS OF BIRDS A certain road leading outwards from a suburb, enters at once among fields. It soon passes a thick hedge dividing a meadow from a cornfield, in which hedge is a spot where some bluebells may be found in spring. Wild flowers are best seen when in masses, a few scattered along a bank much concealed by grass and foliage are lost, except indeed, upon those who love them for their own sake. This meadow in June, for instance, when the buttercups are high, is one broad expanse of burnished gold. The most careless passer-by can hardly fail to cast a glance over acres of rich yellow. The furze, again, especially after a shower has refreshed its tint, must be seen by all. Where broom grows thickly, lifting its colour well into view, or where the bird's-foot lotus in full summer overruns the thin grass of some upland pasture, the eye cannot choose but acknowledge it. So, too, with charlock, and with hill sides purple with heath, or where the woodlands are azure with bluebells for a hundred yards together. Learning from this, those who would transplant wild flowers to their garden should arrange to have as many as possible of the same species close together. The bluebells in this hedge are unseen, except by the rabbits. The latter have a large burrow, and until the grass is too tall, or after it is cut or grazed, can be watched from the highway. In this hedge the first nightingale of the year sings, beginning some two or three days before the bird which comes to the bushes in the gorse, which will presently be mentioned. It is, or rather was, a favourite meadow with the partridges; one summer there was, I think, a nest in or near it, for I saw the birds there daily. But the next year they were absent. One afternoon a brace of partridges came over the hedge within a few inches of my head; they had been flushed and frightened at some distance, and came with the wind at a tremendous pace. It is a habit with partridges to fly low, but just skimming the tops of the hedges, and certainly, had they been three inches lower, they must have taken my hat off. The knowledge that partridges were often about there, made me always glance into this field on passing it, long after the nesting season was over. In October, as I looked as usual, a hawk flew between the elms, and out into the centre of the meadow, with a large object in his talons. He alighted in the middle, so as to be as far as possible from either hedge, and no doubt prepared to enjoy his quarry, when something startled him, and he rose again. Then, as I got a better view, I saw it was a rat he was carrying. The long body of the animal was distinctly visible, and the tail depending, the hawk had it by the shoulders or head. Flying without the least apparent effort, the bird cleared the elms, and I lost sight of him beyond them. Now, the kestrel is but a small bird, and taking into consideration the size of the bird, and the weight of a rat, it seems as great a feat in proportion as for an eagle to snatch up a lamb. Some distance up the road, and in the corner of an arable field, there was a wheat rick which was threshed and most of the straw carted away. But there still remained the litter, and among it probably a quantity of stray corn. There was always a flock of sparrows on this litter--a flock that might often be counted by the hundred. As I came near the spot one day a sparrow-hawk, whose approach I had not observed, and which had therefore been flying low, suddenly came over the hedge just by the loose straw. With shrill cries the sparrows instantly rushed for the hedge, not two yards distant; but the hawk, dashing through the crowd of them as they rose, carried away a victim. It was done in the tenth of a second. He came, singled his bird, and was gone like the wind, before the whirr of wings had ceased on the hawthorn where the flock cowered. Another time, but in a different direction, I saw a hawk descend and either enter, or appear to enter, a short much-cropped hedge, but twenty yards distant. I ran to the spot; the hawk of course made off, but there was nothing in the bush save a hedge sparrow, which had probably attracted him, but which he had not succeeded in getting. Kestrels are almost common; I have constantly seen them while strolling along the road, generally two together, and once three. In the latter part of the summer and autumn they seem to be most numerous, hovering over the recently reaped fields. Certainly there is no scarcity of hawks here. Upon one occasion, on Surbiton Hill, I saw a large bird of the same kind, but not sufficiently near to identify. From the gliding flight, the long forked tail, and large size I supposed it to be a kite. The same bird was going about next day, but still farther off. I cannot say that it was a kite, for unless it is a usual haunt, it is not in my opinion wise to positively identify a bird seen for so short a time. The thick hedge mentioned is a favourite resort of blackbirds, and on a warm May morning, after a shower--they are extremely fond of a shower--half-a-dozen may be heard at once whistling in the elms. They use the elms here because there are not many oaks; the oak is the blackbird's favourite song-tree. There was one one day whistling with all his might on the lower branch of an elm, at the very roadside, and just above him a wood-pigeon was perched. A pair of turtle-doves built in the same hedge one spring, and while resting on the gate by the roadside their "coo-coo" mingled with the song of the nightingale and thrush, the blackbird's whistle, the chiff-chaff's "chip-chip," the willow-wren's pleading voice, and the rustle of green corn as the wind came rushing (as it always does to a gateway). Goldfinches come by occasionally, not often, but still they do come. The rarest bird seems to be the bullfinch. I have only seen bullfinches three or four times in three seasons, and then only a pair. Now, this is worthy a note, as illustrating what I have often ventured to say about the habitat of birds being so often local, for if judged by observation here the bullfinch would be said to be a scarce bird by London. But it has been stated upon the best authority that only a few miles distant, and still nearer town, they are common. The road now becomes bordered by elms on either side, forming an irregular avenue. Almost every elm in spring has its chaffinch loudly challenging. The birdcatchers are aware that it is a frequented resort, and on Sunday mornings four or five of them used to be seen in the course of a mile, each with a call bird in a partly darkened cage, a stuffed dummy, and limed twigs. In the cornfields on either hand wood-pigeons are numerous in spring and autumn. Up to April they come in flocks, feeding on the newly sown grain when they can get at it, and varying it with ivy berries, from the ivy growing up the elms. By degrees the flocks break up as the nesting begins in earnest. Some pair and build much earlier than others; in fact, the first egg recorded is very little to be depended on as an indication. Particular pairs (of many kinds of birds) may have nests, and yet the species as a species may be still flying in large packs. The flocks which settle in these fields number from one to two hundred. Rooks, wood-pigeons, and tame white pigeons often feed amicably mixed up together; the white tame birds are conspicuous at a long distance before the crops have risen, or after the stubble is ploughed. I should think that the corn farmers of Surrey lose more grain from the birds than the agriculturists whose tenancies are a hundred miles from London. In the comparatively wild or open districts to which I had been accustomed before I made these observations I cannot recollect ever seeing such vast numbers of birds. There were places, of course, where they were numerous, and there were several kinds more represented than is the case here, and some that are scarcely represented at all. I have seen flocks of wood-pigeons immensely larger than any here; but then it was only occasionally. They came, passed over, and were gone. Here the flocks, though not very numerous, seem always to be about. Sparrows crowd every hedge and field, their numbers are incredible; chaffinches are not to be counted; of greenfinches there must be thousands. From the railway even you can see them. I caught glimpses of a ploughed field recently sown one spring from the window of a railway carriage, every little clod of which seemed alive with small birds, principally sparrows, chaffinches, and greenfinches. There must have been thousands in that field alone. In autumn the numbers are even greater, or rather more apparent. One autumn some correspondence appeared lamenting the scarcity of small birds (and again in the spring the same cry was raised); people said that they had walked along the roads or footpaths and there were none in the hedges. They were quite correct--the birds were not in the hedges, they were in the corn and stubble. After the nesting is well over and the wheat is ripe the birds leave the hedges and go out into the wheatfields; at the same time the sparrows quit the house-tops and gardens and do the same. At the very time this complaint was raised, the stubbles in Surrey, as I can vouch, were crowded with small birds. If you walked across the stubble flocks of hundreds rose out of your way; if you leant on a gate and watched a few minutes you could see small flocks in every quarter of the field rising and settling again. These movements indicated a larger number in the stubble there, for where a great flock is feeding some few every now and then fly up restlessly. Earlier than that in the summer there was not a wheatfield where you could not find numerous wheatears picked as clean as if threshed where they stood. In some places, the wheat was quite thinned. Later in the year there seems a movement of small birds from the lower to the higher lands. One December day I remember particularly visiting the neighbourhood of Ewell, where the lands begin to rise up towards the Downs. Certainly, I have seldom seen such vast numbers of small birds. Up from the stubble flew sparrows, chaffinches, greenfinches, yellow-hammers, in such flocks that the low-cropped hedge was covered with them. A second correspondence appeared in the spring upon the same subject, and again the scarcity of small birds was deplored. So far as the neighbourhood of London was concerned, this was the exact reverse of the truth. Small birds swarmed, as I have already stated, in every ploughed field. All the birdcatchers in London with traps and nets and limed twigs could never make the slightest appreciable difference to such flocks. I have always expressed my detestation of the birdcatcher; but it is founded on other grounds, and not from any fear of the diminution of numbers only. Where the birdcatcher does inflict irretrievable injury is in this way--a bird, say a nightingale, say a goldfinch, has had a nest for years in the corner of a garden, or an apple-tree in an orchard. The birdcatcher presently decoys one or other of these, and thenceforward the spot is deserted. The song is heard no more; the nest never again rebuilt. The first spring I resided in Surrey I was fairly astonished and delighted at the bird life which proclaimed itself everywhere. The bevies of chiffchaffs and willow wrens which came to the thickets in the furze, the chorus of thrushes and blackbirds, the chaffinches in the elms, the greenfinches in the hedges, wood-pigeons and turtle-doves in the copses, tree-pipits about the oaks in the cornfields; every bush, every tree, almost every clod, for the larks were so many, seemed to have its songster. As for nightingales, I never knew so many in the most secluded country. There are more round about London than in all the woodlands I used to ramble through. When people go into the country they really leave the birds behind them. It was the same, I found, after longer observation, with birds perhaps less widely known as with those universally recognised--such, for instance, as shrikes. The winter when the cry was raised that there were no birds, that the blackbirds and thrushes had left the lawns and must be dead, and how wicked it would be to take a nest next year, I had not the least, difficulty in finding plenty of them. They had simply gone to the water meadows, the brooks, and moist places generally. Every locality where running water kept the ground moist and permitted of movement among the creeping things which form these birds' food, was naturally resorted to. Thrushes and blackbirds, although they do not pack--that is, regularly fly in flocks--undoubtedly migrate when pressed by weather. They are well known to arrive on the east coast from Norway in numbers as the cold increases. I see no reason why we may not suppose that in very severe and continued frost the thrushes and blackbirds round London fly westwards towards the milder side of the island. It seems to me that when, some years since, I used to stroll round the water meadows in a western county for snipes in frosty weather, the hedges were full of thrushes and blackbirds--quite full of them. Now, though there were thrushes and blackbirds about the brooks by London last winter, there were few in the hedges generally. Had they, then, flown westwards? It is my belief that they had. They had left the hard-bound ground about London for the softer and moister lands farther west. They had crossed the rain-line. When frost prevents access to food in the east, thrushes and blackbirds move westwards, just as the fieldfares and redwings do. That the fieldfares and redwings do so I can say with confidence, because, as they move in large flocks, there is no difficulty in tracing the direction in which they are going. They all went west when the severe weather began. On the southern side of London, at least in the districts I am best acquainted with, there was hardly a fieldfare or redwing to be seen for weeks and even months. Towards spring they came back, flying east for Norway. As thrushes and blackbirds move singly, and not with concerted action, their motions cannot be determined with such precision, but all the facts are in favour of the belief that they also went west. That they were killed by the frost and snow I utterly refuse to credit. Some few, no doubt, were--I saw some greatly enfeebled by starvation--but not the mass. If so many had been destroyed their bodies must have been seen when there was no foliage to hide them, and no insects to quickly play the scavenger as in summer. Some were killed by cats; a few perhaps by rats, for in sharp winters they go down into the ditches, and I saw a dead redwing, torn and disfigured, at the mouth of a drain during the snow, where it might have been fastened on by a rat. But it is quite improbable that thousands died as was supposed. Thrushes and blackbirds are not like rooks. Rooks are so bound by tradition and habit that they very rarely quit the locality where they were reared. Their whole lives are spent in the neighbourhood of the nest, trees, and the woods where they sleep. They may travel miles during the day, but they always come back to roost. These are the birds that suffer the most during long frosts and snows. Unable to break the chain that binds them to one spot, they die rather than desert it. A miserable time, indeed, they had of it that winter, but I never heard that any one proposed feeding the rooks, the very birds that wanted it most. Swallows, again, were declared by many to be fewer. It is not at all unlikely that they were fewer. The wet season was unfavourable to them; still a good deal of the supposed absence of swallows may be through the observer not looking for them in the right place. If not wheeling in the sky, look for them over the water, the river, or great ponds; if not there, look along the moist fields or shady woodland meadows. They vary their haunts with the state of the atmosphere, which causes insects to be more numerous in one place at one time, and presently in another. A very wet season is more fatal than the sharpest frost; it acts by practically reducing the births, leaving the ordinary death-rate to continue. Consequently, as the old birds die, there are none (or fewer) to supply their places. Once more let me express the opinion that there are as many small birds round London as in the country, and no measure is needed to protect the species at large. Protection, if needed, is required for the individual. Sweep the roads and lanes clear of the birdcatchers, but do not prevent a boy from taking a nest in the open fields or commons. If it were made illegal to sell full-grown birds, half the evil would be stopped at once if the law were enforced. The question is full of difficulties. To prevent or attempt to prevent the owner of a garden from shooting the bullfinches or blackbirds and so on that steal his fruit, or destroy his buds, is absurd. It is equally absurd to fine--what twaddle!--a lad for taking a bird's egg. The only point upon which I am fully clear is that the birdcatcher who takes birds on land not his own or in his occupation, on public property, as roads, wastes, commons, and so forth, ought to be rigidly put down. But as for the small birds as a mass, I am convinced that they will never cease out of the land. It is not easy to progress far along this road, because every bird suggests so many reflections and recollections. Upon approaching the rising ground at Ewell green plovers or peewits become plentiful in the cornfields. In spring and early summer the flocks break up to some extent, and the scattered parties conduct their nesting operations in the pastures or on the downs. In autumn they collect together again, and flocks of fifty or more are commonly seen. Now and then a much larger flock comes down into the plain, wheeling to and fro, and presently descending upon an arable field, where they cover the ground. NIGHTINGALE ROAD The wayside is open to all, and that which it affords may be enjoyed without fee; therefore it is that I return to it so often. It is a fact that common hedgerows often yield more of general interest than the innermost recesses of carefully guarded preserves, which by day are frequently still, silent, and denuded of everything, even of game; nor can flowers flourish in such thick shade, nor where fir-needles cover the ground. By the same wayside of which I have already spoken there is a birch copse, through which runs a road open to foot passengers, but not to wheel traffic, and also a second footpath. From these a little observation will show that almost all the life and interest of the copse is at, or near, the edge, and can be readily seen without trespassing a single yard. Sometimes, when it is quiet in the evening and the main highway is comparatively deserted, a hare comes stealing down the track through the copse, and after lingering there awhile crosses the highway into the stubble on the other side. In one of these fields, just opposite the copse, a covey of partridges had their rendezvous, and I watched them from the road, evening after evening, issue one by one, calling as they appeared from a breadth of mangolds. Their sleeping-place seemed to be about a hundred yards from the wayside. Another arable field just opposite is bounded by the road with iron wire or railing, instead of a hedge, and the low mound in which the stakes are fixed swarmed one summer with ant-hills full of eggs, and a slight rustle in the corn as I approached told where the parent bird had just led her chicks from the feast to shelter. Passing into the copse by the road, which is metalled but weed-grown from lack of use, the grasshoppers sing from the sward at the sides, but the birds are silent as the summer ends. Pink striped bells of convolvulus flower over the flints and gravel, the stones nearly hidden by their runners and leaves; yellow toadflax or eggs and bacon grew here till a weeding took place, since which it has not reappeared, but in its place viper's bugloss sprang up, a plant which was not previously to be found there. Hawkweeds, some wild vetches, white yarrow, thistles, and burdocks conceal the flints yet further, so that the track has the appearance of a green drive. The slender birch and ash poles are hung with woodbine and wild hops, both growing in profusion. A cream-coloured wall of woodbine in flower extends in one spot, in another festoons of hops hang gracefully, and so thick as to hide everything beyond them. There is scarce a stole without its woodbine or hops; many of the poles, though larger than the arm, are scored with spiral grooves left by the bines. Under these bushes of woodbine the nightingales when they first arrive in spring are fond of searching for food, and dart on a grub with a low satisfied "kurr." The place is so favourite a resort with these birds that it might well be called Nightingale Copse. Four or five may be heard singing at once on a warm May morning, and at least two may often be seen as well as heard at the same time. They sometimes sing from the trees, as well as from the bushes; one was singing one morning on an elm branch which projected over the road, and under which the van drivers jogged indifferently along. Sometimes they sing from the dark foliage of the Scotch firs. As the summer wanes they haunt the hawthorn hedge by the roadside, leaving the interior of the copse, and may often be seen on the dry and dusty sward. When chiffchaff and willow-wren first come they remain in the treetops, but in the summer descend into the lower bushes, and, like the nightingales, come out upon the sward by the wayside. Nightingale Copse is also a great favourite with cuckoos. There are a few oaks in it, and in the meadows in the rear many detached hawthorn bushes, and two or three small groups of trees, chestnuts, lime, and elm. From the hawthorns to the elms, and from the elms to the oaks, the cuckoos continually circulate, calling as they fly. One morning in May, while resting on a rail in the copse, I heard four calling close by, the furthest not a hundred yards distant, and as they continually changed their positions flying round there was always one in sight. They circled round, singing; the instant one ceased another took it up, a perfect madrigal. In the evening, at eight o'clock, I found them there again, still singing. The same detached groups of trees are much frequented by wood-pigeons, especially towards autumn. Rooks prefer to perch on the highest branches, wood-pigeons more in the body of the tree, and when the boughs are bare of leaves a flock of the latter may be recognised in this way as far as the eye can see, and when the difference of colour is rendered imperceptible by distance. The wood-pigeon when perched has a rounded appearance; the rook a longer and sharper outline. By one corner of the copse there is an oak, hollow within, but still green and flourishing. The hollow is black and charred; some mischievous boys must have lighted a fire inside it, just as the ploughboys do in the far away country. A little pond in the meadow close by is so overhung by another oak, and so surrounded with bramble and hawthorn, that the water lies in perpetual shade. It is just the spot where, if rabbits were about, one might be found sitting out on the bank under the brambles. This overhanging oak was broken by the famous October snow, 1880, further splintered by the gales of the next year, and its trunk is now split from top to bottom as if with wedges. These meadows in spring are full of cowslips, and in one part the meadow-orchis flourishes. The method of making cowslip balls is universally known to children, from the most remote hamlet to the very verge of London, and the little children who dance along the green sward by the road here, if they chance to touch a nettle, at once search for a dock leaf to lay on it and assuage the smart. Country children, and indeed older folk, call the foliage of the knotted figwort cutfinger leaves, as they are believed to assist the cure of a cut or sore. Raspberry suckers shoot up in one part of the copse; the fruit is doubtless eaten by the birds. Troops of them come here, travelling along the great hedge by the wayside, and all seem to prefer the outside trees and bushes to the interior of the copse. This great hedge is as wide as a country double mound, though it has but one ditch; the thick hawthorn, blackthorn, elder, and bramble--the oaks, elms, ashes, and firs form, in fact, almost a cover of themselves. In the early spring, when the east wind rushes with bitter energy across the plains, this immense hedge, as far as it extends, shelters the wayfarer, the road being on the southern side, so that he can enjoy such gleams of sunshine as appear. In summer the place is, of course for the same reason, extremely warm, unless the breeze chances to come up strong from the west, when it sweeps over the open cornfields fresh and sweet. Stoats and weasels are common on the mound, or crossing the road to the corn; they seem more numerous in autumn, and I fear leveret and partridge are thinned by them. Mice abound; in spring they are sometimes up in the blackthorn bushes, perhaps for the young buds. In summer they may often be heard rushing along the furrows across the wayside sward, scarce concealed by the wiry grass. Flowers are very local in habit; the spurge, for instance, which is common in a road parallel to this, is not to be seen, and not very much cow-parsnip, or "gix," one of the most freely-growing hedge plants, which almost chokes the mounds near by. Willowherbs, however, fill every place in the ditch here where they can find room between the bushes, and the arum is equally common, but the lesser celandine absent. Towards evening, as the clover and vetches closed their leaves under the dew, giving the fields a different aspect and another green, I used occasionally to watch from here a pair of herons, sailing over in their calm serene way. Their flight was in the direction of the Thames, and they then passed evening after evening, but the following summer they did not come. One evening, later on in autumn, two birds appeared descending across the cornfields towards a secluded hollow where there was water, and, although at a considerable distance, from their manner of flight I could have no doubt they were teal. The spotted leaves of the arum appeared in the ditches in this locality very nearly simultaneously with the first whistling of the blackbirds in February; last spring the chiffchaff sang soon after the flowering of the lesser celandine (not in this hedge, but near by), and the first swift was noticed within a day or two of the opening of the May bloom. Although not exactly, yet in a measure, the movements of plant and bird life correspond. In a closely cropped hedge opposite this great mound (cropped because enclosing a cornfield) there grows a solitary shrub of the wayfaring tree. Though well known elsewhere, there is not, so far as I am aware, another bush of it for miles, and I should not have noticed this had not this part of the highway been so pleasant a place to stroll to and fro in almost all the year. The twigs of the wayfaring tree are covered with a mealy substance which comes off on the fingers when touched. A stray shrub or plant like this sometimes seems of more interest than a whole group. For instance, most of the cottage gardens have foxgloves in them, but I had not observed any wild, till one afternoon near some woods I found a tall and beautiful foxglove, richer in colour than the garden specimens, and with bells more thickly crowded, lifting its spike of purple above the low cropped hawthorn. In districts where the soil is favourable to the foxglove it would not have been noticed, but here, alone and unexpected, it was welcomed. The bees in spring come to the broad wayside sward by the great mound to the bright dandelions; presently to the white clover, and later to the heaths. There are about sixty wild flowers which grow freely along this road, namely, yellow agrimony, amphibious persicaria, arum, avens, bindweed, bird's foot lotus, bittersweet, blackberry, black and white bryony, brooklime, burdock, buttercups, wild camomile, wild carrot, celandine (the great and lesser), cinquefoil, cleavers, corn buttercup, corn mint, corn sowthistle, and spurrey, cowslip, cow-parsnip, wild parsley, daisy, dandelion, dead nettle, and white dog rose, and trailing rose, violets (the sweet and the scentless), figwort, veronica, ground ivy, willowherb (two sorts), herb Robert, honeysuckle, lady's smock, purple loosestrife, mallow, meadow-orchis, meadow-sweet, yarrow, moon daisy, St. John's wort, pimpernel, water plantain, poppy, rattles, scabious, self-heal, silverweed, sowthistle, stitchwort, teazles, tormentil, vetches, and yellow vetch. To these may be added an occasional bacon and eggs, a few harebells (plenty on higher ground), the yellow iris, by the adjoining brook, and flowering shrubs and trees, as dogwood, gorse, privet, blackthorn, hawthorn, horse chestnut, besides wild hops, the horsetails on the mounds, and such plants as grow everywhere, as chickweed, groundsel, and so forth. A solitary shrub of mugwort grows at some distance, but in the same district, and in one hedgerow the wild guelder rose flourishes. Anemones and primroses are not found along or near this road, nor woodruff. At the first glance a list like this reads as if flowers abounded, but the reverse is the impression to those who frequent the place. It is really a very short list, and as of course all of these do not appear at once there really is rather a scarcity of wild flowers, so far at least as variety goes. Just in the spring there is a burst of colour, and again in the autumn; but for the rest, if we set aside the roses in June, there seems quite an absence of flowers during the summer. The wayside is green, the ditches are green, the mounds green; if you enter and stroll round the meadows, they are green too, or white in places with umbelliferous plants, principally parsley and cow-parsnip. But these become monotonous. Therefore, I am constrained to describe it as a district somewhat lacking flowers, meaning, of course, in point of variety. Compared with the hedges and fields of Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Berkshire, and similar south-western localities, it seems flowerless. On the other hand, southern London can boast stretches of heath, which, when in full bloom, rival Scotch hillsides. These remarks are written entirely from a non-scientific point of view. Professional botanists may produce lists of thrice the length, and prove that all the flowers of England are to be found near London. But it will not alter the fact that to the ordinary eye the roads and lanes just south of London are in the middle of the summer comparatively bare of colour. They should be visited in spring and autumn. Nor do the meadows seem to produce so many varieties of grass as farther to the south-west. But beetles of every kind and size, from the great stag beetle, helplessly floundering through the evening air and clinging to your coat, down to the green, bronze, and gilded species that hasten across the path, appear extremely numerous. Warm, dry sands, light soils, and furze and heath are probably favourable to them. From this roadside I have seldom heard the corncrake, and never once the grasshopper lark. These two birds are so characteristic of the meadows in southwestern counties that a summer evening seems silent to me without the "crake, crake!" of the one and the singular sibilous rattle of the other. But they come to other places not far distant from the road, and one summer a grasshopper-lark could be heard in some meadows where I had not heard it the two preceding seasons. On the mounds field crickets cry persistently. At the end of the hedge which is near a brook, a sedge-reedling takes up his residence in the spring. The sedge-reedlings here begin to call very early; the first date I have down is the 16th of April, which is, I think, some weeks before they begin in other localities. In one ditch beside the road (not in this particular hedge) there grows a fine bunch of reeds. Though watery, on account of the artificial drains from the arable fields, the spot is on much higher ground than the brook, and it is a little singular that while reeds flourish in this place they are not to be found by the brook. The elms of the neighbourhood, wherever they can be utilised as posts, are unmercifully wired, wires twisted round, holes bored and the ends of wire driven in or staples inserted, and the same with the young oaks. Many trees are much disfigured from this cause, the bark is worn off on many; and others, which have recovered, have bulging rings, where it swelled up over the iron. The heads of large nails and staples are easily discovered where the wire has disappeared, sometimes three or four, one above the other, in the same tree. A fine avenue of elms which shades part of a suburb appears to be dying by degrees--the too common fate of elms in such places. How many beautiful trees have thus perished near London?--witness the large elms that once stood in Jews' Walk, at Sydenham. Barking the trunks for sheer wanton mischief is undoubtedly the cause in some cases, and it has been suggested that quicksilver has occasionally been inserted in gimlet holes. The mercury is supposed to work up the channels of the sap, and to prevent its flow. But may not the ordinary conditions of suburban improvement often account for the decay of such trees without occult causes? Sewers carry away the water that used to moisten the roots, and being at some depth, they not only take the surface water of a storm before it has had time to penetrate, but drain the lower stratum completely. Then, gas-pipes frequently leak, so much so that the soil for yards is saturated and emits a smell of gas. Roots passing through such a soil can scarcely be healthy, and very probably, in making excavations for laying pipes the roots are cut through. The young trees that have been planted in some places are, I notice, often bored by grubs to an extraordinary extent, and will never make sound timber. One July day, while walking on this road, I happened to look over a gateway and saw that a large and prominent mansion on the summit of some elevated ground had apparently disappeared. The day was very clear and bright, sunny and hot, and there was no natural vapour. But on the light north-east wind there came slowly towards me a bluish-yellow mist, the edge of which was clearly defined, and which blotted out distant objects and blurred those nearer at hand. The appearance of the open arable field over which I was looking changed as it approached. In front of the wall of mist the sunshine lit the field up brightly, behind the ground was dull, and yet not in shadow. It came so slowly that its movement could be easily watched. When it went over me there was a perceptible coolness and a faint smell of damp smoke, and immediately the road, which had been white under the sunshine, took a dim, yellowish hue. The sun was not shut out nor even obscured, but the rays had to pass through a thicker medium. This haze was not thick enough to be called fog, nor was it the summer haze that in the country adds to the beauty of distant hills and woods. It was clearly the atmosphere--not the fog--but simply the atmosphere of London brought out over the fields by a change in the wind, and prevented from diffusing itself by conditions of which nothing seems known. For at ordinary times the atmosphere of London diffuses itself in aerial space and is lost, but on this hot July day it came bodily and undiluted out into the cornfields. From its appearance I should say it would travel many miles in the same condition. In November fog seems seasonable: in hot and dry July this phenomenon was striking. Along the road flocks of sheep continue to travel, some weary enough, and these, gravitating to the rear of the flock by reason of infirmity, lie down in the dust to rest, while their companions feed on the wayside sward. But the shepherds are careful of them, and do not hasten. Shepherds here often carry the pastoral crook. In districts far from the metropolis you may wander about for days, and with sheep all round you, never see a shepherd with a crook; but near town the pastoral staff is common. These flocks appear to be on their way to the southern down farms, and, as I said before, the shepherds are tender over their sheep and careful not to press them. I regret that I cannot say the same about the bullocks, droves of which continually go by, often black cattle, and occasionally even the little Highland animals. The appearance of some of these droves is quite sufficient to indicate the treatment they have undergone. Staring eyes, heads continually turned from side to side, starting at everything, sometimes bare places on the shoulders, all tell the same tale of blows and brutal treatment. Suburban streets which a minute before were crowded with ladies and children (most gentlemen are in town at midday) are suddenly vacated when the word passes that cattle are coming. People rush everywhere, into gardens, shops, back lanes, anywhere, as if the ringing scabbards of charging cavalry were heard, or the peculiar thumping rattle of rifles as they come to the "present" before a storm of bullets. It is no wonder that townsfolk exhibit a fear of cattle which makes their friends laugh when they visit the country after such experiences as these. This should be put down with a firm hand. By the roadside here the hay tyers, who cut up the hayricks into trusses, use balances--a trifling matter, but sufficient to mark a difference, for in the west such men use a steelyard slung on a prong, the handle of the prong on the shoulder and the points stuck in the rick, with which to weigh the trusses. Wooden cottages, wooden barns, wooden mills are also characteristic. Mouchers come along the road at all times and seasons, gathering sacksful of dandelions in spring, digging up fern roots and cowslip mars for sale, cutting briars for standard roses, gathering water-cresses and mushrooms, and in the winter cutting rushes. There is a rook with white feathers in the wing which belongs to an adjacent rookery, and I have observed a blackbird also streaked with white. One January day, when the snow was on the ground and the frost was sharp, when the pale sun seemed to shine brightest round the rim of the disk, as if there were a band of stronger light there, I saw a white animal under a heap of poles by the wayside, near the great hedge I have mentioned. It immediately concealed itself, but, thinking that it was a ferret gone astray, I waited, and presently the head and neck were cautiously protruded. I made the usual call with the lips, but the creature instantly returned to cover. I waited again, hiding this time, and after an interval the creature moved and hastened away from the poles, where it was, in a measure, exposed, to the more secure shelter of some bushes. Then I saw that it was of a clear white, while so-called white ferrets are usually a dingy yellow, and the white tail was tipped with black. From these circumstances, and from the timidity and anxious desire to escape observation, I could only conclude that it was a white stoat. Stoats, as remarked previously, are numerous in these hedges, and it was quite possible for a white one to be among them. The white stoat may be said to exactly resemble the ermine. The interest of the circumstance arises not from its rarity, but from its occurring so near the metropolis. A BROOK Some low wooden rails guarding the approach to a bridge over a brook one day induced me to rest under an aspen, with my back against the tree. Some horse-chestnuts, beeches, and alders grew there, fringing the end of a long plantation of willow stoles which extended in the rear following the stream. In front, southwards, there were open meadows and cornfields, over which shadow and sunshine glided in succession as the sweet westerly wind carried the white clouds before it. The brimming brook, as it wound towards me through the meads, seemed to tremble on the verge of overflowing, as the crown of wine in a glass rises yet does not spill. Level with the green grass, the water gleamed as though polished where it flowed smoothly, crossed with the dark shadows of willows which leaned over it. By the bridge, where the breeze rushed through the arches, a ripple flashed back the golden rays. The surface by the shore slipped towards a side hatch and passed over in a liquid curve, clear and unvarying, as if of solid crystal, till shattered on the stones, where the air caught up and played with the sound of the bubbles as they broke. Beyond the green slope of corn, a thin, soft vapour hung on the distant woods, and hid the hills. The pale young leaves of the aspen rustled faintly, not yet with their full sound; the sprays of the horse-chestnut, drooping with the late frosts, could not yet keep out the sunshine with their broad green. A white spot on the footpath yonder was where the bloom had fallen from a blackthorn bush. The note of the tree-pipit came from over the corn--there were some detached oaks away in the midst of the field, and the birds were doubtless flying continually up and down between the wheat and the branches. A willow-wren sang plaintively in the plantation behind, and once a cuckoo called at a distance. How beautiful is the sunshine! The very dust of the road at my feet seemed to glow with whiteness, to be lit up by it, and to become another thing. This spot henceforward was a place of pilgrimage. Looking that morning over the parapet of the bridge, down stream, there was a dead branch at the mouth of the arch, it had caught and got fixed while it floated along. A quantity of aquatic weeds coming down the stream had drifted against the branch and remained entangled in it. Fresh weeds were still coming and adding to the mass, which had attracted a water-rat. Perched on the branch the little brown creature bent forward over the surface, and with its two forepaws drew towards it the slender thread of a weed, exactly as with hands. Holding the thread in the paws, it nibbled it, eating the sweet and tender portion, feeding without fear though but a few feet away, and precisely beneath me. In a minute the surface of the current was disturbed by larger ripples. There had been a ripple caused by the draught through the arch, but this was now increased. Directly afterwards a moorhen swam out, and began to search among the edge of the tangled weeds. So long as I was perfectly still the bird took no heed, but at a slight movement instantly scuttled back under the arch. The water-rat, less timorous, paused, looked round, and returned to feeding. Crossing to the other side of the bridge, up stream, and looking over, the current had scooped away the sand of the bottom by the central pier, exposing the brickwork to some depth--the same undermining process that goes on by the piers of bridges over great rivers. Nearer the shore the sand has silted up, leaving it shallow, where water-parsnip and other weeds joined, as it were, the verge of the grass and the stream. The sunshine reflected from the ripples on this, the southern side, continually ran with a swift, trembling motion up the arch. Penetrating the clear water, the light revealed the tiniest stone at the bottom: but there was no fish, no water-rat, or moorhen on this side. Neither on that nor many succeeding mornings could anything be seen there; the tail of the arch was evidently the favourite spot. Carefully looking over that side again, the moorhen who had been out rushed back; the water-rat was gone. Were there any fish? In the shadow the water was difficult to see through, and the brown scum of spring that lined the bottom rendered everything uncertain. By gazing steadily at a stone my eyes presently became accustomed to the peculiar light, the pupils adjusted themselves to it, and the brown tints became more distinctly defined. Then sweeping by degrees from a stone to another, and from thence to a rotting stick embedded in the sand, I searched the bottom inch by inch. If you look, as it were at large--at everything at once--you see nothing. If you take some object as a fixed point, gaze all around it, and then move to another, nothing can escape. Even the deepest, darkest water (not, of course, muddy) yields after a while to the eye. Half close the eyelids, and while gazing into it let your intelligence rather wait upon the corners of the eye than on the glance you cast straight forward. For some reason when thus gazing the edge of the eye becomes exceedingly sensitive, and you are conscious of slight motions or of a thickness--not a defined object, but a thickness which indicates an object--which is otherwise quite invisible. The slow feeling sway of a fish's tail, the edges of which curl over and grasp the water, may in this manner be identified without being positively seen, and the dark outline of its body known to exist against the equally dark water or bank. Shift, too, your position according to the fall of the light, just as in looking at a painting. From one point of view the canvas shows little but the presence of paint and blurred colour, from another at the side the picture stands out. Sometimes the water can be seen into best from above, sometimes by lying on the sward, now by standing back a little way, or crossing to the opposite shore. A spot where the sunshine sparkles with dazzling gleam is perhaps perfectly inpenetrable till you get the other side of the ripple, when the same rays that just now baffled the glance light up the bottom as if thrown from a mirror for the purpose. I convinced myself that there was nothing here, nothing visible at present--not so much as a stickleback. Yet the stream ran clear and sweet, and deep in places. It was too broad for leaping over. Down the current sedges grew thickly at a curve: up the stream the young flags were rising; it had an inhabited look, if such a term may be used, and moorhens and water-rats were about but no fish. A wide furrow came along the meadow and joined the stream from the side. Into this furrow, at flood time, the stream overflowed farther up, and irrigated the level sward. At present it was dry, its course, traced by the yellowish and white hue of the grasses in it only recently under water, contrasting with the brilliant green of the sweet turf around. There was a marsh marigold in it, with stems a quarter of an inch thick; and in the grass on the verge, but just beyond where the flood reached, grew the lilac-tinted cuckoo flowers, or cardamine. The side hatch supplied a pond, which was only divided from the brook by a strip of sward not more than twenty yards across. The surface of the pond was dotted with patches of scum that had risen from the bottom. Part at least of it was shallow, for a dead branch blown from an elm projected above the water, and to it came a sedge-reedling for a moment. The sedge-reedling is so fond of sedges, and reeds, and thick undergrowth, that though you hear it perpetually within a few yards it is not easy to see one. On this bare branch the bird was well displayed, and the streak by the eye was visible; but he stayed there for a second or two only, and then back again to the sedges and willows. There were fish I felt sure as I left the spot and returned along the dusty road, but where were they? On the sward by the wayside, among the nettles and under the bushes, and on the mound the dark green arum leaves grew everywhere, sometimes in bunches close together. These bunches varied--in one place the leaves were all spotted with black irregular blotches; in another the leaves were without such markings. When the root leaves of the arum first push up they are closely rolled together in a pointed spike. This, rising among the dead and matted leaves of the autumn, occasionally passes through holes in them. As the spike grows it lifts the dead leaves with it, which hold it like a ring and prevent it from unfolding. The force of growth is not sufficiently strong to burst the bond asunder till the green leaves have attained considerable size. A little earlier in the year the chattering of magpies would have been heard while looking for the signs of spring, but they were now occupied with their nests. There are several within a short distance, easily distinguished in winter, but somewhat hidden now by the young leaves. Just before they settled down to housekeeping there was a great chattering and fluttering and excitement, as they chased each other from elm to elm. Four or five were then often in the same field, some in the trees, some on the ground, their white and black showing distinctly on the level brown earth recently harrowed or rolled. On such a surface birds are visible at a distance; but when the blades of the corn begin to reach any height such as alight are concealed. In many districts of the country that might be called wild and lonely, the magpie is almost extinct. Once now and then a pair may be observed, and those who know their haunts can, of course, find them, but to a visitor passing through, there seems none. But here, so near the metropolis, the magpies are common, and during an hour's walk their cry is almost sure to be heard. They have, however, their favourite locality, where they are much more frequently seen. Coming to my seat under the aspen by the bridge week after week, the burdocks by the wayside gradually spread their leaves, and the procession of the flowers went on. The dandelion, the lesser celandine, the marsh marigold, the coltsfoot, all yellow, had already led the van, closely accompanied by the purple ground-ivy, the red dead-nettle, and the daisy; this last a late comer in the neighbourhood. The blackthorn, the horse-chestnut, and the hawthorn came, and the meadows were golden with the buttercups. Once only had I noticed any indication of fish in the brook; it was on a warm Saturday afternoon, when there was a labourer a long way up the stream, stooping in a peculiar manner near the edge of the water with a stick in his hand. He was, I felt sure, trying to wire a spawning jack, but did not succeed. Many weeks had passed, and now there came (as the close time for coarse fish expired) a concourse of anglers to the almost stagnant pond fed by the side hatch. Well-dressed lads with elegant and finished tackle rode up on their bicycles, with their rods slung at their backs. Hoisting the bicycles over the gate into the meadow, they left them leaning against the elms, fitted their rods and fished in the pond. Poorer boys, with long wands cut from the hedge and ruder lines, trudged up on foot, sat down on the sward and watched their corks by the hour together. Grown men of the artisan class, covered with the dust of many miles' tramping, came with their luncheons in a handkerchief, and set about their sport with a quiet earnestness which argued long if desultory practice. In fine weather there were often a dozen youths and four or five men standing, sitting, or kneeling on the turf along the shore of the pond, all intent on their floats, and very nearly silent. People driving along the highway stopped their traps, and carts, and vans a minute or two to watch them: passengers on foot leaned over the gate, or sat down and waited expectantly. Sometimes one of the more venturesome anglers would tuck up his trousers and walk into the shallow water, so as to be able to cast his bait under the opposite bank, where it was deep. Then an ancient and much battered punt was discovered aground in a field at some distance, and dragged to the pond. One end of the punt had quite rotted away, but by standing at the other, so as to depress it there and lift the open end above the surface, two, or even three, could make a shift to fish from it. The silent and motionless eagerness with which these anglers dwelt upon their floats, grave as herons, could not have been exceeded. There they were day after day, always patient and always hopeful. Occasionally a small catch--a mere "bait "--was handed round for inspection; and once a cunning fisherman, acquainted with all the secrets of his craft, succeeded in drawing forth three perch, perhaps a quarter of a pound each, and one slender eel. These made quite a show, and were greatly admired; but I never saw the same man there again. He was satisfied. As I sat on the white rail under the aspen, and inhaled the scent of the beans flowering hard by, there was a question which suggested itself to me, and the answer to which I never could supply. The crowd about the pond all stood with their backs to the beautiful flowing brook. They had before them the muddy banks of the stagnant pool, on whose surface patches of scum floated. Behind them was the delicious stream, clear and limpid, bordered with sedge and willow and flags, and overhung with branches. The strip of sward between the two waters was certainly not more than twenty yards; there was no division hedge, or railing, and evidently no preservation, for the mouchers came and washed their water-cress which they had gathered in the ditches by the side hatch, and no one interfered with them. There was no keeper or water bailiff, not even a notice board. Policemen, on foot and mounted, passed several times daily, and, like everybody else, paused to see the sport, but said not a word. Clearly, there was nothing whatever to prevent any of those present from angling in the stream; yet they one and all, without exception, fished in the pond. This seemed to me a very remarkable fact. After a while I noticed another circumstance; nobody ever even looked into the stream or under the arches of the bridge. No one spared a moment from his float amid the scum of the pond, just to stroll twenty paces and glance at the swift current. It appeared from this that the pond had a reputation for fish, and the brook had not. Everybody who had angled in the pond recommended his friends to go and do likewise. There were fish in the pond. So every fresh comer went and angled there, and accepted the fact that there were fish. Thus the pond obtained a traditionary reputation, which circulated from lip to lip round about. I need not enlarge on the analogy that exists in this respect between the pond and various other things. By implication it was evidently as much understood and accepted on the other hand that there was nothing in the stream. Thus I reasoned it out, sitting under the aspen, and yet somehow the general opinion did not satisfy me. There must be something in so sweet a stream. The sedges by the shore, the flags in the shallow, slowly swaying from side to side with the current, the sedge-reedlings calling, the moorhens and water-rats, all gave an air of habitation. One morning, looking very gently over the parapet of the bridge (down stream) into the shadowy depth beneath, just as my eyes began to see the bottom, something like a short thick dark stick drifted out from the arch, somewhat sideways. Instead of proceeding with the current, it had hardly cleared the arch when it took a position parallel to the flowing water and brought up. It was thickest at the end that faced the stream; at the other there was a slight motion as if caused by the current against a flexible membrane, as it sways a flag. Gazing down intently into the shadow the colour of the sides of the fish appeared at first not exactly uniform, and presently these indistinct differences resolved themselves into spots. It was a trout, perhaps a pound and a half in weight. His position was at the side of the arch, out of the rush of the current, and almost behind the pier, but where he could see anything that came floating along under the culvert. Immediately above him but not over was the mass of weeds tangled in the dead branch. Thus in the shadow of the bridge and in the darkness under the weeds he might easily have escaped notice. He was, too, extremely wary. The slightest motion was enough to send him instantly under the arch; his cover was but a foot distant, and a trout shoots twelve inches in a fraction of time. The summer advanced, the hay was carted, and the wheat ripened. Already here and there the reapers had cut portions of the more forward corn. As I sat from time to time under the aspen, within hearing of the murmuring water, the thought did rise occasionally that it was a pity to leave the trout there till some one blundered into the knowledge of his existence. There were ways and means by which he could be withdrawn without any noise or publicity. But, then, what would be the pleasure of securing him, the fleeting pleasure of an hour, compared to the delight of seeing him almost day by day? I watched him for many weeks, taking great precautions that no one should observe how continually I looked over into the water there. Sometimes after a glance I stood with my back to the wall as if regarding an object on the other side. If any one was following me, or appeared likely to peer over the parapet, I carelessly struck the top of the wall with my stick in such a manner that it should project, an action sufficient to send the fish under the arch. Or I raised my hat as if heated, and swung it so that it should alarm him. If the coast was clear when I had looked at him still I never left without sending him under the arch in order to increase his alertness. It was a relief to know that so many persons who went by wore tall hats, a safeguard against their seeing anything, for if they approached the shadow of the tall hat reached out beyond the shadow of the parapet, and was enough to alarm him before they could look over. So the summer passed, and, though never free from apprehensions, to my great pleasure without discovery. A LONDON TROUT The sword-flags are rusting at their edges, and their sharp points are turned. On the matted and entangled sedges lie the scattered leaves which every rush of the October wind hurries from the boughs. Some fall on the water and float slowly with the current, brown and yellow spots on the dark surface. The grey willows bend to the breeze; soon the osier beds will look reddish as the wands are stripped by the gusts. Alone the thick polled alders remain green, and in their shadow the brook is still darker. Through a poplar's thin branches the wind sounds as in the rigging of a ship; for the rest, it is silence. The thrushes have not forgotten the frost of the morning, and will not sing at noon; the summer visitors have flown and the moorhens feed quietly. The plantation by the brook is silent, for the sedges, though they have drooped and become entangled, are not dry and sapless yet to rustle loudly. They will rustle dry enough next spring, when the sedge-birds come. A long withey-bed borders the brook and is more resorted to by sedge-reedlings, or sedge-birds, as they are variously called, than any place I know, even in the remotest country. Generally it has been difficult to see them, because the withey is in leaf when they come, and the leaves and sheaves of innumerable rods hide them, while the ground beneath is covered by a thick growth of sedges and flags, to which the birds descend. It happened once, however, that the withey stoles had been polled, and in the spring the boughs were short and small. At the same time, the easterly winds checked the sedges, so that they were hardly half their height, and the flags were thin, and not much taller, when the sedge-birds came, so that they for once found but little cover, and could be seen to advantage. There could not have been less than fifteen in the plantation, two frequented some bushes beside a pond near by, some stayed in scattered willows farther down the stream. They sang so much they scarcely seemed to have time to feed. While approaching one that was singing by gently walking on the sward by the roadside, or where thick dust deadened the footsteps, suddenly another would commence in the low thorn hedge on a branch, so near that it could be touched with a walking-stick. Yet though so near the bird was not wholly visible--he was partly concealed behind a fork of the bough. This is a habit of the sedge-birds. Not in the least timid, they chatter at your elbow, and yet always partially hidden. If in the withey, they choose a spot where the rods cross or bunch together. If in the sedges, though so close it seems as if you could reach forward and catch him, he is behind the stalks. To place some obstruction between themselves and any one passing is their custom: but that spring, as the foliage was so thin, it only needed a little dexterity in peering to get a view. The sedge-bird perches aside, on a sloping willow rod, and, slightly raising his head, chatters, turning his bill from side to side. He is a very tiny bird, and his little eye looks out from under a yellowish streak. His song at first sounds nothing but chatter. After listening a while the ear finds a scale in it--an arrangement and composition--so that, though still a chatter, it is a tasteful one. At intervals he intersperses a chirp, exactly the same as that of the sparrow, a chirp with a tang in it. Strike a piece of metal, and besides the noise of the blow, there is a second note, or tang. The sparrow's chirp has such a note sometimes, and the sedge-bird brings it in--tang, tang, tang. This sound has given him his country name of brook-sparrow, and it rather spoils his song. Often the moment he has concluded he starts for another willow stole, and as he flies begins to chatter when halfway across, and finishes on a fresh branch. But long before this another bird has commenced to sing in a bush adjacent; a third takes it up in the thorn hedge; a fourth in the bushes across the pond; and from farther down the stream comes a faint and distant chatter. Ceaselessly the competing gossip goes on the entire day and most of the night; indeed, sometimes all night through. On a warm spring morning, when the sunshine pours upon the willows, and even the white dust of the road is brighter, bringing out the shadows in clear definition, their lively notes and quick motions make a pleasant commentary on the low sound of the stream rolling round the curve. A moorhen's call comes from the hatch. Broad yellow petals of marsh-marigold stand up high among the sedges rising from the greyish-green ground, which is covered with a film of sun-dried aquatic grass left dry by the retiring waters. Here and there are lilac-tinted cuckoo-flowers, drawn up on taller stalks than those that grow in the meadows. The black flowers of the sedges are powdered with yellow pollen; and dark green sword-flags are beginning to spread their fans. But just across the road, on the topmost twigs of birch poles, swallows twitter in the tenderest tones to their loves. From the oaks in the meadows on that side titlarks mount above the highest bough and then descend, sing, sing, singing, to the grass. A jay calls in a circular copse in the midst of the meadow; solitary rooks go over to their nests in the elms on the hill; cuckoos call, now this way and now that, as they travel round. While leaning on the grey and lichen-hung rails by the brook, the current glides by, and it is the motion of the water and its low murmur which renders the place so idle; the sunbeams brood, the air is still but full of song. Let us, too, stay and watch the petals fall one by one from a wild apple and float down on the stream. But now in autumn the haws are red on the thorn, the swallows are few as they were in the earliest spring; the sedge-birds have flown, and the redwings will soon be here. The sharp points of the sword-flags are turned, their edges rusty, the forget-me-nots are gone. October's winds are too searching for us to linger beside the brook, but still it is pleasant to pass by and remember the summer days. For the year is never gone by; in a moment we can recall the sunshine we enjoyed in May, the roses we gathered in June, the first wheatear we plucked as the green corn filled. Other events go by and are forgotten, and even the details of our own lives, so immensely important to us at the moment, in time fade from the memory till the date we fancied we should never forget has to be sought in a diary. But the year is always with us; the months are familiar always; they have never gone by. So with the red haws around and the rustling leaves it is easy to recall the flowers. The withey plantation here is full of flowers in summer; yellow iris flowers in June when midsummer comes, for the iris loves a thunder-shower. The flowering flag spreads like a fan from the root, the edges overlap near the ground, and the leaves are broad as sword-blades, indeed the plant is one of the largest that grows wild. It is quite different from the common flag with three grooves--bayonet shape--which appears in every brook. The yellow iris is much more local, and in many country streams may be sought for in vain, so that so fine a display as may be seen here seemed almost a discovery to me. They were finest in the year of rain, 1879, that terrible year which is fresh in the memory of all who have any interest in out-of-door matters. At midsummer the plantation was aglow with iris bloom. The large yellow petals were everywhere high above the sedge; in one place a dozen, then two or three, then one by itself, then another bunch. The marsh was a foot deep in water, which could only be seen by parting the stalks of the sedges, for it was quite hidden under them. Sedges and flags grew so thick that everything was concealed except the yellow bloom above. One bunch grew on a bank raised a few inches above the flood which the swollen brook had poured in, and there I walked among them; the leaves came nearly up to the shoulder, the golden flowers on the stalks stood equally high. It was a thicket of iris. Never before had they risen to such a height; it was like the vegetation of tropical swamps, so much was everything drawn up by the continual moisture. Who could have supposed that such a downpour as occurred that summer would have had the effect it had upon flowers? Most would have imagined that the excessive rain would have destroyed them; yet never was there such floral beauty as that year. Meadow-orchis, buttercups, the yellow iris, all the spring flowers came forth in extraordinary profusion. The hay was spoiled, the farmers ruined, but their fields were one broad expanse of flower. As that spring was one of the wettest, so that of the year in present view was one of the driest, and hence the plantation between the lane and the brook was accessible, the sedges and flags short, and the sedge-birds visible. There is a beech in the plantation standing so near the verge of the stream that its boughs droop over. It has a number of twigs around the stem--as a rule the beech-bole is clear of boughs, but some which are of rather stunted growth are fringed with them. The leaves on the longer boughs above fall off and voyage down the brook, but those on the lesser twigs beneath, and only a little way from the ground, remain on, and rustle, dry and brown, all through the winter. Under the shelter of these leaves, and close to the trunk, there grew a plant of flag--the tops of the flags almost reached to the leaves--and all the winter through, despite the frosts for which it was remarkable, despite the snow and the bitter winds which followed, this plant remained green and fresh. From this beech in the morning a shadow stretches to a bridge across the brook, and in that shadow my trout used to lie. The bank under the drooping boughs forms a tiny cliff a foot high, covered with moss, and here I once observed shrew mice diving and racing about. But only once, though I frequently passed the spot; it is curious that I did not see them afterwards. Just below the shadow of the beech there is a sandy, oozy shore, where the footprints of moorhens are often traceable. Many of the trees of the plantation stand in water after heavy rain; their leaves drop into it in autumn, and, being away from the influence of the current, stay and soak, and lie several layers thick. Their edges overlap, red, brown, and pale yellow, with the clear water above and shadows athwart it, and dry white grass at the verge. A horse-chestnut drops its fruit in the dusty road; high above its leaves are tinted with scarlet. It was at the tail of one of the arches of the bridge over the brook that my favourite trout used to lie. Sometimes the shadow of the beech came as far as his haunts, that was early in the morning, and for the rest of the day the bridge itself cast a shadow. The other parapet faces the south, and looking down from it the bottom of the brook is generally visible, because the light is so strong. At the bottom a green plant may be seen waving to and fro in summer as the current sways it. It is not a weed or flag, but a plant with pale green leaves, and looks as if it had come there by some chance; this is the water-parsnip. By the shore on this, the sunny side of the bridge, a few forget-me-nots grow in their season, water crow's-foot flowers, flags lie along the surface and slowly swing from side to side like a boat at anchor. The breeze brings a ripple, and the sunlight sparkles on it; the light reflected dances up the piers of the bridge. Those that pass along the road are naturally drawn to this bright parapet where the brook winds brimming full through green meadows. You can see right to the bottom; you can see where the rush of the water has scooped out a deeper channel under the arches, but look as long as you like there are no fish. The trout I watched so long, and with such pleasure, was always on the other side, at the tail of the arch, waiting for whatever might come through to him. There in perpetual shadow he lay in wait, a little at the side of the arch, scarcely ever varying his position except to dart a yard up under the bridge to seize anything he fancied, and drifting out again to bring up at his anchorage. If people looked over the parapet that side they did not see him; they could not see the bottom there for the shadow, or if the summer noonday cast a strong beam even then it seemed to cover the surface of the water with a film of light which could not be seen through. There are some aspects from which even a picture hung on the wall close at hand cannot be seen. So no one saw the trout; if any one more curious leant over the parapet he was gone in a moment under the arch. Folk fished in the pond about the verge of which the sedge-birds chattered, and but a few yards distant; but they never looked under the arch on the northern and shadowy side, where the water flowed beside the beech. For three seasons this continued. For three summers I had the pleasure to see the trout day after day whenever I walked that way, and all that time, with fishermen close at hand, he escaped notice, though the place was not preserved. It is wonderful to think how difficult it is to see anything under one's very eyes, and thousands of people walked actually and physically right over the fish. However, one morning in the third summer, I found a fisherman standing in the road and fishing over the parapet in the shadowy water. But he was fishing at the wrong arch, and only with paste for roach. While the man stood there fishing, along came two navvies; naturally enough they went quietly up to see what the fisherman was doing, and one instantly uttered an exclamation. He had seen the trout. The man who was fishing with paste had stood so still and patient that the trout, re-assured, had come out, and the navvy--trust a navvy to see anything of the kind--caught sight of him. The navvy knew how to see through water. He told the fisherman, and there was a stir of excitement, a changing of hooks and bait. I could not stay to see the result, but went on, fearing the worst. But he did not succeed; next day the wary trout was there still, and the next, and the next. Either this particular fisherman was not able to come again, or was discouraged; at any rate, he did not try again. The fish escaped, doubtless more wary than ever. In the spring of the next year the trout was still there, and up to the summer I used to go and glance at him. This was the fourth season, and still he was there; I took friends to look at this wonderful fish, which defied all the loafers and poachers, and above all, surrounded himself not only with the shadow of the bridge, but threw a mental shadow over the minds of passers-by, so that they never thought of the possibility of such a thing as trout. But one morning something happened. The brook was dammed up on the sunny side of the bridge, and the water let off by a side-hatch, that some accursed main or pipe or other horror might be laid across the bed of the stream somewhere far down. Above the bridge there was a brimming broad brook, below it the flags lay on the mud, the weeds drooped, and the channel was dry. It was dry up to the beech tree. There, under the drooping boughs of the beech, was a small pool of muddy water, perhaps two yards long, and very narrow--a stagnant muddy pool, not more than three or four inches deep. In this I saw the trout. In the shallow water, his back came up to the surface (for his fins must have touched the mud sometimes)--once it came above the surface, and his spots showed as plain as if you had held him in your hand. He was swimming round to try and find out the reason of this sudden stinting of room. Twice he heaved himself somewhat on his side over a dead branch that was at the bottom, and exhibited all his beauty to the air and sunshine. Then he went away into another part of the shallow and was hidden by the muddy water. Now under the arch of the bridge, his favourite arch, close by there was a deep pool, for, as already mentioned, the scour of the current scooped away the sand and made a hole there. When the stream was shut off by the dam above this hole remained partly full. Between this pool and the shallow under the beech there was sufficient connection for the fish to move into it. My only hope was that he would do so, and as some showers fell, temporarily increasing the depth of the narrow canal between the two pools, there seemed every reason to believe that he had got to that under the arch. If now only that accursed pipe or main, or whatever repair it was, could only be finished quickly, even now the trout might escape! Every day my anxiety increased, for the intelligence would soon get about that the brook was dammed up, and any pools left in it would be sure to attract attention. Sunday came, and directly the bells had done ringing four men attacked the pool under the arch. They took off shoes and stockings and waded in, two at each end of the arch. Stuck in the mud close by was an eel-spear. They churned up the mud, wading in, and thickened and darkened it as they groped under. No one could watch these barbarians longer. Is it possible that he could have escaped? He was a wonderful fish, wary and quick. Is it just possible that they may not even have known that a trout was there at all; but have merely hoped for perch, or tench, or eels? The pool was deep and the fish quick--they did not bale it, might he have escaped? Might they even, if they did find him, have mercifully taken him and placed him alive in some other water nearer their homes? Is it possible that he may have almost miraculously made his way down the stream into other pools? There was very heavy rain one night, which might have given him such a chance. These "mights," and "ifs," and "is it possible" even now keep alive some little hope that some day I may yet see him again. But that was in the early summer. It is now winter, and the beech has brown spots. Among the limes the sedges are matted and entangled, the sword-flags rusty; the rooks are at the acorns, and the plough is at work in the stubble. I have never seen him since. I never failed to glance over the parapet into the shadowy water. Somehow it seemed to look colder, darker, less pleasant than it used to do. The spot was empty, and the shrill winds whistled through the poplars. A BARN A broad red roof of tile is a conspicuous object on the same road which winds and turns in true crooked country fashion, with hedgerows, trees, and fields on both sides, and scarcely a dwelling visible. It is not, indeed, so crooked as a lane in Gloucestershire, which I verily believe passes the same tree thrice, but the curves are frequent enough to vary the view pleasantly. Approaching from either direction, on turning a certain corner a great red roof rises high above the hedges, and the line of its ridge is seen every way through the trees. With this old barn, as with so much of the architecture of former times, the roof is the most important part. The gables, for instance, of Elizabethan houses occupy the eye far more than the walls; and so, too, with the antique halls that still exist. The roof of this old barn is itself the building; the roof and the doors, for the sweeping slope of the tiles comes down within reach of the hand, while the great doors extend half-way to the ridge. By the low black wooden walls a little chaff has been spilt, and has blown out and mingles with the dust of the road. Loose straws lie across the footpath, trodden flat by passing feet; straws have wandered across the road and lodged on the mound, and others have roamed still farther round the corner. Between the gatepost and the wall that encloses the rickyard more straws are jammed, and yet more are borne up by the nettles beneath it. Mosses have grown over the old red brick wall, both on the top and following the lines of the mortar, and bunches of wall grasses flourish along the top. The wheat, and barley, and hay carted home to the rickyard contain the seeds of innumerable plants, many of which, dropping to the ground, come up next year. The trodden earth round where the ricks stood seems favourable to their early appearance; the first poppy blooms here, though its colour is paler than those which come afterwards in the fields. In spring most of the ricks are gone, threshed and sold, but there remains the vast pile of straw--always straw--and the three-cornered stump of a hay-rick which displays bands of different hues, one above the other, like the strata of a geological map. Some of the hay was put up damp, some in good condition, and some had been browned by bad weather before being carted. About the straw-rick, and over the chaff that everywhere strews the earth, numerous fowls search, and by the gateway Chanticleer proudly stands, tall and upright, the king of the rickyard still, as he and his ancestors have been these hundreds of years. Under the granary, which is built on stone staddles, to exclude the mice, some turkeys are huddled together calling occasionally for a "halter," and beyond them the green, glossy neck of a drake glistens in the sunshine. When the corn is high, and sometimes before it is well up, the doors of the barn are daily open, and shock-headed children peer over the hatch. There are others within playing and tumbling on a heap of straw--always straw--which is their bed at night. The sacks which form their counterpane are rolled aside, and they have half the barn for their nursery. If it is wet, at least one great girl and the mother will be there too, gravely sewing, and sitting where they can see all that goes along the road. A hundred yards away, in a corner of an arable field, the very windiest and most draughty that could be chosen, where the hedge is cut down so that it can barely be called a hedge, and where the elms draw the wind, the men of the family crowd over a smoky fire. In the wind and rain the fire could not burn at all had they not by means of a stick propped up a hurdle to windward, and thus sheltered it. As it is there seems no flame, only white embers and a flow of smoke, into which the men from time to time cast the dead wood they have gathered. Here the pot is boiled and the cooking accomplished at a safe distance from the litter and straw of the rickyard. These people are Irish, who come year after year to the same barn for the hoeing and the harvest, travelling from the distant West to gather agricultural wages on the verge of the metropolis. In fine summer weather, beside the usual business traffic, there goes past this windy bare corner a constant stream of pleasure-seekers, heavily laden four-in-hands, tandems, dog-carts, equestrians, and open carriages, filled with well-dressed ladies. They represent the abundant gold of trade and commerce. In their careless luxury they do not notice--how should they?--the smoky fire in the barren corner, or the shock-headed children staring at the equipages over the hatch at the barn. Within a mile there is a similar fire, which by day is not noticeable, because the spot is under a hedge two meadows back from the road. At night it shows brightly, and even as late as eleven o'clock dusky figures may be seen about it, as if the family slept in the open air. A third fire is kept up in the same neighbourhood, but in a different direction, in a meadow bordering on a lonely lane. There is a thatched shed behind the hedge, which is the sleeping-place--the fire burns some forty yards away. Still another shines at night in an open arable field, where is a barn. One day I observed a farmer's courtyard completely filled with groups of men, women, and children, who had come travelling round to do the harvesting. They had with them a small cart or van--not of the kind which the show folk use as movable dwellings, but for the purpose of carrying their pots, pans, and the like. The greater number carry their burdens on their backs, trudging afoot. A gang of ten or twelve once gathered round me to inquire the direction of some spot they desired to reach. A powerful-looking woman, with reaping-hook in her hand and cooking implements over her shoulder, was the speaker. The rest did not appear to know a word of English, and her pronunciation was so peculiar that it was impossible to understand what she meant except by her gestures. I suppose she wanted to find a farm, the name of which I could not get at, and then perceiving she was not understood her broad face flushed red and she poured out a flood of Irish in her excitement. The others chimed in, and the din redoubled. At last I caught the name of a town and was thus able to point the way. About harvest time it is common to meet an Irish labourer dressed in the national costume: a tall, upright fellow with a long-tailed coat, breeches, and worsted stockings. He walks as upright as if drilled, with a quick easy gait and springy step, quite distinct from the Saxon stump. When the corn is cut these bivouac fires go out, and the camp disappears, but the white ashes remain, and next season the smoke will rise again. The barn here with its broad red roof, and the rickyard with the stone staddles, and the litter of chaff and straw, is the central rendezvous all the year of the resident labourers. Day by day, and at all hours, there is sure to be some of them about the place. The stamp of the land is on them. They border on the city, but are as distinctly agricultural and as immediately recognisable as in the heart of the country. This sturdy carter, as he comes round the corner of the straw-rick, cannot be mistaken. He is short and thickly set, a man of some fifty years, but hard and firm of make. His face is broad and red, his shiny fat cheeks almost as prominent as his stumpy nose, likewise red and shiny. A fringe of reddish whiskers surrounds his chin like a cropped hedge. The eyes are small and set deeply, a habit of half-closing the lids when walking in the teeth of the wind and rain has caused them to appear still smaller. The wrinkles at the corners and the bushy eyebrows are more visible and pronounced than the eyes themselves, which are mere bright grey points twinkling with complacent good humour. These red cheeks want but the least motion to break into a smile; the action of opening the lips to speak is sufficient to give that expression. The fur cap he wears allows the round shape of his head to be seen, and the thick neck which is the colour of a brick. He trudges deliberately round the straw-rick: there is something in the style of the man which exactly corresponds to the barn, and the straw, and the stone staddles, and the waggons. Could we look back three hundred years, just such a man would be seen in the midst of the same surroundings, deliberately trudging round the straw-ricks of Elizabethan days, calm and complacent though the Armada be at hand. There are the ricks just the same, here is the barn, and the horses are in good case; the wheat is coming on well. Armies may march, but these are the same. When his waggon creaks along the road towards the town his eldest lad walks proudly by the leader's head, and two younger boys ride in the vehicle. They pass under the great elms; now the sunshine and now the shadow falls upon them; the horses move with measured step and without haste, and both horses and human folks are content in themselves. As you sit in summer on the beach and gaze afar over the blue waters scarcely flecked with foam, how slowly the distant ship moves along the horizon. It is almost, but not quite, still. You go to lunch and return, and the vessel is still there; what patience the man at the wheel must have. So, now, resting here on the stile, see the plough yonder, travelling as it were with all sails set. Three shapely horses in line draw the share. The traces are taut, the swing-tree like a yard braced square, the helmsman at the tiller bears hard upon the stilts. But does it move? The leading horse, seen distinct against the sky, lifts a hoof and places it down again, stepping in the last furrow made. But then there is a perceptible pause before the next hoof rises, and yet again a perceptible delay in the pull of the muscles. The stooping ploughman walking in the new furrow, with one foot often on the level and the other in the hollow, sways a little with the lurch of his implement, but barely drifts ahead. While watched they scarcely move; but now look away for a time and on returning the plough itself and the lower limbs of the ploughman and the horses are out of sight. They have gone over a slope, and are "hull down"; a few minutes more, and they disappear behind the ridge. Look away again and read or dream, as you would on the beach, and then, see, the head and shoulders of the leading horse are up, and by-and-by the plough rises, as they come back on the opposite tack. Thus the long hours slowly pass. Intent day after day upon the earth beneath his feet or upon the tree in the hedge yonder, by which, as by a lighthouse, he strikes out a straight furrow, his mind absorbs the spirit of the land. When the plough pauses, as he takes out his bread and cheese in the corner of the field for luncheon, he looks over the low cropped hedge and sees far off the glitter of the sunshine on the glass roof of the Crystal Palace. The light plays and dances on it, flickering as on rippling water. But, though hard by, he is not of London. The horses go on again, and his gaze is bent down upon the furrow. A mile or so up the road there is a place where it widens, and broad strips of sward run parallel on both sides. Beside the path, but just off it, so as to be no obstruction, an aged man stands watching his sheep. He has stood there so long that at last the restless sheep dog has settled down on the grass. He wears a white smock-frock, and leans heavily on his long staff, which he holds with both hands, propping his chest upon it. His face is set in a frame of white--white hair, white whiskers, short white beard. It is much wrinkled with years; but still has a hale and hearty hue. The sheep are only on their way from one part of the farm to another, perhaps half a mile; but they have already been an hour, and will probably occupy another in getting there. Some are feeding steadily; some are in a gateway, doing nothing, like their pastor; if they were on the loneliest slope of the Downs he and they could not be more unconcerned. Carriages go past, and neither the sheep nor the shepherd turn to look. Suddenly there comes a hollow booming sound--a roar, mellowed and subdued by distance, with a peculiar beat upon the ear, as if a wave struck the nerve and rebounded and struck again in an infinitesimal fraction of time--such a sound as can only bellow from the mouth of cannon. Another and another. The big guns at Woolwich are at work. The shepherd takes no heed--neither he nor his sheep. His ears must acknowledge the sound, but his mind pays no attention. He knows of nothing but his sheep. You may brush by him along the footpath and it is doubtful if he sees you. But stay and speak about the sheep, and instantly he looks you in the face and answers with interest. Round the corner of the straw-rick by the red-roofed barn there comes another man, this time with smoke-blackened face, and bringing with him an odour of cotton waste and oil. He is the driver of a steam ploughing engine, whose broad wheels in summer leave their impression in the deep white dust of the roads, and in moist weather sink into the soil at the gateways and leave their mark as perfect as in wax. But though familiar with valves, and tubes, and gauges, spending his hours polishing brass and steel, and sometimes busy with spanner and hammer, his talk, too, is of the fields. He looks at the clouds, and hopes it will continue fine enough to work. Like many others of the men who are employed on the farms about town he came originally from a little village a hundred miles away, in the heart of the country. The stamp of the land is on him, too. Besides the Irish, who pass in gangs and generally have a settled destination, many agricultural folk drift along the roads and lanes searching for work. They are sometimes alone, or in couples, or they are a man and his wife, and carry hoes. You can tell them as far as you can see them, for they stop and look over every gateway to note how the crop is progressing, and whether any labour is required. On Saturday afternoons, among the crowd of customers at the shops in the towns, under the very shadow of the almost palatial villas of wealthy "City" men, there may be seen women whose dress and talk at once mark them out as agricultural. They have come in on foot from distant farms for a supply of goods, and will return heavily laden. No town-bred woman, however poor, would dress so plainly as these cottage matrons. Their daughters who go with them have caught the finery of the town, and they do not mean to stay in the cottage. There is a bleak arable field, on somewhat elevated ground, not very far from the same old barn. In the corner of this field for the last two or three years a great pit of roots has been made: that is, the roots are piled together and covered with straw and earth. When this mound is opened in the early spring a stout, elderly woman takes her seat beside it, billhook in hand, and there she sits the day through trimming the roots one by one, and casting those that she has prepared aside ready to be carted away to the cattle. A hurdle or two propped up with stakes, and against which some of the straw from a mound has been thrown, keeps off some of the wind. But the easterly breezes sweeping over the bare upland must rush round and over that slight bulwark with force but little broken. Holding the root in the left hand, she turns it round and slashes off the projections with quick blows, which seem to only just miss her fingers, laughing and talking the while with two children who have brought her some refreshment, and who roll and tumble and play about her. The scene might be bodily removed and set down a hundred miles away, in the midst of a western county, and would there be perfectly at one with the surroundings. Here, as she sits and chops, the east wind brings the boom of trains continually rolling over an iron bridge to and from the metropolis. She was there two successive seasons to my knowledge; she, too, had the stamp of the land upon her. The broad sward where the white-haired shepherd so often stands watching his sheep feeding along to this field, is decked in summer with many flowers. By the hedge the agrimony frequently lifts its long stem, surrounded with small yellow petals. One day towards autumn I noticed a man looking along a hedge, and found that he was gathering this plant. He had a small armful of the straggling stalks, from which the flowers were then fading. The herb had once a medicinal reputation, and, curious to know if it was still remembered, I asked him the name of the herb and what it was for. He replied that it was agrimony. "We makes tea of it, and it is good for the flesh," or, as he pronounced it, "fleysh." WHEATFIELDS The cornfields immediately without London on the southern side are among the first to be reaped. Regular as if clipped to a certain height, the level wheat shows the slope of the ground, corresponding to it, so that the glance travels swiftly and unchecked across the fields. They scarce seemed divided, for the yellow ears on either side rise as high as the cropped hedge between. Red spots, like larger poppies, now appear above and now dive down again beneath the golden surface. These are the red caps worn by some of the reapers; some of the girls, too, have a red scarf across the shoulder or round the waist. By instinctive sympathy the heat of summer requires the contrast of brilliant hues, of scarlet and gold, of poppy and wheat. A girl, as she rises from her stooping position, turns a face, brown, as if stained with walnut juice, towards me, the plain gold ring in her brown ear gleams, so, too, the rings on her finger, nearly black from the sun, but her dark eyes scarcely pause a second on a stranger. She is too busy, her tanned fingers are at work again gathering up the cut wheat. This is no gentle labour, but "hard hand-play," like that in the battle of the olden time sung by the Saxon poet. The ceaseless stroke of the reaping-hook falls on the ranks of the corn: the corn yields, but only inch by inch. If the burning sun, or thirst, or weariness forces the reaper to rest, the fight too stays, the ranks do not retreat, and victory is only won by countless blows. The boom of a bridge as a train rolls over the iron girders resounds, and the brazen dome on the locomotive is visible for a moment as it passes across the valley. But no one heeds it--the train goes on its way to the great city, the reapers abide by their labour. Men and women, lads and girls, some mere children, judged by their stature, are plunged as it were in the wheat. The few that wear bright colours are seen: the many who do not are unnoticed. Perhaps the dusky girl here with the red scarf may have some strain of the gipsy, some far-off reminiscence of the sunlit East which caused her to wind it about her. The sheaf grows under her fingers, it is bound about with a girdle of twisted stalks, in which mingle the green bine of convolvulus and the pink-streaked bells that must fade. Heat comes down from above; heat comes up from beneath, from the dry, white earth, from the rows of stubble, as if emitted by the endless tubes of cut stalks pointing upwards. Wheat is a plant of the sun: it loves the heat, and heat crackles in the rustle of the straw. The pimpernels above which the hook passed are wide open: the larger white convolvulus trumpets droop languidly on the low hedge: the distant hills are dim with the vapour of heat; the very clouds which stay motionless in the sky reflect a yet more brilliant light from their white edges. Is there no shadow? There is no tree in the field, and the low hedge can shelter nothing; but bordering the next, on rather higher ground, is an ash copse, with some few spruce firs. Resting on a rail in the shadow of these firs, a light air now and again draws along beside the nut-tree bushes of the hedge, the cooler atmosphere of the shadow, perhaps causes it. Faint as it is, it sways the heavy laden brome grass, but is not strong enough to lift a ball of thistledown from the bennets among which it is entangled. How swiftly the much-desired summer comes upon us! Even with the reapers at work before one it is difficult to realise that it has not only come, but will soon be passing away. Sweet summer is but just long enough for the happy loves of the larks. It seems but yesterday, it is really more than five months since, that, leaning against the gate there, I watched a lark and his affianced on the ground among the grey stubble of last year still standing. His crest was high and his form upright, he ran a little way and then sang, went on again and sang again to his love, moving parallel with him. Then passing from the old dead stubble to fresh-turned furrows, still they went side by side, now down in the valley between the clods, now mounting the ridges, but always together, always with song and joy, till I lost them across the brown earth. But even then from time to time came the sweet voice, full of hope in coming summer. The day declined, and from the clear, cold sky of March the moon looked down, gleaming on the smooth planed furrow which the plough had passed. Scarce had she faded in the dawn ere the lark sang again, high in the morning sky. The evenings became dark; still he rose above the shadows and the dusky earth, and his song fell from the bosom of the night. With full untiring choir the joyous host heralded the birth of the corn; the slender forceless seed-leaves which came gently up till they had risen above the proud crests of the lovers. Time advanced and the bare mounds about the field, carefully cleaned by the husbandman, were covered again with wild herbs and plants, like a fringe to a garment of pure green. Parsley and "gix," and clogweed, and sauce-alone, whose white flowers smell of garlic if crushed in the fingers, came up along the hedge; by the gateway from the bare trodden earth appeared the shepherd's purse; small must be the coin to go in its seed capsule, and therefore it was so called with grim and truthful humour, for the shepherd, hard as is his work, facing wind and weather, carries home but little money. Yellow charlock shot up faster and shone bright above the corn; the oaks showered down their green flowers like moss upon the ground; the tree-pipits sang on the branches and descending to the wheat. The rusty chain-harrow, lying inside the gate, all tangled together, was concealed with grasses. Yonder the magpies fluttered over the beans among which they are always searching in spring; blackbirds, too, are fond of a beanfield. Time advanced again, and afar on the slope bright yellow mustard flowered, a hill of yellow behind the elms. The luxuriant purple of trifolium, acres of rich colour, glowed in the sunlight. There was a scent of flowering beans, the vetches were in flower, and the peas which clung together for support--the stalk of the pea goes through the leaf as a painter thrusts his thumb through his palette. Under the edge of the footpath through the wheat a wild pansy blooms. Standing in the gateway beneath the shelter of the elms as the clouds come over, it is pleasant to hear the cool refreshing rain come softly down; the green wheat drinks it as it falls, so that hardly a drop reaches the ground, and to-morrow it will be as dry as ever. Wood-pigeons call from the hedges, and blackbirds whistle in the trees; the sweet delicious rain refreshes them as it does the corn. Thunder mutters in the distance, and the electric atmosphere rapidly draws the wheat up higher. A few days' sunshine and the first wheatear appears. Very likely there are others near, but standing with their hood of green leaf towards you, and therefore hidden. As the wheat comes into ear it is garlanded about with hedges in full flower. It is midsummer, and midsummer, like a bride, is decked in white. On the high-reaching briars white June roses; white flowers on the lowly brambles; broad white umbels of elder in the corner, and white cornels blooming under the elm; honeysuckle hanging creamy white coronals round the ash boughs; white meadow-sweet flowering on the shore of the ditch; white clover, too, beside the gateway. As spring is azure and purple, so midsummer is white, and autumn golden. Thus the coming out of the wheat into ear is marked and welcomed with the purest colour. But these, though the most prominent along the hedge, are not the only flowers; the prevalent white is embroidered with other hues. The brown feathers of a few reeds growing where the furrows empty the showers into the ditch, wave above the corn. Among the leaves of mallow its mauve petals are sheltered from the sun. On slender stalks the yellow vetchling blooms, reaching ambitiously as tall as the lowest of the brambles. Bird's-foot lotus, with red claws, is overtopped by the grasses. The elm has a fresh green--it has put forth its second or midsummer shoot; the young leaves of the aspen are white, and the tree as the wind touches it seems to turn grey. The furrows run to the ditch under the reeds, the ditch declines to a little streamlet which winds all hidden by willowherb and rush and flag, a mere trickle of water under brooklime, away at the feet of the corn. In the shadow, deep down beneath the crumbling bank which is only held up by the roots of the grasses, is a forget-me-not with a tiny circlet of yellow in the centre of its petals. The coming of the ears of wheat forms an era and a date, a fixed point in the story of the summer. It is then that, soon after dawn, the clear sky assumes the delicate and yet luscious purple which seems to shine through the usual atmosphere, as if its former blue became translucent and an inner and ethereal light of colour was shown. As the sun rises higher the brilliance of his rays overpowers it, and even at midsummer it is but rarely seen. The morning sky is often, too, charged with saffron, or the blue is clear, but pale, and the sunrise might be watched for many mornings without the appearance of this exquisite hue. Once seen, it will ever be remembered. Upon the Downs in early autumn, as the vapours clear away, the same colour occasionally gleams from the narrow openings of blue sky. But at midsummer, above the opening wheatears, the heaven from the east to the zenith is flushed with it. At noonday, as the light breeze comes over, the wheat rustles the more because the stalks are stiffening and swing from side to side from the root instead of yielding up the stem. Stay now at every gateway and lean over while the midsummer hum sounds above. It is a peculiar sound, not like the querulous buzz of the honey, nor the drone of the humble bee, but a sharp ringing resonance like that of a tuning-fork. Sometimes, in the far-away country where it is often much louder, the folk think it has a threatening note. Here the barley has taken a different tint now the beard is out; here the oats are straggling forth from their sheath; here a pungent odour of mustard in flower comes on the air; there a poppy faints with broad petals flung back and drooping, unable to uphold its gorgeous robes. The flower of the field pea, here again, would make a model for a lady's hat; so would a butterfly with closed wings on the verge of a leaf; so would the broom blossom, or the pink flower of the restharrow. This hairy caterpillar, creeping along the hawthorn, which if touched, immediately coils itself in a ring, very recently was thought a charm in distant country places for some diseases of childhood, if hung about the neck. Hedge mustard, yellow and ragged and dusty, stands by the gateway. In the evening, as the dew gathers on the grass, which feels cooler to the hand some time before an actual deposit, the clover and vetches close their leaves--the signal the hares have been waiting for to venture from the sides of the fields where they have been cautiously roaming, and take bolder strolls across the open and along the lanes. The aspens rustle louder in the stillness of the evening; their leaves not only sway to and fro, but semi-rotate upon the stalks, which causes their scintillating appearance. The stars presently shine from the pale blue sky, and the wheat shimmers dimly white beneath them. So time advances till to-day, watching the reapers from the shadow of the copse, it seems as if within that golden expanse there must be something hidden, could you but rush in quickly and seize it--some treasure of the sunshine; and there _is_ a treasure, the treasure of life stored in those little grains, the slow product of the sun. But it cannot be grasped in an impatient moment--it must be gathered with labour. I have threshed out in my hand three ears of the ripe wheat: how many foot-pounds of human energy do these few light grains represent? The roof of the Crystal Palace yonder gleams and sparkles this afternoon as if it really were crystal under the bright rays. But it was concealed by mist when the ploughs in the months gone by were guided in these furrows by men, hard of feature and of hand, stooping to their toil. The piercing east wind scattered the dust in clouds, looking at a distance like small rain across the field, when grey-coated men, grey too of beard, followed the red drill to and fro. How many times the horses stayed in this sheltered corner while the ploughmen and their lads ate their crusts! How many times the farmer and the bailiff, with hands behind their backs, considering, walked along the hedge taking counsel of the earth if they had done right! How many times hard gold and silver was paid over at the farmer's door for labour while yet the plant was green; how many considering cups of ale were emptied in planning out the future harvest! Now it is come, and still more labour--look at the reapers yonder--and after that more time and more labour before the sacks go to the market. Hard toil and hard fare: the bread which the reapers have brought with them for their luncheon is hard and dry, the heat has dried it like a chip. In the corner of the field the women have gathered some sticks and lit a fire--the flame is scarce seen in the sunlight, and the sticks seem eaten away as they burn by some invisible power. They are boiling a kettle, and their bread, too, which they will soak in the tea, is dry and chip-like. Aside, on the ground by the hedge, is a handkerchief tied at the corners, with a few mushrooms in it. The scented clover field--the white campions dot it here and there--yields a rich, nectareous food for ten thousand bees, whose hum comes together with its odour on the air. But these men and women and children ceaselessly toiling know no such sweets; their food is as hard as their labour. How many foot-pounds, then, of human energy do these grains in my hand represent? Do they not in their little compass contain the potentialities, the past and the future, of human life itself? Another train booms across the iron bridge in the hollow. In a few hours now the carriages will be crowded with men hastening home from their toil in the City. The narrow streak of sunshine which day by day falls for a little while upon the office floor, yellowed by the dingy pane, is all, perhaps, to remind them of the sun and sky, of the forces of nature; and that little is unnoticed. The pressure of business is so severe in these later days that in the hurry and excitement it is not wonderful many should forget that the world is not comprised in the court of a City thoroughfare. Rapt and absorbed in discount and dollars, in bills and merchandise, the over-strung mind deems itself all--the body is forgotten, the physical body, which is subject to growth and change, just as the plants and the very grass of the field. But there is a subtle connection between the physical man and the great nature which comes pressing up so closely to the metropolis. He still depends in the nineteenth century, as in the dim ages before the Pyramids, upon this tiny yellow grain here, rubbed out from the ear of wheat. The clever mechanism of the locomotive which bears him to and fro, week after week and month after month, from home to office and from office home, has not rendered him in the least degree independent of this. But it is no wonder that these things are forgotten in the daily struggle of London. And if the merchant spares an abstracted glance from the morning or evening newspaper out upon the fields from the carriage window, the furrows of the field can have but little meaning. Each looks to him exactly alike. To the farmers and the labourer such and such a furrow marks an acre and has its bearing, but to the passing glance it is not so. The work in the field is so slow; the passenger by rail sees, as it seems to him, nothing going on; the corn may sow itself almost for all that is noteworthy in apparent labour. Thus it happens that, although the cornfields and the meadows come so closely up to the offices and warehouses of mighty London, there is a line and mark in the minds of men between them; the man of merchandise does not see what the man of the fields sees, though both may pass the same acres every morning. It is inevitable that it should be so. It is easy in London to forget that it is midsummer, till, going some day into Covent Garden Market, you see baskets of the cornflower, or blue-bottle as it is called in the country, ticketed "Corinne," and offered for sale. The lovely azure of the flower recalls the scene where it was first gathered long since at the edge of the wheat. By the copse here now the teazles lift their spiny heads high in the hedge, the young nuts are browning, the wild mints flowering on the shores of the ditch, and the reapers are cutting ceaselessly at the ripe corn. The larks have brought their loves to a happy conclusion. Besides them the wheat in its day has sheltered many other creatures--both animals and birds. Hares raced about it in the spring, and even in the May sunshine might be seen rambling over the slopes. As it grew higher it hid the leverets and the partridge chicks. Toll has been taken by rook, and sparrow, and pigeon. Enemies, too, have assailed it; the daring couch invaded it, the bindweed climbed up the stalk, the storm rushed along and beat it down. Yet it triumphed, and to-day the full sheaves lean against each other. THE CROWS On one side of the road immediately after quitting the suburb there is a small cover of furze. The spines are now somewhat browned by the summer heats, and the fern which grows about every bush trembles on the balance of colour between green and yellow. Soon, too, the tall wiry grass will take a warm brown tint, which gradually pales as the autumn passes into winter, and finally bleaches to greyish white. Looking into the furze from the footpath, there are purple traces here and there at the edge of the fern where the heath-bells hang. On a furze branch, which projects above the rest, a furze chat perches, with yellow blossom above and beneath him. Rushes mark the margin of small pools and marshy spots, so overhung with brambles and birch branches, and so closely surrounded by gorse, that they would not otherwise be noticed. But the thick growth of rushes intimates that water is near, and upon parting the bushes a little may be seen, all that has escaped evaporation in the shade. From one of these marshy spots I once--and once only--observed a snipe rise, and after wheeling round return and settle by another. As the wiry grass becomes paler with the fall of the year, the rushes, on the contrary, from green become faintly yellow, and presently brownish. Grey grass and brown rushes, dark furze, and fern, almost copper in hue from frost, when lit up by a gleam of winter sunshine form a pleasant breadth of warm colour in the midst of bare fields. After continuous showers in spring, lizards are often found in the adjacent gardens, their dark backs as they crawl over the patches being almost exactly the tint of the moist earth. If touched, the tail is immediately coiled, the body stiffens, and the creature appears dead. They are popularly supposed to come from the furze, which is also believed to shelter adders. There is, indeed, scarcely a cover in Surrey and Kent which is not said to have its adders; the gardeners employed at villas close to the metropolis occasionally raise an alarm, and profess to have seen a viper in the shrubberies, or the ivy, or under an old piece of bast. Since so few can distinguish at a glance between the common snake and the adder it is as well not to press too closely upon any reptile that may chance to be heard rustling in the grass, and to strike tussocks with the walking-stick before sitting down to rest, for the adder is only dangerous when unexpectedly encountered. In the roadside ditch by the furze the figwort grows, easily known by its coarse square stem; and the woody bines, if so they may be called, or stalks of bitter-sweet, remain all the winter standing in the hawthorn hedge. The first frosts, on the other hand, shrivel the bines of white bryony, which part and hang separated, and in the spring a fresh bine pushes up with greyish green leaves and tendrils feeling for support. It is often observed that the tendrils of this bryony coil both ways, with and against the sun. But it must be remembered in looking for this that it is the same tendril which should be examined, and not two different ones. It will then be seen that the tendril, after forming a spiral one way, lengthens out like a tiny green wax taper, and afterwards turns the other. Sometimes it resumes the original turn before reaching a branch to cling to, and may thus be said to have revolved in three directions. The dusty celandine grows under the bushes; and its light green leaves seem to retain the white dust from the road. Ground ivy creeps everywhere over the banks, and covers the barest spot. In April its flowers, though much concealed by leaves, dot the sides of the ditches with colour, like the purple tint that lurks in the amethyst. A small black patch marks the site of one of those gorse fires which are so common in Surrey. This was extinguished before it could spread beyond a few bushes. The crooked stems remain black as charcoal, too much burnt to recover, and in the centre a young birch scorched by the flames stands leafless. This barren birch, bare of foliage and apparently unattractive, is the favourite resort of yellow-hammers. Perching on a branch towards evening a yellow-hammer will often sit and sing by the hour together, as if preferring to be clear of leafy sprays. The somewhat dingy hue of many trees as the summer begins to wane is caused not only by the fading of the green, but by the appearance of spots upon the leaves, as may be seen on those birches which grow among the furze. But in spring and early summer their fresh light green contrasts with masses of bright yellow gorse bloom. Just before then--just as the first leaves are opening--the chiffchaffs come. The first spring I had any knowledge of this spot was mild, and had been preceded by mild seasons. The chiffchaffs arrived all at once, as it seemed, in a bevy, and took possession of every birch about the furze, calling incessantly with might and main. The willow-wrens were nearly as numerous. All the gorse seemed full of them for a few days. Then by degrees they gradually spread abroad, and dispersed among the hedges. But in the following springs nothing of the kind occurred. Chiffchaff and willow-wren came as usual, but they did not arrive in a crowd at once. This may have been owing to the flight going elsewhere, or possibly the flock were diminished by failure to rear the young broods in so drenching a season as 1879, which would explain the difference observed next spring. There was no scarcity, but there was a lack of the bustle and excitement and flood of song that accompanied their advent two years before. Upon a piece of waste land at the corner of the furze a very large cinder and dust heap was made by carting refuse there from the neighbouring suburb. During the sharp and continued frosts of the winter this dust-heap was the resort of almost every species of bird--sparrows, starlings, greenfinches, and rooks searching for any stray morsels of food. Some birdcatchers soon noticed this concourse, and spread their nets among the adjacent rushes, but fortunately with little success. I say fortunately, not because I fear the extinction of small birds, but because of the miserable fate that awaits the captive. Far better for the frightened little creature to have its neck at once twisted and to die than to languish in cages hardly large enough for it to turn in behind the dirty panes of the windows in the Seven Dials. The happy greenfinch--I use the term of forethought, for the greenfinch seems one of the very happiest of birds in the hedges--accustomed during all its brief existence to wander in company with friends from bush to bush, and tree to tree, must literally pine its heart out. Or it may be streaked with bright paint and passed on some unwary person for a Java sparrow or a "blood-heart." The little boy who dares to take a bird's nest is occasionally fined and severely reproved. The ruffian-like crew who go forth into the pastures and lanes about London, snaring and netting full-grown birds by the score, are permitted to ply their trade unchecked. I mean to say that there is no comparison between the two things. An egg has not yet advanced to consciousness or feeling: the old birds, if their nest is taken, frequently build another. The lad has to hunt for the nest, to climb for it or push through thorns, and may be pricked by brambles and stung by nettles. In a degree there is something to him approaching to sport in nesting. But these birdcatchers simply stand by the ditch with their hands in their pockets sucking a stale pipe. They would rather lounge there in the bitterest north-east wind that ever blew than do a single hour's honest work. Blackguard is written in their faces. The poacher needs some courage, at least; he knows a penalty awaits detection. These fellows have no idea of sport, no courage, and no skill, for their tricks are simplicity itself, nor have they the pretence of utility, for they do not catch birds for the good of the farmers or the market gardeners, but merely that they may booze without working for the means. Pity it is that any one can be found to purchase the product of their brutality. No one would do so could they but realise the difference to the captive upon which they are lavishing their mistaken love, between the cage, the alternately hot and cold room (as the fire goes out at night), the close atmosphere and fumes that lurk near the ceiling, and the open air and freedom to which it was born. The rooks only came to the dust-heap in hard weather, and ceased to visit it so soon as the ground relaxed and the ploughs began to move. But a couple of crows looked over the refuse once during the day for months till men came to sift the cinders. These crows are permanent residents. Their rendezvous is a copse, only separate from the furze by the highway. They are always somewhere near, now in the ploughed fields, now in the furze, and during the severe frost of last winter in the road itself, so sharply driven by hunger as to rise very unwillingly on the approach of passengers. A meadow opposite the copse is one of their favourite resorts. There are anthills, rushes, and other indications of not too rich a soil in this meadow, and in places the prickly restharrow grows among the grass, bearing its pink flower in summer. Perhaps the coarse grass and poor soil are productive of grubs and insects, for not only the crows, but the rooks, continually visit it. One spring, hearing a loud chattering in the copse, and recognising the alarm notes of the missel-thrush, I cautiously crept up the hedge, and presently found three crows up in a birch tree, just above where the thrushes were calling. The third crow--probably a descendant of the other two--had joined in a raid upon the missel-thrushes' brood. Both defenders and assailants were in a high state of excitement; the thrushes screeching, and the crows in a row one above the other on a branch, moving up and down it in a restless manner. I fear they had succeeded in their purpose, for no trace of the young birds was visible. The nest of the missel-thrush is so frequently singled out for attack by crows that it would seem the young birds must possess a peculiar and attractive flavour; or is it because they are large? There are more crows round London than in a whole county, where the absence of manufactures and the rural quiet would seem favourable to bird life. The reason, of course, is that in the country the crows frequenting woods are shot and kept down as much as possible by gamekeepers. In the immediate environs of London keepers are not about, and even a little farther away the land is held by many small owners, and game preservation is not thought of. The numerous pieces of waste ground, "to let on building lease," the excavated ground, where rubbish can be thrown, the refuse and ash heaps--these are the haunts of the London crow. Suburban railway stations are often haunted by crows, which perch on the telegraph wires close to the back windows of the houses that abut upon the metals. There they sit, grave and undisturbed by the noisy engines which pass beneath them. In the shrubberies around villa gardens, or in the hedges of the small paddocks attached, thrushes and other birds sometimes build their nests. The children of the household watch the progress of the nest, and note the appearance of the eggs with delight. Their friends of larger growth visit the spot occasionally, and orders are given that the birds shall be protected, the gardeners become gamekeepers, and the lawn or shrubbery is guarded like a preserve. Everything goes well till the young birds are almost ready to quit the nest, when one morning they are missing. The theft is, perhaps, attributed to the boys of the neighbourhood, but unjustly, unless plain traces of entry are visible. It is either cats or crows. The cats cannot be kept out, not even by a dog, for they watch till his attention is otherwise engaged. Food is not so much the object as the pleasure of destruction, for cats will kill and yet not eat their victim. The crow may not have been seen in the garden, and it may be said that he could not have known of the nest without looking round the place. But the crow is a keen observer, and has not the least necessity to search for the nest. He merely keeps a watch on the motions of the old birds of the place, and knows at once by their flight being so continually directed to one spot that there their treasure lies. He and his companion may come very early in the morning--summer mornings are bright as noonday long before the earliest gardener is abroad--or they may come in the dusk of the evening. Crows are not so particular in retiring regularly to roost as the rook. The furze and copse frequented by the pair which I found attacking the missel-thrushes are situate at the edge of extensive arable fields. In these, though not overlooked by the gamekeepers, there is a good deal of game which is preserved by the tenants of the farm. After the bitter winter and wet summer of 1879, there was a complaint, too well founded, that the partridges were diminished in numbers. But the crows were not. There were as many of them as ever. When there were many partridges the loss of a few eggs or chicks was not so important. But when there are but few, every egg or chick destroyed retards the re-stocking of the fields. The existence of so many crows all round London is, in short, a constant check upon the game. The belt of land immediately outside the houses, and lying between them and the plantations which are preserved, is the crow's reserve, where he hunts in security. He is so safe that he has almost lost all dread of man, and his motions can be observed without trouble. The ash-heap at the corner of the furze, besides the crows, became the resort of rats, whose holes were so thick in the bank as to form quite a bury. After the rats came the weasels. When the rats were most numerous, before the ash-heap was sifted, there was a weasel there nearly every day, slipping in and out of their holes. In the depth of the country an observer might walk some considerable distance and wait about for hours without seeing a weasel; but here by the side of a busy suburban road there were plenty. Professional ratcatchers ferreted the bank once or twice, and filled their iron cages. With these the dogs kept by dog-fanciers in the adjacent suburb were practised in destroying vermin at so much a rat. Though ferreted and hunted down by the weasels the rats were not rooted out, but remained till the ash-heap was sifted and no fresh refuse deposited. In one place among the gorse, the willows, birches, and thorn bushes make a thick covert, which is adjacent to several of the hidden pools previously mentioned. Here a brook-sparrow or sedge-reedling takes up his quarters in the spring, and chatters on, day and night, through the summer. Visitors to the opera and playgoers returning in the first hours of the morning from Covent Garden or Drury Lane can scarcely fail to hear him if they pause but one moment to listen to the nightingale. The latter sings in one bush and the sedge-reedling in another close together. The moment the nightingale ceases the sedge-reedling lifts his voice, which is a very penetrating one, and in the silence of the night may be heard some distance. This bird is credited with imitating the notes of several others, and has been called the English mocking-bird, but I strongly doubt the imitation. Nor, indeed, could I ever trace the supposed resemblance of its song to that of other birds. It is a song of a particularly monotonous character. It is distinguishable immediately, and if the bird happens to nest near a house, is often disliked on account of the loud iteration. Perhaps those who first gave it the name of the mocking-bird were not well acquainted with the notes of the birds which they fancied it to mock. To mistake it for the nightingale, some of whose tones it is said to imitate, would be like confounding the clash of cymbals with the soft sound of a flute. Linnets come to the furze, and occasionally magpies, but these latter only in winter. Then, too, golden-crested wrens may be seen searching in the furze bushes, and creeping round and about the thorns and brambles. There is a roadside pond close to the furze, the delight of horses and cattle driven along the dusty way in summer. Along the shelving sandy shore the wagtails run, both the pied and the yellow, but few birds come here to wash; for that purpose they prefer a running stream if it be accessible. Upon the willow trees which border it, a reed-sparrow or blackheaded bunting may often be observed. One bright March morning, as I came up the road, just as the surface of the pond became visible it presented a scene of dazzling beauty. At that distance only the tops of the ripples were seen, reflecting the light at a very low angle. The result was that the eye saw nothing of the water or the wavelet, but caught only the brilliant glow. Instead of a succession of sparkles there seemed to be a golden liquid floating on the surface as oil floats--a golden liquid two or three inches thick, which flowed before the wind. Besides this surface of molten gold there was a sheen and flicker above it, as if a spray or vapour, carried along, or the crests of the wavelets blown over, was also of gold. But the metal conveys no idea of the glowing, lustrous light which filled the hollow by the dusty road. It was visible from one spot only, a few steps altering the angle lessened the glory, and as the pond itself came into view there was nothing but a ripple on water somewhat thick with suspended sand. Thus things change their appearance as they are looked at in different ways. A patch of water crowsfoot grows on the farthest side of the pond, and in early summer sends up lovely white flowers. HEATHLANDS Sandown has become one of the most familiar places near the metropolis, but the fir woods at the back of it are perhaps scarcely known to exist by many who visit the fashionable knoll. Though near at hand, they are shut off by the village of Esher; but a mile or two westwards, down the Portsmouth highway, there is a cart road on the left hand which enters at once into the woods. The fine white sand of the soil is only covered by a thin coating of earth formed from the falling leaves and decayed branches, so thin that it may sometimes be rubbed away by the foot or even the fingers. Grass and moss grow sparingly in the track, but wherever wheels or footsteps have passed at all frequently the sand is exposed in white streaks under the shadowy firs. In grass small objects often escape observation, but on such a bare surface everything becomes visible. Coming to one of these places on a summer day, I saw a stream of insects crossing and recrossing, from the fern upon one side to the fern upon the other. They were ants, but of a very much larger species than the little red-and-black "emmets" which exist in the meadows. These horse ants were not much less than half an inch in length, with a round spot at each end like beads, or the black top of long pins. The length of their legs enabled them to move much quicker, and they raced to and fro over the path with great rapidity. The space covered by the stream was a foot or more broad, all of which was crowded and darkened by them, and as there was no cessation in the flow of this multitude, their numbers must have been immense. Standing a short way back, so as not to interfere with their proceedings, I saw two of these insects seize hold of a twig, one at each end. The twig, which was dead and dry, and had dropped from a fir, was not quite so long as a match, but rather thicker. They lifted this stick with ease, and carried it along, exactly as labourers carry a plank. A few short blades of grass being in the way they ran up against them, but stepped aside, and so got by. A cart which had passed a long while since had forced down the sand by the weight of its load, leaving a ridge about three inches high, the side being perpendicular. Till they came to this cliff the two ants moved parallel, but here one of them went first, and climbed up the bank with its end of the stick, after which the second followed and brought up the other. An inch or two farther, on the level ground, the second ant left hold and went away, and the first laboured on with the twig and dragged it unaided across the rest of the path. Though many other ants stayed and looked at the twig a moment, none of them now offered assistance, as if the chief obstacle had been surmounted. Several other ants passed, each carrying the slender needles which fall from firs, and which seemed nothing in their powerful grasp. These burdens of wood all went in one direction, to the right of the path. I took a step there, but stayed to watch two more ants, who had got a long scarlet fly between them, one holding it by the head and the other by the tail. They were hurrying their prey over the dead leaves and decayed sticks which strewed the ground, and dragging it mercilessly through moss and grass. I put the tip of my stick on the victim, but instead of abandoning it they tugged and pulled desperately, as if they would have torn it to pieces rather than have yielded. So soon as I released it away they went through the fragments of branches, rushing the quicker for the delay. A little farther there was a spot where the ground for a yard or two was covered with small dead brown leaves, last year's, apparently of birch, for some young birch saplings grew close by. One of these leaves suddenly rose up and began to move of itself, as it seemed; an ant had seized it, and holding it by the edge travelled on, so that as the insect was partly hidden under it, the leaf appeared to move alone, now over sticks and now under them. It reminded me of the sight which seemed so wonderful to the early navigators when they came to a country where, as they first thought, the leaves were alive and walked about. The ant with the leaf went towards a large heap of rubbish under the sapling birches. While watching the innumerable multitude of these insects, whose road here crossed these dead dry leaves, I became conscious of a rustling sound, which at first I attributed to the wind, but seeing that the fern was still, and that the green leaves of a Spanish chestnut opposite did not move, I began to realise that this creeping, rustling noise, distinctly audible, was not caused by any wind, but by the thousands upon thousands of insects passing over the dead leaves and among the grass. Stooping down to listen better, there could be no doubt of it: it was the tramp of this immense army. The majority still moved in one direction, and I found it led to the heap of rubbish over which they swarmed. This heap was exactly what might have been swept together by half-a-dozen men using long gardeners' brooms, and industriously clearing the ground under the firs of the fragments which had fallen from them. It appeared to be entirely composed of small twigs, fir-needles, dead leaves, and similar things. The highest part rose about level with my chest--say, between four and five feet--the heap was irregularly circular, and not less than three or four yards across, with sides gradually sloping. In the midst stood the sapling birches, their stumps buried in it, the rubbish having been piled up around them. This heap was, in fact, the enormous nest or hill of a colony of horse ants. The whole of it had been gathered together, leaf by leaf, and twig by twig, just as I had seen the two insects carrying the little stick, and the third the brown leaf above itself. It really seemed some way round the outer circumference of the nest, and while walking round it was necessary to keep brushing off the ants which dropped on the shoulder from the branches of the birches. For they were everywhere; every inch of ground, every bough was covered with them. Even standing near it was needful to kick the feet continually against the black stump of a fir which had been felled to jar them off, and this again brought still more, attracted by the vibration of the ground. The highest part of the mound was in the shape of a dome, a dome whitened by layers of fir-needles, which was apparently the most recent part and the centre of this year's operations. The mass of the heap, though closely compacted, was fibrous, and a stick could be easily thrust into it, exposing the eggs. No sooner was such an opening made, and the stick withdrawn from the gap, than the ants swarmed into it, falling headlong over upon each other, and filling the bottom with their struggling bodies. Upon leaving the spot, to follow the footpath, I stamped my feet to shake down any stray insects, and then took off my coat and gave it a thorough shaking. Immense ant-hills are often depicted in the illustrations to tropical travels, but this great pile, which certainly contained more than a cartload, was within a few miles of Hyde Park Corner. From nests like this large quantities of eggs are obtained for feeding the partridges hatched from the eggs collected by mowers and purchased by keepers. Part of the nest being laid bare with any tool, the eggs are hastily taken out in masses and thrown into a sack. Some think that ant's eggs, although so favourite a food, are not always the most advantageous. Birds which have been fed freely on these eggs become fastidious, and do not care for much else, so that if the supply fails they fall off in condition. If there are sufficient eggs to last the season, then a few every day produce the best effect; if not they had better not have a feast followed by a fast. The sense of having a roof overhead is felt in walking through a forest of firs like this, because the branches are all at the top of the trunks. The stems rise to the same height, and then the dark foliage spreading forms a roof. As they are not very near together the eye can see some distance between them, and as there is hardly any underwood or bushes--nothing higher than the fern--there is a space open and unfilled between the ground and the roof so far above. A vast hollow extends on every side, nor is it broken by the flitting of birds or the rush of animals among the fern. The sudden note of a wood-pigeon, hoarse and deep, calling from a fir-top, sounds still louder and ruder in the spacious echoing vault beneath, so loud as at first to resemble the baying of a hound. The call ceases, and another of these watch-dogs of the woods takes it up afar off. There is an opening in the monotonous firs by some rising ground, and the sunshine falls on young Spanish chestnuts and underwood, through which is a little-used footpath. If firs are planted in wildernesses with the view of ultimately covering the barren soil with fertile earth, formed by the decay of vegetable matter, it is, perhaps, open to discussion as to whether the best tree has been chosen. Under firs the ground is generally dry, too dry for decay; the resinous emanations rather tend to preserve anything that falls there. No underwood or plants and little grass grows under them; these, therefore, which make soil quickest, are prevented from improving the earth. The needles of firs lie for months without decay; they are, too, very slender, and there are few branches to fall. Beneath any other trees (such as the edible chestnut and birch, which seem to grow here), there are the autumn leaves to decay, the twigs and branches which fall off, while grasses and plants flourish, and brambles and underwood grow freely. The earth remains moist, and all these soon cause an increase of the fertility; so that, unless fir-tree timber is very valuable, and I never heard that it was, I would rather plant a waste with any other tree or brushwood, provided, of course, it would grow. It is a pleasure to explore this little dell by the side of the rising ground, creeping under green boughs which brush the shoulders, after the empty space of the firs. Within there is a pond, where lank horsetails grow thickly, rising from the water. Returning to the rising ground I pursue the path, still under the shadow of the firs. There is no end to them--the vast monotony has no visible limit. The brake fern--it is early in July--has not yet reached its full height, but what that will be is shown by these thick stems which rise smooth and straight, fully three feet to the first frond. A woodpecker calls, and the gleam of his green and gold is visible for a moment as he hastens away--the first bird, except the wood-pigeons, seen for an hour, yet there are miles of firs around. After a time the ground rises again, the tall firs cease, but are succeeded by younger firs. These are more pleasant because they do not exclude the sky. The sunshine lights the path, and the summer blue extends above. The fern, too, ceases, and the white sand is now concealed by heath, with here and there a dash of colour. Furze chats call, and flit to and fro; the hum of bees is heard once more--there was not one under the vacant shadow; and swallows pass overhead. At last emerging from the firs the open slope is covered with heath only, but heath growing so thickly that even the narrow footpaths are hidden by the overhanging bushes of it. Some small bushes of furze here and there are dead and dry, but every prickly point appears perfect; when struck with the walking-stick the bush crumbles to pieces. Beneath and amid the heath what seems a species of lichen grows so profusely as to give a grey undertone. In places it supplants the heath, the ground is concealed by lichen only, which crunches under the foot like hoar-frost. Each piece is branched not unlike a stag's antlers; gather a handful and it crumbles to pieces in the fingers, dry and brittle. A quarry for sand has been dug down some eight or ten feet, so that standing in it nothing else is visible. This steep scarp shows the strata, yellow sand streaked with thin brown layers; at the top it is fringed with heath in full flower, bunches of purple bloom overhanging the edge, and behind this the azure of the sky. Here, where the ground slopes gradually, it is entirely covered with the purple bells; a sheen and gleam of purple light plays upon it. A fragrance of sweet honey floats up from the flowers where grey hive-bees are busy. Ascending still higher and crossing the summit, the ground almost suddenly falls away in a steep descent, and the entire hillside, seen at a glance, is covered with heath, and heath alone. A bunch at the very edge offers a purple cushion fit for a king; resting here a delicious summer breeze, passing over miles and miles of fields and woods yonder, comes straight from the distant hills. Along those hills the lines of darker green are woods; there are woods to the south, and west, and east, heath around, and in the rear the gaze travels over the tops of the endless firs. But southwards is sweetest; below, beyond the verge of the heath, the corn begins, and waves in the wind. It is the breeze that makes the summer day so lovely. The eggs of the nighthawk are sometimes found at this season near by. They are laid on the ground, on the barest spots, where there is no herbage. At dusk, the nighthawk wheels with a soft yet quick flight over the ferns and about the trees. Along the hedges bounding the heath butcher-birds watch for their prey--sometimes on the furze, sometimes on a branch of ash. Wood-sage grows plentifully on the banks by the roads; it is a plant somewhat resembling a lowly nettle; the leaves have a hop-like scent, and so bitter and strong is the odour that immediately after smelling them the mouth for a moment feels dry with a sense of thirst. The angle of a field by the woods on the eastern side of the heath, the entire corner, is blue in July with viper's bugloss. The stalks rise some two feet, and are covered with minute brown dots; they are rough, and the lower part prickly. Blue flowers in pairs, with pink stamens and pink buds, bloom thickly round the top, and as each plant has several stalks, it is very conspicuous where the grass is short. There are hundreds of these flowers in this corner, and along the edge of the wood; a quarter of an acre is blue with them. So indifferent are people to such things that men working in the same field, and who had pulled up the plant and described its root as like that of a dock, did not know its name. Yet they admired it. "It is an innocent-looking flower," they said, that is, pleasant to look at. By the roadside I thought I saw something red under the long grass of the mound, and, parting the blades, found half-a-dozen wild strawberries. They were larger than usual, and just ripe. The wild strawberry is a little more acid than the cultivated, and has more flavour than would be supposed from its small size. Descending to the lower ground again, the brake fills every space between the trees; it is so thick and tall that the cows which wander about, grazing at their will, each wear a bell slung round the neck, that their position may be discovered by sound. Otherwise it would be difficult to find them in the fern or among the firs. There are many swampy places here, which should be avoided by those who dislike snakes. The common harmless snakes are numerous in this part, and they always keep near water. They often glide into a mole's "angle," or hole, if found in the open. Adders are known to exist in the woods round about, but are never, or very seldom, seen upon the heath itself. In the woods of the neighbourhood they are not uncommon, and are sometimes killed for the sake of the oil. The belief in the virtue of adder's fat, or oil, is still firm; among other uses it is considered the best thing for deafness, not, of course, resulting from organic defect. For deafness, the oil should be applied by pouring a small quantity into the ear, exactly in the same manner as in the play the poison is poured into the ear of the sleeping king. Cures are declared to be effected by this oil at the present day. It is procured by skinning the adder, taking the fat, and boiling it; the result is a clear oil, which never thickens in the coldest weather. One of these reptiles on being killed and cut open was found to contain the body of a full-grown toad. The old belief that the young of the viper enters its mouth for refuge still lingers. The existence of adders in the woods here seems so undoubted that strangers should be a little careful if they leave the track. Viper's bugloss, which grows so freely by the heath, was so called because anciently it was thought to yield an antidote to the adder's venom. THE RIVER There is a slight but perceptible colour in the atmosphere of summer. It is not visible close at hand, nor always where the light falls strongest, and if looked at too long it sometimes fades away. But over gorse and heath, in the warm hollows of wheatfield, and round about the rising ground there is something more than air alone. It is not mist, nor the hazy vapour of autumn, nor the blue tints that come over the distant hills and woods. As there is a bloom upon the peach and grape, so this is the bloom of summer. The air is ripe and rich, full of the emanations, the perfume, from corn and flower and leafy tree. In strictness the term will not, of course, be accurate, yet by what other word can this appearance in the atmosphere be described but as a bloom? Upon a still and sunlit summer afternoon it may be seen over the osier-covered islets in the Thames immediately above Teddington Lock. It hovers over the level cornfields that stretch towards Richmond, and along the ridge of the wooded hills that bound them. The bank by the towing-path is steep and shadowless, being bare of trees or hedge; but the grass is pleasant to rest on, and heat is always more supportable near flowing water. In places the friable earth has crumbled away, and there, where the soil and the stones are exposed, the stonecrop flourishes. A narrow footpath on the summit, raised high above the water, skirts the corn, and is overhung with grass heavily laden by its own seed. Sometimes in early June the bright trifolium, drooping with its weight of flower, brushes against the passer-by--acre after acre of purple. Occasionally the odour of beans in blossom floats out over the river. Again, above the green wheat the larks rise, singing as they soar; or later on the butterflies wander over the yellow ears. Or, as the law of rotation dictates, the barley whitens under the sun. Still, whether in the dry day, or under the dewy moonlight, the plain stretching from the water to the hills is never without perfume, colour, or song. There stood, one summer not long since, in the corner of a barley field close to the Lock, within a stone's throw, perfect shrubs of mallow, rising to the shoulder, thick as a walking-stick, and hung with flower. Poppies filled every interstice between the barley stalks, their scarlet petals turned back in very languor of exuberant colour, as the awns, drooping over, caressed them. Poppies, again, in the same fields formed a scarlet ground from which the golden wheat sprang up, and among it here and there shone the large blue rays of wild succory. The paths across the corn having no hedges, the wayfarer really walks among the wheat, and can pluck with either hand. The ears rise above the heads of children, who shout with joy as they rush along as though to the arms of their mother. Beneath the towing-path, at the root of the willow bushes, which the tow-ropes, so often drawn over them, have kept low, the water-docks lift their thick stems and giant leaves. Bunches of rough-leaved comfrey grow down to the water's edge--indeed, the coarse stems sometimes bear signs of having been partially under water when a freshet followed a storm. The flowers are not so perfectly bell-shaped as those of some plants, but are rather tubular. They appear in April, though then green, and may be found all the summer months. Where the comfrey grows thickly the white bells give some colour to the green of the bank, and would give more were they not so often overshadowed by the leaves. Water betony, or persicaria, lifts its pink spikes everywhere, tiny florets close together round the stem at the top; the leaves are willow-shaped, and there is scarcely a hollow or break in the bank where the earth has fallen which is not clothed with them. A mile or two up the river the tansy is plentiful, bearing golden buttons, which, like every fragment of the feathery foliage, if pressed in the fingers, impart to them a peculiar scent. There, too, the yellow loosestrife pushes up its tall slender stalks to the top of the low willow-bushes, that the bright yellow flowers may emerge from the shadow. The river itself, the broad stream, ample and full, exhibits all its glory in this reach; from One Tree to the Lock it is nearly straight, and the river itself is everything. Between wooded hills, or where divided by numerous islets, or where trees and hedges enclose the view, the stream is but part of the scene. Here it is all. The long raised bank without a hedge or fence, with the cornfields on its level, simply guides the eye to the water. Those who are afloat upon it insensibly yield to the influence of the open expanse. The boat whose varnished sides but now slipped so gently that the cutwater did not even raise a wavelet, and every black rivet-head was visible as a line of dots, begins to forge ahead. The oars are dipped farther back, and as the blade feels the water holding it in the hollow, the lissom wood bends to its work. Before the cutwater a wave rises, and, repulsed, rushes outwards. At each stroke, as the weight swings towards the prow, there is just the least faint depression at its stem as the boat travels. Whirlpool after whirlpool glides from the oars, revolving to the rear with a threefold motion, round and round, backwards and outwards. The crew impart their own life to their boat; the animate and inanimate become as one, the boat is no longer wooden but alive. If there be a breeze a fleet of white sails comes round the willow-hidden bend. But the Thames yachtsmen have no slight difficulties to contend with. The capricious wind is nowhere so thoroughly capricious as on the upper river. Along one mile there may be a spanking breeze, the very next is calm, or with a fitful puff coming over a high hedge, which flutters his pennant, but does not so much as shake the sail. Even in the same mile the wind may take the water on one side, and scarcely move a leaf on the other. But the current is always there, and the vessel is certain to drift. When at last a good opportunity is obtained, just as the boat heels over, and the rushing bubbles at the prow resound, she must be put about, and the napping foresail almost brushes the osiers. If she does not come round--if the movement has been put off a moment too long--the keel grates, and she is aground immediately. It is nothing but tacking, tacking, tacking--a kind of stitching the stream. Nor can one always choose the best day for the purpose; the exigencies of business, perhaps, will not permit, and when free, the wind, which has been scattering tiles and chimney-pots and snapping telegraph wires in the City all the week, drops on the Saturday to nothing. He must possess invincible patience, and at the same time be always ready to advance his vessel even a foot, and his judgment must never fail him at the critical time. But the few brief hours when the circumstances are favourable compensate for delays and monotonous calms; the vessel, built on well-judged lines, answers her helm and responds to his will with instant obedience, and that sense of command is perhaps the great charm of sailing. There are others who find a pleasure in the yacht. When at her moorings on a sunny morning she is sometimes boarded by laughing girls, who have put off from the lawn, and who proceed in the most sailor-like fashion to overhaul the rigging and see that everything is shipshape. No position shows off a well-poised figure to such advantage as when, in a close-fitting costume, a lady's arms are held high above her head to haul at a rope. So the river life flows by; skiffs, and four oars, canoes, solitary scullers in outriggers, once now and then a swift eight, launches, a bargee in a tublike dingey standing up and pushing his sculls instead of pulling; gentlemen, with their shoulders in a halter, hauling like horses and towing fair freights against the current; and punts poled across to shady nooks. The splashing of oars, the staccato sound as a blade feathered too low meets the wavelets, merry voices, sometimes a song, and always a low undertone, which, as the wind accelerates it, rises to a roar. It is the last leap of the river to the sea; the last weir to whose piles the tide rises. On the bank of the weir where the tide must moisten their roots grow dense masses of willow-herb, almost as high as the shoulder, with trumpet-shaped pink flowers. Let us go back again to the bank by the cornfields, with the glorious open stretch of stream. In the evening, the rosy or golden hues of the sunset will be reflected on the surface from the clouds; then the bats wheel to and fro, and once now and then a nighthawk will throw himself through the air with uncertain flight, his motions scarcely to be followed, as darkness falls. Am I mistaken, or are kingfishers less numerous than they were only a few seasons since? Then I saw them, now I do not. Long-continued and severe frosts are very fatal to these birds; they die on the perch. And may I say a word for the Thames otter? The list of really wild animals now existing in the home counties is so very, very short, that the extermination of one of them seems a serious loss. Every effort is made to exterminate the otter. No sooner does one venture down the river than traps, gins, nets, dogs, prongs, brickbats, every species of missile, all the artillery of vulgar destruction, are brought against its devoted head. Unless my memory serves me wrong, one of these creatures caught in a trap not long since was hammered to death with a shovel or a pitchfork. Now the river fox is, we know, extremely destructive to fish, but what are a basketful of "bait" compared to one otter? The latter will certainly never be numerous, for the moment they become so, otter-hounds would be employed, and then we should see some sport. Londoners, I think, scarcely recognise the fact that the otter is one of the last links between the wild past of ancient England and the present days of high civilisation. The beaver is gone, but the otter remains, and comes so near the mighty City as just the other side of the well-known Lock, the portal through which a thousand boats at holiday time convey men and women to breathe pure air. The porpoise, and even the seal, it is said, ventures to Westminster sometimes; the otter to Kingston. Thus, the sea sends its denizens past the vast multitude that surges over the City bridges, and the last link with the olden time, the otter, still endeavours to live near. Perhaps the river is sweetest to look on in spring time or early summer. Seen from a distance the water seems at first sight, when the broad stream fills the vision as a whole, to flow with smooth, even current between meadow and cornfield. But, coming to the brink, that silvery surface now appears exquisitely chased with ever-changing lines. The light airs, wandering to and fro where high banks exclude the direct influence of the breeze, flutter the ripples hither and thither, so that, instead of rolling upon one lee shore, they meet and expend their little force upon each other. A continuous rising and falling, without a line of direction, thus breaks up the light, not with sparkle or glitter, but with endless silvery facets. There is no pattern. The apparently intertangled tracing on a work of art presently resolves itself into a design, which once seen is always the same. These wavelets form no design; watch the sheeny maze as long as one will, the eye cannot get at the clue, and so unwind the pattern. Each seems for a second exactly like its fellow, but varies while you say "These two are the same," and the white reflected light upon the wide stream is now strongest here, and instantly afterwards flickers yonder. Where a gap in the willows admits a current of air a ripple starts to rush straight across, but is met by another returning, which has been repulsed from the bluff bow of a moored boat, and the two cross and run through each other. As the level of the stream now slightly rises and again falls, the jagged top of a large stone by the shore alternately appears above, or is covered by the surface. The water as it retires leaves for a moment a hollow in itself by the stone, and then swings back to fill the vacuum. Long roots of willows and projecting branches cast their shadow upon the shallow sandy bottom; the shadow of a branch can be traced slanting downwards with the shelve of the sand till lost in the deeper water. Are those little circlets of light enclosing a round umbra or slightly darker spot, that move along the bottom as the bubbles drift above on the surface, shadows or reflections? In still, dark places of the stream, where there seems no current, a dust gathers on the water, falling from the trees, or borne thither by the wind and dropping where its impulse ceases. Shadows of branches lie here upon the surface itself, received by the greenish water dust. Round the curve on the concave and lee side of the river, where the wind drives the wavelets direct upon the strand, there are little beaches formed by the undermining and fall of the bank. The tiny surge rolls up the incline; each wave differing in the height to which it reaches, and none of them alike, washing with it minute fragments of stone and gravel, mere specks which vibrate to and fro with the ripple and even drift with the current. Will these fragments, after a process of trituration, ultimately become sand? A groove runs athwart the bottom, left recently by the keel of a skiff, recently only, for in a few hours these specks of gravel, sand, and particles that sweep along the bottom, fill up such depressions. The motion of these atoms is not continuous, but intermittent; now they rise and are carried a few inches and there sink, in a minute or two to rise again and proceed. Looking to windward there is a dark tint upon the water; but down the stream, turning the other way, intensely brilliant points of light appear and disappear. Behind a boat rowed against the current two widening lines of wavelets, in the shape of an elongated V, stretch apart and glitter, and every dip of the oars and the slippery oar-blades themselves, as they rise out of the water, reflect the sunshine. The boat appears but to touch the surface, instead of sinking into it, for the water is transparent, and the eye can see underneath the keel. Here, by some decaying piles, a deep eddy whirls slowly round and round; they stand apart from the shore, for the eddy has cleared away the earth around them. Now, walking behind the waves that roll away from you, dark shadowy spots fluctuate to and fro in the trough of the water. Before a glance can define its shape the shadow elongates itself from a spot to an oval, the oval melts into another oval, and reappears afar off. When, too, in flood time, the hurrying current seems to respond more sensitively to the shape of the shallows and the banks beneath, there boils up from below a ceaseless succession of irregular circles as if the water there expanded from a centre, marking the verge of its outflow with bubbles and raised lines upon the surface. By the side float tiny whirlpools, some rotating this way and some that, sucking down and boring tubes into the stream. Longer lines wander past, and as they go, curve round, till when about to make a spiral they lengthen out and drift, and thus, perpetually coiling and uncoiling, glide with the current. They somewhat resemble the conventional curved strokes which, upon an Assyrian bas-relief, indicate water. Under the spring sunshine, the idle stream flows easily onward, yet every part of the apparently even surface varies; and so, too, in a larger way, the aspects of the succeeding reaches change. Upon one broad bend the tints are green, for the river moves softly in a hollow, with its back, as it were, to the wind. The green lawn sloping to the shore, and the dark cedar's storeys of flattened foliage, tier above tier; the green osiers of two eyots: the light-leaved aspen; the tall elms, fresh and green; and the green hawthorn bushes give their colour to the water, smooth as if polished, in which they are reflected. A white swan floats in the still narrow channel between the eyots, and there is a punt painted green moored in a little inlet by the lawn, and scarce visible under drooping boughs. Roofs of red tile and dormer windows rise behind the trees, the dull yellow of the walls is almost hidden, and deep shadows lurk about the shore. Opposite, across the stream, a wide green sward stretches beside the towing-path, lit up with sunshine which touches the dandelions till they glow in the grass. From time to time a nightingale sings in a hawthorn unregarded, and in the elms of the park hard by a crowd of jackdaws chatter. But a little way round a curve the whole stream opens to the sunlight and becomes blue, reflecting the sky. Again, sweeping round another curve with bounteous flow, the current meets the wind direct, a cloud comes up, the breeze freshens, and the watery green waves are tipped with foam. Rolling upon the strand, they leave a line like a tide marked by twigs and fragments of dead wood, leaves, and the hop-like flowers of Chichester elms which have been floated up and left. Over the stormy waters a band of brown bank-martins wheel hastily to and fro, and from the osiers the loud chirp of the sedge-reedling rises above the buffet of the wind against the ear, and the splashing of the waves. Once more a change, where the stream darts along swiftly, after having escaped from a weir, and still streaked with foam. The shore rises like a sea beach, and on the pebbles men are patching and pitching old barges which have been hauled up on the bank. A skiff partly drawn up on the beach rocks as the current strives to work it loose, and up the varnish of the side glides a flickering light reflected from the wavelets. A fleet of such skiffs are waiting for hire by the bridge; the waterman cleaning them with a parti-coloured mop spies me eyeing his vessels, and before I know exactly what is going on, and whether I have yet made up my mind, the sculls are ready, the cushions in; I take my seat, and am shoved gently forth upon the stream. After I have gone under the arch, and am clear of all obstructions, I lay the sculls aside, and reclining let the boat drift past a ballast punt moored over the shallowest place, and with a rising load of gravel. One man holds the pole steadying the scoop, while his mate turns a windlass the chain from which drags it along the bottom, filling the bag with pebbles, and finally hauls it to the surface, when the contents are shot out in the punt. It is a floating box rather than a boat, square at each end, and built for capacity instead of progress. There are others moored in various places, and all hard at work. The men in this one, scarcely glancing at my idle skiff, go steadily on, dropping the scoop, steadying the pole, turning the crank, and emptying the pebbles with a rattle. Where do these pebbles come from? Like the stream itself there seems a continual supply; if a bank be scooped away and punted to the shore presently another bank forms. If a hollow be deepened, by-and-by it fills up; if a channel be opened, after a while it shallows again. The stony current flows along below, as the liquid current above. Yet in so many centuries the strand has not been cleared of its gravel, nor has it all been washed out from the banks. The skiff drifts again, at first slowly, till the current takes hold of it and bears it onward. Soon it is evident that a barge-port is near--a haven where barges discharge their cargoes. A by-way leads down to the river where boats are lying for hire--a dozen narrow punts, waiting at this anchorage till groundbait be lawful. The ends of varnished skiffs, high and dry, are visible in a shed carefully covered with canvas; while sheaves of oars and sculls lean against the wooden wall. Through the open doors of another shed there may be had a glimpse of shavings and tools, and slight battens crossing the workshop in apparent confusion, forming a curious framework. These are the boatbuilder's struts and stays, and contrivances to keep the boat in rigid position, that her lines may be true and delicate, strake upon strake of dull red mahogany rising from the beechen keel, for the craftsman strings his boat almost as a violinist strings his violin, with the greatest care and heed, and with a right adjustment of curve and due proportion. There is not much clinking, or sawing, or thumping; little noise, but much skill. Gradually the scene opens. Far down a white bridge spans the river: on the shore red-tiled and gabled houses crowd to the very edge; and behind them a church tower stands out clear against the sky. There are barges everywhere. By the towing-path colliers are waiting to be drawn up stream, black as their freight, by the horses that are nibbling the hawthorn hedge; while by the wharf, labourers are wheeling barrows over bending planks from the barges to the carts upon the shore. A tug comes under the bridge, panting, every puff re-echoed from the arches, dragging by sheer force deeply laden flats behind it. The water in front of their bluff bows rises in a wave nearly to the deck, and then swoops in a sweeping curve to the rear. The current by the port runs back on the wharf side towards its source, and the foam drifts up the river instead of down. Green flags on a sandbank far out in the stream, their roots covered and their bent tips only visible, now swing with the water and now heel over with the breeze. The _Edwin and Angelina_ lies at anchor, waiting to be warped into her berth, her sails furled, her green painted water-barrel lashed by the stern, her tiller idle after the long and toilsome voyage from Rochester. For there are perils of the deep even to those who only go down to it in barges. Barge as she is, she is not without a certain beauty, and a certain interest, inseparable from all that has received the buffet of the salt water, and over which the salt spray has flown. Barge too, as she is, she bears her part in the commerce of the world. The very architecture on the shore is old-fashioned where these bluff-bowed vessels come, narrow streets and overhanging houses, boat anchors in the windows, sails and tarry ropes; and is there not a Row Barge Inn somewhere? "Hoy, ahoy!" The sudden shout startles me, and, glancing round, I find an empty black barge, high out of the water, floating helplessly down upon me with the stream. Noiselessly the great hulk had drifted upon me; as it came the light glinted on the wavelets before the bow, quick points of brilliant light. But two strokes with the sculls carried me out of the way. NUTTY AUTUMN There is some honeysuckle still flowering at the tops of the hedges, where in the morning gossamer lies like a dewy net. The gossamer is a sign both of approaching autumn and, exactly at the opposite season of the year, of approaching spring. It stretches from pole to pole, and bough to bough, in the copses in February, as the lark sings. It covers the furze, and lies along the hedge-tops in September, as the lark, after a short or partial silence, occasionally sings again. But the honeysuckle does not flower so finely as the first time; there is more red (the unopened petal) than white, and beneath, lower down the stalk, are the red berries, the fruit of the former bloom. Yellow weed, or ragwort, covers some fields almost as thickly as buttercups in summer, but it lacks the rich colour of the buttercup. Some knotty knapweeds stay in out-of-the-way places, where the scythe has not been; some bunches of mayweed, too, are visible in the corners of the stubble. Silverweed lays its golden flower--like a buttercup without a stalk--level on the ground; it has no protection, and any passing foot may press it into the dust. A few white or pink flowers appear on the brambles, and in waste places a little St. John's wort remains open, but the seed vessels are for the most part forming. St. John's wort is the flower of the harvest; the yellow petals appear as the wheat ripens, and there are some to be found till the sheaves are carted. Once now and then a blue and slender bell-flower is lighted on; in Sussex the larger varieties bloom till much later. By still ponds, to which the moorhens have now returned, tall spikes of purple loosestrife rise in bunches. In the furze there is still much yellow, and wherever heath grows it spreads in shimmering gleams of purple between the birches; for these three, furze, heath, and birch are usually together. The fields, therefore, are not yet flowerless, nor yet without colour here and there, and the leaves, which stay on the trees till late in the autumn, are more interesting now than they have been since they lost their first fresh green. Oak, elm, beech, and birch, all have yellow spots, while retaining their groundwork of green. Oaks are often much browner, but the moisture in the atmosphere keeps the saps in the leaves. Even the birches are only tinted in a few places, the elms very little, and the beeches not much more: so it would seem that their hues will not be gone altogether till November. Frosts have not yet bronzed the dogwood in the hedges, and the hazel leaves are fairly firm. The hazel generally drops its leaves at a touch about this time, and while you are nutting, if you shake a bough, they come down all around. The rushes are but faintly yellow, and the slender tips still point upwards. Dull purple burrs cover the burdock; the broad limes are withering, but the leaves are thick, and the teazles are still flowering. Looking upwards, the trees are tinted; lower, the hedges are not without colour, and the field itself is speckled with blue and yellow. The stubble is almost hidden in many fields by the growth of weeds brought up by the rain; still the tops appear above and do not allow it to be green. The stubble has a colour--white if barley, yellow if wheat or oats. The meads are as verdant, even more so, than in the spring, because of the rain, and the brooks crowded with green flags. Haws are very plentiful this year (1881), and exceptionally large, many fully double the size commonly seen. So heavily are the branches laden with bunches of the red fruit that they droop as apple trees do with a more edible burden. Though so big, and to all appearance tempting to birds, none have yet been eaten; and, indeed, haws seem to be resorted to only as a change unless severe weather compels. Just as we vary our diet, so birds eat haws, and not many of them till driven by frost and snow. If any stay on till the early months of next year, wood-pigeons and missel-thrushes will then eat them; but at this season they are untouched. Blackbirds will peck open the hips directly the frost comes; the hips go long before the haws. There was a large crop of mountain-ash berries, every one of which has been taken by blackbirds and thrushes, which are almost as fond of them as of garden fruit. Blackberries are thick, too--it is a berry year--and up in the horse-chestnut the prickly-coated nuts hang up in bunches, as many as eight in a stalk. Acorns are large, but not so singularly numerous as the berries, nor are hazel-nuts. This provision of hedge fruit no more indicates a severe winter than a damaged wheat harvest indicates a mild one. There is something wrong with elm trees. In the early part of this summer, not long after the leaves were fairly out upon them, here and there a branch appeared as if it had been touched with red-hot iron and burnt up, all the leaves withered and browned on the boughs. First one tree was thus affected, then another, then a third, till, looking round the fields, it seemed as if every fourth or fifth tree had thus been burnt. It began with the leaves losing colour, much as they do in autumn, on the particular bough; gradually they faded, and finally became brown and of course dead. As they did not appear to shrivel up, it looked as if the grub or insect, or whatever did the mischief, had attacked, not the leaves, but the bough itself. Upon mentioning this I found that it had been noticed in elm avenues and groups a hundred miles distant, so that it is not a local circumstance. As far as yet appears, the elms do not seem materially injured, the damage being outwardly confined to the bough attacked. These brown spots looked very remarkable just after the trees had become green. They were quite distinct from the damage caused by the snow of October 1880. The boughs broken by the snow had leaves upon them which at once turned brown, and in the case of the oak were visible, the following spring, as brown spots among the green. These snapped boughs never bore leaf again. It was the young fresh green leaves of the elms, those that appeared in the spring of 1881, that withered as if scorched. The boughs upon which they grew had not been injured; they were small boughs at the outside of the tree. I hear that this scorching up of elm leaves has been noticed in other districts for several seasons. The dewdrops of the morning, preserved by the mist, which the sun does not disperse for some hours, linger on late in shaded corners, as under trees, on drooping blades of grass and on the petals of flowers. Wild bees and wasps may often be noticed on these blades of grass that are still wet, as if they could suck some sustenance from the dew. Wasps fight hard for their existence as the nights grow cold. Desperate and ravenous, they will eat anything, but perish by hundreds as the warmth declines. Dragon-flies of the larger size are now very busy rushing to and fro on their double wings; those who go blackberrying or nutting cannot fail to see them. Only a very few days since--it does not seem a week--there was a chiffchaff calling in a copse as merrily as in the spring. This little bird is the first, or very nearly the first, to come in the spring, and one of the last to go as autumn approaches. It is curious that, though singled out as a first sign of spring, the chiffchaff has never entered into the home life of the people like the robin, the swallow, or even the sparrow. There is nothing about it in the nursery rhymes or stories, no one goes out to listen to it, children are not taught to recognise it, and grown-up persons are often quite unaware of it. I never once heard a countryman, a labourer, a farmer, or any one who was always out of doors, so much as allude to it. They never noticed it, so much is every one the product of habit. The first swallow they looked for, and never missed; but they neither heard nor saw the chiffchaff. To those who make any study at all of birds it is, of course, perfectly familiar; but to the bulk of people it is unknown. Yet it is one of the commonest of migratory birds, and sings in every copse and hedgerow, using loud, unmistakable notes. At last, in the middle of September, the chiffchaff, too, is silent. The swallow remains; but for the rest, the birds have flocked together, finches, starlings, sparrows, and gone forth into the midst of the stubble far from the place where their nests were built, and where they sang, and chirped, and whistled so long. The swallows, too, are not without thought of going. They may be seen twenty in a row, one above the other, or on the slanting ropes or guys which hold up the masts of the rickcloths over the still unfinished corn-ricks. They gather in rows on the ridges of the tiles, and wisely take counsel of each other. Rooks are up at the acorns; they take them from the bough, while the pheasants come underneath and pick up those that have fallen. The partridge coveys are more numerous and larger than they have been for several seasons, and though shooting has now been practised for more than a fortnight, as many as twelve and seventeen are still to be counted together. They have more cover than usual at this season, not only because the harvest is still about, but because where cut the stubble is so full of weeds that when crouching they are hidden. In some fields the weeds are so thick that even a pheasant can hide. South of London the harvest commenced in the last week of July. The stubble that was first cut still remains unploughed; it is difficult to find a fresh furrow, and I have only once or twice heard the quick strong puffing of the steam-plough. While the wheat was in shock it was a sight to see the wood-pigeons at it. Flocks of hundreds came perching on the sheaves, and visiting the same field day after day. The sparrows have never had such a feast of grain as this year. Whole corners of wheatfields--they work more at corners--were cleared out as clean by them as if the wheat had been threshed as it stood. The sunshine of the autumn afternoons is faintly tawny, and the long grass by the wayside takes from it a tawny undertone. Some other colour than the green of each separate blade, if gathered, lies among the bunches, a little, perhaps like the hue of the narrow pointed leaves of the reeds. It is caught only for a moment, and looked at steadily it goes. Among the grass, the hawkweeds, one or two dandelions, and a stray buttercup, all yellow, favour the illusion. By the bushes there is a double row of pale buff bryony leaves; these, too, help to increase the sense of a secondary colour. The atmosphere holds the beams, and abstracts from them their white brilliance. They come slower with a drowsy light, which casts a less defined shadow of the still oaks. The yellow and brown leaves in the oaks, in the elms, and the beeches, in their turn affect the rays, and retouch them with their own hue. An immaterial mist across the fields looks like a cloud of light hovering on the stubble: the light itself made visible. The tawniness is indistinct, it haunts the sunshine, and is not to be fixed, any more than you can say where it begins and ends in the complexion of a brunette. Almost too large for their cups, the acorns have a shade of the same hue now before they become brown. As it withers, the many-pointed leaf of the white bryony and the bine as it shrivels, in like manner, do their part. The white thistle-down, which stays on the bursting thistles because there is no wind to waft it away, reflects it; the white is pushed aside by the colour that the stained sunbeams bring. Pale yellow thatch on the wheat-ricks becomes a deeper yellow; broad roofs of old red tiles smoulder under it. What can you call it but tawniness?--the earth sunburnt once more at harvest time. Sunburnt and brown--for it deepens into brown. Brown partridges, and pheasants, at a distance brown, their long necks stretched in front and long tails behind gleaming in the stubble. Brown thrushes just venturing to sing again. Brown clover hayricks; the bloom on the third crop yonder, which was recently a bright colour, is fast turning brown, too. Here and there a thin layer of brown leaves rustles under foot. The scaling bark on the lower part of the tree trunks is brown. Dry dock stems, fallen branches, the very shadows, are not black, but brown. With red hips and haws, red bryony and woodbine berries, these together cause the sense rather than the actual existence of a tawny tint. It is pleasant; but sunset comes so soon, and then after the trees are in shadow beneath, the yellow spots at the tops of the elms still receive the light from the west a few moments longer. There is something nutty in the short autumn day--shorter than its duration as measured by hours, for the enjoyable day is between the clearing of the mist and the darkening of the shadows. The nuts are ripe, and with them is associated wine and fruit. They are hard but tasteful; if you eat one, you want ten, and after ten, twenty. In the wine there is a glow, a spot like tawny sunlight; it falls on your hand as you lift the glass. They are never really nuts unless you gather them yourself. Put down the gun a minute or two, and pull the boughs this way. One or two may drop of themselves as the branch is shaken, one among the brambles, another outwards into the stubble. The leaves rustle against hat and shoulders; a thistle is crushed under foot, and the down at last released. Bines of bryony hold the ankles, and hazel boughs are stiff and not ready to bend to the will. This large brown nut must be cracked at once; the film slips off the kernel, which is white underneath. It is sweet. The tinted sunshine comes through between the tall hazel rods; there is a grasshopper calling in the sward on the other side of the mound. The bird's nest in the thorn-bush looks as perfect as if just made, instead of having been left long long since--the young birds have flocked into the stubbles. On the briar which holds the jacket the canker rose, which was green in summer, is now rosy. No such nuts as those captured with cunning search from the bough in the tinted sunlight and under the changing leaf. The autumn itself is nutty, brown, hard, frosty, and sweet. Nuts are hard, frosts are hard; but the one is sweet, and the other braces the strong. Exercise often wearies in the spring, and in the summer heats is scarcely to be faced; but in autumn, to those who are well, every step is bracing and hardens the frame, as the sap is hardening in the trees. ROUND A LONDON COPSE In October a party of wood-pigeons took up their residence in the little copse which has been previously mentioned. It stands in the angle formed by two suburban roads, and the trees in it overshadow some villa gardens. This copse has always been a favourite with birds, and it is not uncommon to see a pheasant about it, sometimes within gunshot of the gardens, while the call of the partridges in the evening may now and then be heard from the windows. But though frequently visited by wood-pigeons, they did not seem to make any stay till now when this party arrived. There were eight of them. During the day they made excursions into the stubble fields, and in the evening returned to roost. They remained through the winter, which will be remembered as the most severe for many years. Even in the sharpest frost, if the sun shone out, they called to each other now and then. On the first day of the year their hollow cooing came from the copse at midday. During the deep snow which blocked the roads and covered the fields almost a foot deep, they were silent, but were constantly observed flying to and fro. Immediately it became milder they recommenced to coo, so that at intervals the note of the wood-pigeon was heard in the adjacent house from October, all through the winter, till the nesting time in May. Sometimes towards sunset in the early spring they all perched together before finally retiring on the bare, slender tips of the tall birch trees, exposed and clearly visible against the sky. Six once alighted in a row on a long birch branch, bending it down with their weight like a heavy load of fruit. The stormy sunset flamed up, tinting the fields with momentary red, and their hollow voices sounded among the trees. By May they had paired off, and each couple had a part of the copse to themselves. Instead of avoiding the house, they seemed, on the contrary, to come much nearer, and two or three couples built close to the garden. Just there, the wood being bare of undergrowth, there was nothing to obstruct the sight but some few dead hanging branches, and the pigeons or ringdoves could be seen continually flying up and down from the ground to their nests. They were so near that the darker marking at the end of the tail, as it was spread open to assist the upward flight to the branch, was visible. Outside the garden gate, and not more than twenty yards distant, there stood three young spruce firs, at the edge of the copse, but without the boundary. To the largest of these one of the pigeons came now and then; he was half inclined to choose it for his nest. The noise of their wings as they rose and threshed their strong feathers together over the tops of the trees was often heard, and while in the garden one might be watched approaching from a distance, swift as the wind, then suddenly half-closing his wings and shooting forwards, he alighted among the boughs. Their coo is not in any sense tuneful; yet it has a pleasant association; for the ringdove is pre-eminently the bird of the woods and forests, and rightly named the wood-pigeon. Yet though so associated with the deepest and most lonely woods, here they were close to the house and garden, constantly heard, and almost always visible; and London, too, so near. They seemed almost as familiar as the sparrows and starlings. These pigeons were new inhabitants; but turtle-doves had built in the copse since I knew it. They were late coming the last spring I watched them; but, when they did, chose a spot much nearer the house than usual. The turtle-dove has a way of gurgling the soft vowels "oo" in the throat. Swallows do not make a summer, but when the turtle-dove coos summer is certainly come. One afternoon one of the pair flew up into a hornbeam which stood beside the garden not twenty yards at farthest. At first he sat upright on the branch watching me below, then turned and fluttered down to the nest beneath. While this nesting was going on I could hear five different birds at once either in the garden or from any of the windows. The doves cooed, and every now and then their gentle tones were overpowered by the loud call of the wood-pigeons. A cuckoo called from the top of the tallest birch, and a nightingale and a brook-sparrow (or sedge-reedling) were audible together in the common on the opposite side of the road. It is remarkable that one season there seems more of one kind of bird than the next. The year alluded to, for instance, in this copse was the wood-pigeons' year. But one season previously the copse seemed to belong to the missel-thrushes. Early in the March mornings I used to wake as the workmen's trains went rumbling by to the great City, to see on the ceiling by the window a streak of sunlight, tinted orange by the vapour through which the level beams had passed. Something in the sense of morning lifts the heart up to the sun. The light, the air, the waving branches speak; the earth and life seem boundless at that moment. In this it is the same on the verge of the artificial City as when the rays come streaming through the pure atmosphere of the Downs. While thus thinking, suddenly there rang out three clear, trumpet-like notes from a tree at the edge of the copse by the garden. A softer song followed, and then again the same three notes, whose wild sweetness echoed through the wood. The voice of the missel-thrush sounded not only close at hand and in the room, but repeated itself as it floated away, as the bugle-call does. He is the trumpeter of spring: Lord of March, his proud call challenges the woods; there are none who can answer. Listen for the missel-thrush: when he sings the snow may fall, the rain drift, but not for long; the violets are near at hand. The nest was in a birch visible from the garden, and that season seemed to be the missel-thrush's. Another year the cuckoos had possession. There is a detached ash tree in the field by the copse; it stands apart, and about sixty or seventy yards from the garden. A cuckoo came to this ash every morning, and called there for an hour at a time, his notes echoing along the building, one following the other as wavelets roll on the summer sands. After awhile two more used to appear, and then there was a chase round the copse, up to the tallest birch, and out to the ash tree again. This went on day after day, and was repeated every evening. Flying from the ash to the copse and returning, the birds were constantly in sight; they sometimes passed over the house, and the call became so familiar that it was not regarded any more than the chirp of a sparrow. Till the very last the cuckoos remained there, and never ceased to be heard till they left to cross the seas. That was the cuckoos' season; next spring, they returned again, but much later than usual, and did not call so much, nor were they seen so often while they were there. One was calling in the copse on the evening of the 6th of May as late as half-past eight, while the moon was shining. But they were not so prominent; and as for the missel-thrushes, I did not hear them at all in the copse. It was the wood-pigeons' year. Thus the birds come in succession and reign by turns. Even the starlings vary, regular as they are by habit. This season (1881) none have whistled on the house-top. In previous years they have always come, and only the preceding spring a pair filled the gutter with the materials of their nest. Long after they had finished a storm descended, and the rain, thus dammed up and unable to escape, flooded the corner. It cost half a sovereign to repair the damage, but it did not matter; the starlings had been happy. It has been a disappointment this year not to listen to their eager whistling and the flutter of their wings as they vibrate them rapidly while hovering a moment before entering their cavern. A pair of house-martins, too, built under the eaves close to the starlings' nest, and they also disappointed me by not returning this season, though the nest was not touched. Some fate, I fear, overtook both starlings and house-martins. Another time it was the season of the lapwings. Towards the end of November (1881), there appeared a large flock of peewits, or green plovers, which flock passed most of the day in a broad, level ploughed field of great extent. At this time I estimated their number as about four hundred; far exceeding any flock I had previously seen in the neighbourhood. Fresh parties joined the main body continually, until by December there could not have been less than a thousand. Still more and more arrived, and by the first of January (1882) even this number was doubled, and there were certainly fully two thousand there. It is the habit of green plovers to all move at once, to rise from the ground simultaneously, to turn in the air, or to descend--and all so regular that their very wings seem to flap together. The effect of such a vast body of white-breasted birds uprising as one from the dark ploughed earth was very remarkable. When they passed overhead the air sang like the midsummer hum with the shrill noise of beating wings. When they wheeled a light shot down reflected from their white breasts, so that people involuntarily looked up to see what it could be. The sun shone on them, so that at a distance the flock resembled a cloud brilliantly illuminated. In an instant they turned and the cloud was darkened. Such a great flock had not been seen in that district in the memory of man. There did not seem any reason for their congregating in this manner, unless it was the mildness of the winter, but winters had been mild before without such a display. The birds as a mass rarely left this one particular field--they voyaged round in the air and settled again in the same place. Some few used to spend hours with the sheep in a meadow, remaining there till dusk, till the mist hid them, and their cry sounded afar in the gloom. They stayed all through the winter, breaking up as the spring approached. By March the great flock had dispersed. The winter was very mild. There were buttercups, avens, and white nettles in flower on December 31st. On January 7th, there were briar buds opening into young leaf; on the 9th a dandelion in flower, and an arum up. A grey veronica was trying to open flower on the 11th, and hawthorn buds were so far open that the green was visible on the 16th. On February 14th a yellow-hammer sang, and brambles had put forth green buds. Two wasps went by in the sunshine. The 14th is old Candlemas, supposed to rule the weather for some time after. Old Candlemas was very fine and sunny till night, when a little rain fell. The summer that followed was cold and ungenial, with easterly winds, though fortunately it brightened up somewhat for the harvest. A chaffinch sang on the 20th of February: all these are very early dates. One morning while I was watching these plovers, a man with a gun got over a gate into the road. Another followed, apparently without a weapon, but as the first proceeded to take his gun to pieces, and put the barrel in one pocket at the back of his coat, and the stock in a second, it is possible that there was another gun concealed. The coolness with which the fellow did this on the highway was astounding, but his impudence was surpassed by his stupidity, for at the very moment he hid the gun there was a rabbit out feeding within easy range, which neither of these men observed. The boughs of a Scotch fir nearly reached to one window. If I recollect rightly, the snow was on the ground in the early part of the year, when a golden-crested wren came to it. He visited it two or three times a week for some time; his golden crest distinctly seen among the dark green needles of the fir. There are squirrels in the copse, and now and then one comes within sight. In the summer there was one in the boughs of an oak close to the garden. Once, and once only, a pair of them ventured into the garden itself, deftly passing along the wooden palings and exploring a guelder rose-bush. The pheasants which roost in the copse wander to it from distant preserves. One morning in spring, before the corn was up, there was one in a field by the copse calmly walking along the ridge of a furrow so near that the ring round his neck was visible from the road. In the early part of last autumn, while the acorns were dropping from the oaks and the berries ripe, I twice disturbed a pheasant from the garden of a villa not far distant. There were some oaks hard by, and from under these the bird had wandered into the quiet sequestered garden. The oak in the copse on which the squirrel was last seen is peculiar for bearing oak-apples earlier than any other of the neighbourhood, and there are often half-a-dozen of them on the twigs on the trunk before there is one anywhere else. The famous snowstorm of October 1880 snapped off the leader or top of this oak. Jays often come, magpies more rarely, to the copse; as for the lesser birds they all visit it. In the hornbeams at the verge blackcaps sing in spring a sweet and cultured song, which does not last many seconds. They visit a thick bunch of ivy in the garden. By these hornbeam trees a streamlet flows out of the copse, crossed at the hedge by a pole, to prevent cattle straying in. The pole is a robin's perch. He is always there, or near; he was there all through the terrible winter, all the summer, and he is there now. There are a few inches, a narrow strip of sand, beside the streamlet under this pole. Whenever a wagtail dares to come to this sand the robin immediately appears and drives him away. He will bear no intrusion. A pair of butcher-birds built very near this spot one spring, but afterwards appeared to remove to a place where there is more furze, but beside the same hedge. The determination and fierce resolution of the shrike, or butcherbird, despite his small size, is most marked. One day a shrike darted down from a hedge just before me, not a yard in front, and dashed a dandelion to the ground. His claws clasped the stalk, and the flower was crushed in a moment; he came with such force as to partly lose his balance. His prey was probably a humble-bee which had settled on the dandelion. The shrike's head resembles that of the eagle in miniature. From his favourite branch he surveys the grass, and in an instant pounces on his victim. There is a quiet lane leading out of one of the roads which have been mentioned down into a wooded hollow, where there are two ponds, one on each side of the lane. Standing here one morning in the early summer, suddenly a kingfisher came shooting straight towards me, and swerving a little passed within three yards; his blue wings, his ruddy front, the white streak beside his neck, and long bill were visible for a moment; then he was away, straight over the meadows, till he cleared a distant hedge and disappeared. He was probably on his way to visit his nest, for though living by the streams kingfishers often have their nest a considerable way from water. Two years had gone by since I saw one here before, perched then on the trunk of a willow which overhangs one of the ponds. After that came the severe winters, and it seemed as if the kingfishers were killed off, for they are often destroyed by frost, so that the bird came unexpectedly from the shadow of the trees, across the lane, and out into the sunshine over the field. It was a great pleasure to see a kingfisher again. This hollow is the very place of singing birds in June. Up in the oaks blackbirds whistle--you do not often see them, for they seek the leafy top branches, but once now and then while fluttering across to another perch. The blackbird's whistle is very human, like some one playing the flute; an uncertain player now drawing forth a bar of a beautiful melody and then losing it again. He does not know what quiver or what turn his note will take before it ends; the note leads him and completes itself. His music strives to express his keen appreciation of the loveliness of the days, the golden glory of the meadow, the light, and the luxurious shadows. Such thoughts can only be expressed in fragments, like a sculptor's chips thrown off as the inspiration seizes him, not mechanically sawn to a set line. Now and again the blackbird feels the beauty of the time, the large white daisy stars, the grass with yellow-dusted tips, the air which comes so softly unperceived by any precedent rustle of the hedge. He feels the beauty of the time, and he must say it. His notes come like wild flowers not sown in order. There is not an oak here in June without a blackbird. Thrushes sing louder here than anywhere else; they really seem to sing louder, and they are all around. Thrushes appear to vary their notes with the period of the year, singing louder in the summer, and in the mild days of October when the leaves lie brown and buff on the sward under their perch more plaintively and delicately. Warblers and willow-wrens sing in the hollow in June, all out of sight among the trees--they are easily hidden by a leaf. At that time the ivy leaves which flourish up to the very tops of the oaks are so smooth with enamelled surface, that high up, as the wind moves them, they reflect the sunlight and scintillate. Greenfinches in the elms never cease love-making; and love-making needs much soft talking. A nightingale in a bush sings so loud the hawthorn seems too small for the vigour of the song. He will let you stand at the very verge of the bough; but it is too near, his voice is sweeter across the field. There are still, in October, a few red apples on the boughs of the trees in a little orchard beside the same road. It is a natural orchard--left to itself--therefore there is always something to see in it. The palings by the road are falling, and are held up chiefly by the brambles about them and the ivy that has climbed up. Trees stand on the right and trees on the left; there is a tall spruce fir at the back. The apple trees are not set in straight lines: they were at first, but some have died away and left an irregularity; the trees lean this way and that, and they are scarred and marked as it were with lichen and moss. It is the home of birds. A blackbird had its nest this spring in the bushes on the left side, a nightingale another in the bushes on the right, and there the nightingale sang under the shadow of a hornbeam for hours every morning while "City" men were hurrying past to their train. The sharp relentless shrike that used to live by the copse moved up here, and from that very hornbeam perpetually darted across the road upon insects in the fern and furze opposite. He never entered the orchard; it is often noticed that birds (and beasts of prey) do not touch creatures that build near their own nests. Several thrushes reside in the orchard; swallows frequently twittered from the tops of the apple trees. As the grass is so safe from intrusion, one of the earliest buttercups flowers here. Bennets--the flower of the grass--come up; the first bennet is to green things what the first swallow is to the breathing creatures of summer. On a bare bough, but lately scourged by the east wind, the apple bloom appears, set about with the green of the hedges and the dark spruce behind. White horse-chestnut blooms stand up in their stately way, lighting the path which is strewn with the green moss-like flowers fallen from the oaks. There is an early bush of May. When the young apples take form and shape the grass is so high even the buttercups are overtopped by it. Along the edge of the roadside footpath, where the dandelions, plantains, and grasses are thick with seed, the greenfinches come down and feed. Now the apples are red that are left, and they hang on boughs from which the leaves are blown by every gust. But it does not matter when you pass, summer or autumn, this little orchard has always something to offer. It is not neglected--it is true attention to leave it to itself. Left to itself, so that the grass reaches its fullest height; so that bryony vines trail over the bushes and stay till the berries fall of their own ripeness; so that the brown leaves lie and are not swept away unless the wind chooses; so that all things follow their own course and bent. The hedge opposite in autumn, when reapers are busy with the sheaves, is white with the large trumpet flowers of the great wild convolvulus (or bindweed). The hedge there seems made of convolvulus then; nothing but convolvulus, and nowhere else does the flower flourish so strongly; the bines remain till the following spring. Without a path through it, without a border or parterre, unvisited, and left alone, the orchard has acquired an atmosphere of peace and stillness, such as grows up in woods and far-away lonely places. It is so commonplace and unpretentious that passers-by do not notice it; it is merely a corner of meadow dotted with apple trees--a place that needs frequent glances and a dreamy mood to understand it as the birds understand it. They are always there. In spring, thrushes move along, rustling the fallen leaves as they search among the arum sheaths unrolling beside the sheltering palings. There are nooks and corners whence shy creatures can steal out from the shadow and be happy. There is a loving streak of sunshine somewhere among the tree trunks. Though the copse is so much frequented the migrant birds (which have now for the most part gone) next spring will not be seen nor heard there first. With one exception, it is not the first place to find them. The cuckoos which come to the copse do not call till some time after others have been heard in the neighbourhood. There is another favourite copse a mile distant, and the cuckoo can be heard near it quite a week earlier. This last spring there were two days' difference--a marked interval. The nightingale that sings in the bushes on the common immediately opposite the copse is late in the same manner. There is a mound about half a mile farther, where a nightingale always sings first, before all the others of the district. The one on the common began to sing last spring a full week later. On the contrary, the sedge-reedling, which chatters side by side with the nightingale, is the first of all his kind to return to the neighbourhood. The same thing happens season after season, so that when once you know these places you can always hear the birds several days before other people. With flowers it is the same; the lesser celandine, the marsh marigold, the silvery cardamine, appear first in one particular spot, and may be gathered there before a petal has opened elsewhere. The first swallow in this district generally appears round about a pond near some farm buildings. Birds care nothing for appropriate surroundings. Hearing a titlark singing his loudest, I found him perched on the rim of a tub placed for horses to drink from. This very pond by which the first swallow appears is muddy enough, and surrounded with poached mud, for a herd of cattle drink from and stand in it. An elm overhangs it, and on the lower branches, which are dead, the swallows perch and sing just over the muddy water. A sow lies in the mire. But the sweet swallows sing on softly; they do not see the wallowing animal, the mud, the brown water; they see only the sunshine, the golden buttercups, and the blue sky of summer. This is the true way to look at this beautiful earth. MAGPIE FIELDS There were ten magpies together on the 9th of September 1881, in a field of clover beside a road but twelve miles from Charing Cross. Ten magpies would be a large number to see at once anywhere in the south, and not a little remarkable so near town. The magpies were doubtless young birds which had packed, and were bred in the nests in the numerous elms of the hedgerows about there. At one time they were scattered over the field, their white and black colours dotted everywhere, so that they seemed to hold entire possession of it. Then a knot of them gathered together, more came up, and there they were all ten fluttering and restlessly moving. After a while they passed on into the next field, which was stubble, and, collected in a bunch, were even more conspicuous there, as the stubble did not conceal them so much as the clover. That was on the 9th of September; by the end of the month weeds had grown so high that the stubble itself in that field had disappeared, and from a distance it looked like pasture. In the stubble the magpies remained till I could watch them no longer. A short time afterwards, on the 17th of September, looking over the gateway of an adjacent field which had been wheat, then only recently carried, a pheasant suddenly appeared rising up out of the stubble; and then a second, and a third and fourth. So tall were the weeds that, in a crouching posture, at the first glance they were not visible; then as they fed, stretching their necks out, only the top of their backs could be seen. Presently some more raised their heads in another part of the field, then two more on the left side, and one under an oak by the hedge, till seventeen were counted. These seventeen pheasants were evidently all young birds, which had wandered from covers, some distance, too, for there is no preserve within a mile at least. Seven or eight came near each other, forming a flock, but just out of gunshot from the road. They were all extremely busy feeding in the stubble. Next day half-a-dozen or so still remained, but the rest had scattered; some had gone across to an acre of barley yet standing in a corner; some had followed the dropping acorns along the hedge into another piece of stubble; others went into a breadth of turnips. Day by day their numbers diminished as they parted, till only three or four could be seen. Such a sortie from cover is the standing risk of the game-preserver. Towards the end of September, on passing a barley-field, still partly uncut, and with some spread, there was a loud, confused, murmuring sound up in the trees, like that caused by the immense flocks of starlings which collect in winter. The sound, however, did not seem quite the same, and upon investigation it turned out to be an incredible number of sparrows, whose voices were audible across the field. They presently flew out from the hedge, and alighted on one of the rows of cut barley, making it suddenly brown from one end to the other. There must have been thousands; they continually flew up, swept round with a whirring of wings, and settled, again darkening the spot they chose. Now, as the sparrow eats from morning to night without ceasing, say for about twelve hours, and picks up a grain of corn in the twinkling of an eye, it would be a moderate calculation to allow this vast flock two sacks a week. Among them there was one white sparrow--his white wings showed distinctly among the brown flock. In the most remote country I never observed so great a number of these birds at once; the loss to the farmers must be considerable. There were a few fine days at the end of the month. One afternoon there rose up a flock of rooks out of a large oak tree standing separate in the midst of an arable field which was then at last being ploughed. This oak is a favourite with the rooks of the neighbourhood, and they have been noticed to visit it more frequently than others. Up they went, perhaps a hundred of them, rooks and jackdaws together cawing and soaring round and round till they reached a great height. At that level, as if they had attained their ballroom, they swept round and round on outstretched wings, describing circles and ovals in the air. Caw-caw! jack-juck-juck! Thus dancing in slow measure, they enjoyed the sunshine, full from their feast of acorns. Often as one was sailing on another approached and interfered with his course when they wheeled about each other. Soon one dived. Holding his wings at full stretch and rigid, he dived headlong, rotating as he fell, till his beak appeared as if it would be driven into the ground by the violence of the descent. But within twenty feet of the earth he recovered himself and rose again. Most of these dives, for they all seemed to dive in turn, were made over the favourite oak, and they did not rise till they had gone down to its branches. Many appeared about to throw themselves against the boughs. Whether they wheeled round in circles, or whether they dived, or simply sailed onward in the air, they did it in pairs. As one was sweeping round another came to him. As one sailed straight on a second closely followed. After one had dived the other soon followed, or waited till he had come up and rejoined him. They danced and played in couples as if they were paired already. Some left the main body and steered right away from their friends, but turned and came back, and in about half-an-hour they all descended and settled in the oak from which they had risen. A loud cawing and jack-juck-jucking accompanied this sally. The same day it could be noticed how the shadows of the elms cast by the bright sunshine on the grass, which is singularly fresh and green this autumn, had a velvety appearance. The dark shadow on the fresh green looked soft as velvet. The waters of the brook had become darker now; they flowed smooth, and at the brink reflected a yellow spray of horse-chestnut. The sunshine made the greenfinches call, the chaffinches utter their notes, and a few thrushes sing; but the latter were soon silenced by frosts in the early morning, which turned the fern to so deep a reddish brown as to approach copper. At the beginning of October a herd of cows and a small flock of sheep were turned into the clover field to eat off the last crop, the preceding crops having been mown. There were two or more magpies among the sheep every day: magpies, starlings, rooks, crows, and wagtails follow sheep about. The clover this year seems to have been the best crop, though in the district alluded to it has not been without an enemy. Early in July, after the first crop had been mown a short time, there came up a few dull yellowish-looking stalks among it. These increased so much that one field became yellowish all over, the stalks overtopped the clover, and overcame its green. It was the lesser broom rape, and hardly a clover plant escaped this parasitic growth. By carefully removing the earth with a pocket-knife the two could be dug up together. From the roots of the clover a slender filament passes underground to the somewhat bulbous root of the broom rape, so that although they stand apart and appear separate plants, they are connected under the surface. The stalk of the broom rape is clammy to touch, and is an unwholesome greenish yellow, a dull undecided colour; if cut, it is nearly the same texture throughout. There are numerous dull purplish flowers at the top, but it has no leaves. It is not a pleasant-looking plant--a strange and unusual growth. One particular field was completely covered with it, and scarcely a clover field in the neighbourhood was perfectly free. But though drawing the sap from the clover plants the latter grew so vigorously that little damage was apparent. After a while the broom rape disappeared, but the clover shot up and afforded good forage. So late as the beginning of October a few poppies flowered in it, their bright scarlet contrasting vividly with the green around, and the foliage above fast turning brown. The flight of the jay much resembles that of the magpie, the same jaunty, uncertain style, so that at a distance from the flight alone it would be difficult to distinguish them, though in fact the magpie's longer tail and white and black colours always mark him. One morning in July, standing for a moment in the shade beside a birch copse which borders the same road, a jay flew up into the tree immediately overhead, so near that the peculiar shape of the head and bill and all the plumage was visible. He looked down twice, and then flew. Another morning there was a jay on the ground, searching about, not five yards from the road, nor twenty from a row of houses. It was at the corner of a copse which adjoins them. If not so constantly shot at the jay would be anything but wild. Notwithstanding all these magpies and jays, the partridges are numerous this year in the fields bordering the highway, and which are not watched by keepers. Thinking of the partridges makes me notice the anthills. There were comparatively few this season, but on the 4th of August, which was a sunny day, I saw the inhabitants of a hill beside the road bringing out the eggs into the sunshine. They could not do it fast enough; some ran out with eggs, and placed them on the top of the little mound, and others seized eggs that had been exposed sufficiently and hurried with them into the interior. Woody nightshade grows in quantities along this road and, apparently, all about the outskirts of the town. There is not a hedge without it, and it creeps over the mounds of earth at the sides of the highways. Some fumitory appeared this summer in a field of barley; till then I had not observed any for some time in that district. This plant, once so common, but now nearly eradicated by culture, has a soft pleasant green. A cornflower, too, flowered in another field, quite a treasure to find where these beautiful blue flowers are so scarce. The last day of August there was a fierce combat on the footpath between a wasp and a brown moth. They rolled over and struggled, now one, now the other uppermost, and the wasp appeared to sting the moth repeatedly. The moth, however, got away. There are so many jackdaws about the suburbs that, when a flock of rooks passes over, the caw-cawing is quite equalled by the jack-jucking. The daws are easily known by their lesser size and by their flight, for they use their wings three times to the rook's once. Numbers of daws build in the knot-holes and hollows of the horse-chestnut trees in Bushey Park, and in the elms of the grounds of Hampton Court. To the left of the Diana Fountain there are a number of hawthorn trees, which stand apart, and are aged like those often found on village greens and commons. Upon some of these hawthorns mistletoe grows, not in such quantities as on the apples in Gloucester and Hereford, but in small pieces. As late in the spring as May-day I have seen some berries, then very large, on the mistletoe here. Earlier in the year, when the adjoining fountain was frozen and crowded with skaters, there were a number of missel-thrushes in these hawthorns, but they appeared to be eating the haws. At all events, they left some of the mistletoe berries, which were on the plant months later. Just above Molesey Lock, in the meadows beside the towing-path, the blue meadow geranium, or crane's-bill, flowers in large bunches in the summer. It is one of the most beautiful flowers of the field, and after having lost sight of it for some time, to see it again seemed to bring the old familiar far-away fields close to London. Between Hampton Court and Kingston the towing-path of the Thames is bordered by a broad green sward, sufficiently wide to be worth mowing. One July I found a man at work here in advance of the mowers, pulling up yarrow plants with might and main. The herb grew in such quantities that it was necessary to remove it first, or the hay would be too coarse. On conversing with him, he said that a person came sometimes and took away a trap-load of yarrow; the flowers were to be boiled and mixed with cayenne pepper, as a remedy for cold in the chest. In spring the dandelions here are pulled in sackfuls, to be eaten as salad. These things have fallen so much into disuse in the country that country people are surprised to find the herbalists flourishing round the great city of progress. The continued dry weather in the early summer of the present year, which was so favourable to partridges and game, was equally favourable to the increase of several other kinds of birds, and among these the jays. Their screeching is often heard in this district, quite as often as it is in country woodlands. One day in the spring I saw six all screeching and yelling together up and down a hedge near the road. Now in October they are plentiful. One flew across overhead with an acorn in its beak, and perched in an elm beside the highway. He pecked at the acorn on the bough, then glanced down, saw me, and fled, dropping the acorn, which fell tap tap from branch to branch till it reached the mound. Another jay actually flew up into a fir in the green, or lawn, before a farm-house window, crossing the road to do so. Four together were screeching in an elm close to the road, and since then I have seen others with acorns, while walking there. Indeed, this autumn it is not possible to go far without hearing their discordant and unmistakable cry. They were never scarce here, but are unusually numerous this season, and in the scattered trees of hedgerows their ways can be better observed than in the close covert of copses and plantations, where you hear them, but cannot see for the thick fir boughs. It is curious to note the number of creatures to whom the oak furnishes food. The jays, for instance, are now visiting them for acorns; in the summer they fluttered round the then green branches for the chafers, and in the evenings the fern owls or goat-suckers wheeled about the verge for these and for moths. Rooks come to the oaks in crowds for the acorns; wood-pigeons are even more fond of them, and from their crops quite a handful may sometimes be taken when shot in the trees. They will carry off at once as many acorns as old-fashioned economical farmers used to walk about with in their pockets, "chucking" them one, two, or three at a time to the pigs in the stye as a _bonne bouche_ and an encouragement to fatten well. Never was there such a bird to eat as the wood-pigeon. Pheasants roam out from the preserves after the same fruit, and no arts can retain them at acorn time. Swine are let run out about the hedgerows to help themselves. Mice pick up the acorns that fall, and hide them for winter use, and squirrels select the best. If there is a decaying bough, or, more particularly, one that has been sawn off, it slowly decays into a hollow, and will remain in that state for years, the resort of endless woodlice, snapped up by insect-eating birds. Down from the branches in spring there descend long, slender threads, like gossamer, with a caterpillar at the end of each--the insect-eating birds decimate these. So that in various ways the oaks give more food to the birds than any other tree. Where there are oaks there are sure to be plenty of birds. Beeches come next. Is it possible that the severe frosts we sometimes have split oak trees? Some may be found split up the trunk, and yet not apparently otherwise injured, as they probably would be if it had been done by lightning. Trees are said to burst in America under frost, so that it is not impossible in this country. There is a young oak beside the highway which in autumn was wreathed as artistically as could have been done by hand. A black bryony plant grew up round it, rising in a spiral. The heart-shaped leaves have dropped from the bine, leaving thick bunches of red and green berries clustering about the greyish stem of the oak. Every one must have noticed that some trees have a much finer autumn tint than others. This, it will often be found, is an annual occurrence, and the same elm, or beech, or oak that has delighted the eye with its hues this autumn, will do the same next year, and excel its neighbours in colour. Oaks and beeches, perhaps, are the best examples of this, as they are also the trees that present the most beautiful appearance in autumn. There are oaks on villa lawns near London whose glory of russet foliage in October or November is not to be surpassed in the parks of the country. There are two or three such oaks in Long Ditton. All oaks do not become russet, or buff; some never take those tints. An oak, for instance, not far from those just mentioned never quite loses its green; it cannot be said, indeed, to remain green, but there is a trace of it somewhere; the leaves must, I suppose, be partly buff and partly green; and the mixture of these colours in bright sunshine produces a tint for which I know no accurate term. In the tops of the poplars, where most exposed, the leaves stay till the last, those growing on the trunk below disappearing long before those on the spire, which bends to every blast. The keys of the hornbeam come twirling down: the hornbeam and the birch are characteristic trees of the London landscape--the latter reaches a great height and never loses its beauty, for when devoid of leaves the feathery spray-like branches only come into view the more. The abundant bird life is again demonstrated as the evening approaches. Along the hedgerows, at the corners of the copses, wherever there is the least cover, so soon as the sun sinks, the blackbirds announce their presence by their calls. Their "ching-chinging" sounds everywhere; they come out on the projecting branches and cry, then fly fifty yards farther down the hedge, and cry again. During the day they may not have been noticed, scattered as they were under the bushes, but the dusky shadows darkening the fields send them to roost, and before finally retiring, they "ching-ching" to each other. Then, almost immediately after the sun has gone down, looking to the south-west the sky seen above the trees (which hide the yellow sunset) becomes a delicate violet. Soon a speck of light gleams faintly through it--the merest speck. The first appearance of a star is very beautiful; the actual moment of first contact as it were of the ray with the eye is always a surprise, however often you may have enjoyed it, and notwithstanding that you are aware it will happen. Where there was only the indefinite violet before, the most intense gaze into which could discover nothing, suddenly, as if at that moment born, the point of light arrives. So glorious is the night that not all London, with its glare and smoke, can smother the sky; in the midst of the gas, and the roar and the driving crowd, look up from the pavement, and there, straight above, are the calm stars. I never forget them, not even in the restless Strand; they face one coming down the hill of the Haymarket; in Trafalgar Square, looking towards the high dark structure of the House at Westminster, the clear bright steel silver of the planet Jupiter shines unwearied, without sparkle or flicker. Apart from the grand atmospheric changes caused by a storm wave from the Atlantic, or an anti-cyclone, London produces its own sky. Put a shepherd on St. Paul's, allow him three months to get accustomed to the local appearances and the deceptive smoke clouds, and he would then tell what the weather of the day was going to be far more efficiently than the very best instrument ever yet invented. He would not always be right; but he would predict the local London weather with far more accuracy than any one reading the returns from the barometers at Valentia, Stornoway, Brest, or Christiansand. The reason is this--the barometer foretells the cloud in the sky, but cannot tell where it will burst. The practised eye can judge with very considerable accuracy where the discharge will take place. Some idea of what the local weather of London will be for the next few hours may often be obtained by observation on either of the bridges--Westminster, Waterloo, or London Bridge: there is on the bridges something like a horizon, the best to be got in the City itself, and the changes announce themselves very clearly there. The difference in the definition is really wonderful. From Waterloo Bridge the golden cross on St. Paul's and the dome at one time stand out as if engraved upon the sky, clear and with a white aspect. At the same time, the brick of the old buildings at the back of the Strand is red and bright. The structures of the bridges appear light, and do not press upon their arches. The yellow straw stacked on the barges is bright, the copper-tinted sails bright, the white wall of the Embankment clear, and the lions' heads distinct. Every trace of colour, in short, is visible. At another time the dome is murky, the cross tarnished, the outline dim, the red brick dull, the whiteness gone. In summer there is occasionally a bluish haze about the distant buildings. These are the same changes presented by the Downs in the country, and betoken the state of the atmosphere as clearly. The London atmosphere is, I should fancy, quite as well adapted to the artist's uses as the changeless glare of the Continent. The smoke itself is not without its interest. Sometimes upon Westminster Bridge at night the scene is very striking. Vast rugged columns of vapour rise up behind and over the towers of the House, hanging with threatening aspect; westward the sky is nearly clear, with some relic of the sunset glow: the river itself, black or illuminated with the electric light, imparting a silvery blue tint, crossed again with the red lamps of the steamers. The aurora of dark vapour, streamers extending from the thicker masses, slowly moves and yet does not go away; it is just such a sky as a painter might give to some tremendous historical event, a sky big with presage, gloom, tragedy. How bright and clear, again, are the mornings in summer! I once watched the sun rise on London Bridge, and never forgot it. In frosty weather, again, when the houses take hard, stern tints, when the sky is clear over great part of its extent, but with heavy thunderous-looking clouds in places--clouds full of snow--the sun becomes of a red or orange hue, and reminds one of the lines of Longfellow when Othere reached the North Cape-- "Round in a fiery ring Went the great sun, oh King! With red and lurid light." The redness of the winter sun in London is, indeed, characteristic. A sunset in winter or early spring floods the streets with fiery glow. It comes, for instance, down Piccadilly; it is reflected from the smooth varnished roofs of the endless carriages that roll to and fro like the flicker of a mighty fire; it streaks the side of the street with rosiness. The faces of those who are passing are lit up by it, all unconscious as they are. The sky above London, indeed, is as full of interest as above the hills. Lunar rainbows occasionally occur; two to my knowledge were seen in the direction and apparently over the metropolis recently. When a few minutes on the rail has carried you outside the hub as it were of London, among the quiet tree-skirted villas, the night reigns as completely as in the solitudes of the country. Perhaps even more so, for the solitude is somehow more apparent. The last theatre-goer has disappeared inside his hall door, the last dull roll of the brougham, with its happy laughing load, has died away--there is not so much as a single footfall. The cropped holly hedges, the leafless birches, the limes and acacias are still and distinct in the moonlight. A few steps farther out on the highway the copse or plantation sleeps in utter silence. But the tall elms are the most striking; the length of the branches and their height above brings them across the light, so that they stand out even more shapely than when in leaf. The blue sky (not, of course, the blue of day), the white moonlight, the bright stars--larger at midnight and brilliant, in despite of the moon, which cannot overpower them in winter as she does in summer evenings--all are as beautiful as on the distant hills of old. By night, at least, even here, in the still silence, Heaven has her own way. When the oak leaves first begin to turn buff, and the first acorns drop, the redwings arrive, and their "kuk-kuk" sound in the hedges and the shrubberies in the gardens of suburban villas. They seem to come very early to the neighbourhood of London, and before the time of their appearance in other districts. The note is heard before they are seen; the foliage of the shrubberies, still thick, though changing colour, concealing them. Presently, when the trees are bare, with the exception of a few oaks, they have disappeared, passing on towards the west. The fieldfares, too, as I have previously observed, do not stay. But missel-thrushes seem more numerous near town than in the country. Every mild day in November the thrushes sing; there are meadows where one may be certain to hear the song-thrush. In the dip or valley at Long Ditton there are several meadows well timbered with elm, which are the favourite resorts of thrushes, and their song may be heard just there in the depth of winter, when it would be possible to go a long distance on the higher ground without hearing one. If you hear the note of the song-thrush during frost it is sure to rain within a few hours; it is the first sign of the weather breaking up. Another autumn sign is the packing (in a sense) of the moorhens. During the summer the numerous brooks and ponds about town are apparently partially deserted by these birds; at least they are not to be seen by casual wayfarers. But directly the winter gets colder they gather together in the old familiar places, and five or six, or even more, come out at once to feed in the meadows or on the lawns by the water. Green plovers, or peewits, come in small flocks to the fields recently ploughed; sometimes scarcely a gunshot from the walls of the villas. The tiny golden-crested wrens are comparatively numerous near town--the heaths with their bramble thickets doubtless suit them; so soon as the leaves fall they may often be seen. HERBS A great green book, whose broad pages are illuminated with flowers, lies open at the feet of Londoners. This volume, without further preface, lies ever open at Kew Gardens, and is most easily accessible from every part of the metropolis. A short walk from Kew station brings the visitor to Cumberland Gate. Resting for a moment upon the first seat that presents itself, it is hard to realise that London has but just been quitted. Green foliage around, green grass beneath, a pleasant sensation--not silence, but absence of jarring sound--blue sky overhead, streaks and patches of sunshine where the branches admit the rays, wide, cool shadows, and clear, sweet atmosphere. High in a lime tree, hidden from view by the leaves, a chiffchaff sings continually, and from the distance comes the softer note of a thrush. On the close-mown grass a hedge-sparrow is searching about within a few yards, and idle insects float to and fro, visible against the background of a dark yew tree--they could not be seen in the glare of the sunshine. The peace of green things reigns. It is not necessary to go farther in; this spot at the very entrance is equally calm and still, for there is no margin of partial disturbance--repose begins at the edge. Perhaps it is best to be at once content, and to move no farther; to remain, like the lime tree, in one spot, with the sunshine and the sky, to close the eyes and listen to the thrush. Something, however, urges exploration. The majority of visitors naturally follow the path, and go round into the general expanse; but I will turn from here sharply to the right, and crossing the sward there is, after a few steps only, another enclosing wall. Within this enclosure, called the Herbaceous Ground, heedlessly passed and perhaps never heard of by the thousands who go to see the Palm Houses, lies to me the real and truest interest of Kew. For here is a living dictionary of English wild flowers. The meadow and the cornfield, the river, the mountain and the woodland, the seashore, the very waste place by the roadside, each has sent its peculiar representatives, and glancing for the moment, at large, over the beds, noting their number and extent, remembering that the specimens are not in the mass but individual, the first conclusion is that our own country is the true Flowery Land. But the immediate value of this wonderful garden is in the clue it gives to the most ignorant, enabling any one, no matter how unlearned, to identify the flower that delighted him or her, it may be, years ago, in faraway field or copse. Walking up and down the green paths between the beds, you are sure to come upon it presently, with its scientific name duly attached and its natural order labelled at the end of the patch. Had I only known of this place in former days, how gladly I would have walked the hundred miles hither! For the old folk, aged men and countrywomen, have for the most part forgotten, if they ever knew, the plants and herbs in the hedges they had frequented from childhood. Some few, of course, they can tell you; but the majority are as unknown to them, except by sight, as, the ferns of New Zealand or the heaths of the Cape. Since books came about, since the railways and science destroyed superstition, the lore of herbs has in great measure decayed and been lost. The names of many of the commonest herbs are quite forgotten--they are weeds, and nothing more. But here these things are preserved; in London, the centre of civilisation and science, is a garden which restores the ancient knowledge of the monks and the witches of the villages. Thus, on entering to-day, the first plant which I observed is hellebore--a not very common wild herb perhaps, but found in places, and a traditionary use of which is still talked of in the country, a use which I must forbear to mention. What would the sturdy mowers whom I once watched cutting their way steadily through the tall grass in June say, could they see here the black knapweed cultivated as a garden treasure? Its hard woody head with purple florets lifted high above the ground, was greatly disliked by them, as, too, the blue scabious, and indeed most other flowers. The stalks of such plants were so much harder to mow than the grass. Feathery yarrow sprays, which spring up by the wayside and wherever the foot of man passes, as at the gateway, are here. White and lilac-tinted yarrow flowers grow so thickly along the roads round London as often to form a border between the footpath and the bushes of the hedge. Dandelions lift their yellow heads, classified and cultivated--the same dandelions whose brilliant colour is admired and imitated by artists, and whose prepared roots are still in use in country places to improve the flavour of coffee. Groundsel, despised groundsel--the weed which cumbers the garden patch, and is hastily destroyed, is here fully recognised. These harebells--they have flowered a little earlier than in their wild state--how many scenes they recall to memory! We found them on the tops of the glorious Downs when the wheat was ripe in the plains and the earth beneath seemed all golden. Some, too, concealed themselves on the pastures behind those bunches of tough grass the cattle left untouched. And even in cold November, when the mist lifted, while the dewdrops clustered thickly on the grass, one or two hung their heads under the furze. Hawkweeds, which many mistake for dandelions; cowslips, in seed now, and primroses, with foreign primulas around them and enclosed by small hurdles, foxgloves, some with white and some with red flowers, all these have their story and are intensely English. Rough-leaved comfrey of the side of the river and brook, one species of which is so much talked of as better forage than grass, is here, its bells opening. Borage, whose leaves float in the claret-cup ladled out to thirsty travellers at the London railway stations in the hot weather; knotted figwort, common in ditches; Aaron's rod, found in old gardens; lovely veronicas; mints and calamints whose leaves, if touched, scent the fingers, and which grow everywhere by cornfield and hedgerow. This bunch of wild thyme once again calls up a vision of the Downs; it is not so thick and strong, and it lacks that cushion of herbage which so often marks the site of its growth on the noble slopes of the hills, and along the sward-grown fosse of ancient earthworks, but it is wild thyme, and that is enough. From this bed of varieties of thyme there rises up a pleasant odour which attracts the bees. Bees and humble-bees, indeed, buzz everywhere, but they are much too busily occupied to notice you or me. Is there any difference in the taste of London honey and in that of the country? From the immense quantity of garden flowers about the metropolis it would seem possible for a distinct flavour, not perhaps preferable, to be imparted. Lavender, of which old housewives were so fond, and which is still the best of preservatives, comes next, and self-heal is just coming out in flower; the reapers have, I believe, forgotten its former use in curing the gashes sometimes inflicted by the reap-hook. The reaping-machine has banished such memories from the stubble. Nightshades border on the potato, the flowers of both almost exactly alike; poison and food growing side by side and of the same species. There are tales still told in the villages of this deadly and enchanted mandragora; the lads sometimes go to the churchyards to search for it. Plantains and docks, wild spurge, hops climbing up a dead fir tree, a well-chosen pole for them--nothing is omitted. Even the silver weed, the dusty-looking foliage which is thrust aside as you walk on the footpath by the road, is here labelled with truth as "cosmopolitan" of habit. Bird's-foot lotus, another Downside plant, lights up the stones put to represent rockwork with its yellow. Saxifrage, and stone-crop and house-leek are here in variety. Buttercups occupy a whole patch--a little garden to themselves. What would the haymakers say to such a sight? Little, too, does the mower reck of the number, variety, and beauty of the grasses in a single armful of swathe, such as he gathers up to cover his jar of ale with and keep it cool by the hedge. The bennets, the flower of the grass, on their tall stalks, go down in numbers as countless as the sand of the seashore before his scythe. But here the bennets are watched and tended, the weeds removed from around them, and all the grasses of the field cultivated as affectionately as the finest rose. There is something cool and pleasant in this green after the colours of the herbs in flower, though each grass is but a bunch, yet it has with it something of the sweetness of the meadows by the brooks. Juncus, the rush, is here, a sign often welcome to cattle, for they know that water must be near; the bunch is cut down, and the white pith shows, but it will speedily be up again; horse-tails, too, so thick in marshy places--one small species is abundant in the ploughed fields of Surrey, and must be a great trouble to the farmers, for the land is sometimes quite hidden by it. In the adjoining water tank are the principal flowers and plants which flourish in brook, river, and pond. This yellow iris flowers in many streams about London, and the water-parsnip's pale green foliage waves at the very bottom, for it will grow with the current right over it as well as at the side. Water-plantain grows in every pond near the metropolis; there is some just outside these gardens, in a wet ha-ha. The huge water-docks in the centre here flourish at the verge of the adjacent Thames; the marsh marigold, now in seed, blooms in April in the damp furrows of meadows close up to town. But in this flower-pot, sunk so as to be in the water, and yet so that the rim may prevent it from spreading and coating the entire tank with green, is the strangest of all, actually duckweed. The still ponds always found close to cattle yards, are in summer green from end to end with this weed. I recommend all country folk who come up to town in summer time to run down here just to see duckweed cultivated once in their lives. In front of an ivy-grown museum there is a kind of bowling-green, sunk somewhat below the general surface, where in similar beds may be found the most of those curious old herbs which, for seasoning or salad, or some use of superstition, were famous in ancient English households. Not one of them but has its associations. "There's rue for you," to begin with; we all know who that herb is for ever connected with. There is marjoram and sage, clary, spearmint, peppermint, salsify, elecampane, tansy, assafoetida, coriander, angelica, caper spurge, lamb's lettuce, and sorrel. Mugwort, southernwood, and wormwood are still to be found in old gardens: they stand here side by side. Monkshood, horehound, henbane, vervain (good against the spells of witches), feverfew, dog's mercury, bistort, woad, and so on, all seem like relics of the days of black-letter books. All the while greenfinches are singing happily in the trees without the wall. This is but the briefest résumé; for many long summer afternoons would be needed even to glance at all the wild flowers that bloom in June. Then you must come once at least a month, from March to September, as the flowers succeed each other, to read the place aright. It is an index to every meadow and cornfield, wood, heath, and river in the country, and by means of the plants of the same species to the flowers of the world. Therefore, the Herbaceous Ground seems to me a place that should on no account be passed by. And the next place is the Wilderness--that is, the Forest. On the way thither an old-fashioned yew hedge may be seen round about a vast glasshouse. Outside, on the sward, there are fewer wild flowers growing wild than might perhaps be expected, owing in some degree, no doubt, to the frequent mowing, except under the trees, where again the constant shadow does not suit all. By the ponds, in the midst of trees, and near the river, there is a little grass, however, left to itself, in which in June there were some bird's-foot lotus, veronica, hawkweeds, ox-eye daisy, knapweed, and buttercups. Standing by these ponds, I heard a cuckoo call, and saw a rook sail over them; there was no other sound but that of the birds and the merry laugh of children rolling down the slopes. The midsummer hum was audible above; the honey-dew glistened on the leaves of the limes. There is a sense of repose in the mere aspect of large trees in groups and masses of quiet foliage. Their breadth of form steadies the roving eye; the rounded slopes, the wide sweeping outline of these hills of green boughs, induce an inclination, like them, to rest. To recline upon the grass and with half-closed eyes gaze upon them is enough. The delicious silence is not the silence of night, of lifelessness; it is the lack of jarring, mechanical noise; it is not silence but the sound of leaf and grass gently stroked by the soft and tender touch of the summer air. It is the sound of happy finches, of the slow buzz of humble-bees, of the occasional splash of a fish, or the call of a moorhen. Invisible in the brilliant beams above, vast legions of insects crowd the sky, but the product of their restless motion is a slumberous hum. These sounds are the real silence; just as a tiny ripple of the water and the swinging of the shadows as the boughs stoop are the real stillness. If they were absent, if it was the soundlessness and stillness of stone, the mind would crave for something. But these fill and content it. Thus reclining, the storm and stress of life dissolve--there is no thought, no care, no desire. Somewhat of the Nirvana of the earth beneath--the earth which for ever produces and receives back again and yet is for ever at rest--enters into and soothes the heart. The time slips by, a rook emerges from yonder mass of foliage, and idly floats across, and is hidden in another tree. A whitethroat rises from a bush and nervously discourses, gesticulating with wings and tail, for a few moments. But this is not possible for long; the immense magnetism of London, as I have said before, is too near. There comes the quick short beat of a steam launch shooting down the river hard by, and the dream is over. I rise and go on again. Already one of the willows planted about the pond is showing the yellow leaf, before midsummer. It reminds me of the inevitable autumn. In October these ponds, now apparently deserted, will be full of moorhens. I have seen and heard but one to-day, but as the autumn comes on they will be here again, feeding about the island, or searching on the sward by the shore. Then, too, among the beeches that lead from hence towards the fanciful pagoda the squirrels will be busy. There are numbers of them, and their motions may be watched with ease. I turn down by the river; in the ditch at the foot of the ha-ha wall is plenty of duckweed, the Lemna of the tank. A little distance away, and almost on the shore, as it seems, of the Thames, is a really noble horse-chestnut, whose boughs, untouched by cattle, come sweeping down to the ground, and then, continuing, seem to lie on and extend themselves along it, yards beyond their contact. Underneath, it reminds one of sketches of encampments in Hindostan beneath banyan trees, where white tent cloths are stretched from branch to branch. Tent cloths might be stretched here in similar manner, and would enclose a goodly space. Or in the boughs above, a savage's tree-hut might be built, and yet scarcely be seen. My roaming and uncertain steps next bring me under a plane, and I am forced to admire it; I do not like planes, but this is so straight of trunk, so vast of size, and so immense of height that I cannot choose but look up into it. A jackdaw, perched on an upper bough, makes off as I glance up. But the trees constantly afford unexpected pleasure; you wander among the timber of the world, now under the shadow of the trees which the Red Indian haunts, now by those which grow on Himalayan slopes. The interest lies in the fact that they are trees, not shrubs or mere saplings, but timber trees which cast a broad shadow. So great is their variety and number that it is not always easy to find an oak or an elm; there are plenty, but they are often lost in the foreign forest. Yet every English shrub and bush is here; the hawthorn, the dogwood, the wayfaring tree, gorse and broom, and here is a round plot of heather. Weary at last, I rest again near the Herbaceous Ground, as the sun declines and the shadows lengthen. As evening draws on, the whistling of blackbirds and the song of thrushes seem to come from everywhere around. The trees are full of them. Every few moments a blackbird passes over, flying at some height, from the villa gardens and the orchards without. The song increases; the mellow whistling is without intermission; but the shadow has nearly reached the wall, and I must go. TREES ABOUT TOWN Just outside London there is a circle of fine, large houses, each standing in its own grounds, highly rented, and furnished with every convenience money can supply. If any one will look at the trees and shrubs growing in the grounds about such a house, chosen at random for an example, and make a list of them, he may then go round the entire circumference of Greater London, mile after mile, many days' journey, and find the list ceaselessly repeated. There are acacias, sumachs, cedar deodaras, araucarias, laurels, planes, beds of rhododendrons, and so on. There are various other foreign shrubs and trees whose names have not become familiar, and then the next grounds contain exactly the same, somewhat differently arranged. Had they all been planted by Act of Parliament, the result could scarcely have been more uniform. If, again, search were made in these enclosures for English trees and English shrubs, it would be found that none have been introduced. The English trees, timber trees, that are there, grew before the house was built; for the rest, the products of English woods and hedgerows have been carefully excluded. The law is, "Plant planes, laurels, and rhododendrons; root up everything natural to this country." To those who have any affection for our own woodlands this is a pitiful spectacle, produced, too, by the expenditure of large sums of money. Will no one break through the practice, and try the effect of English trees? There is no lack of them, and they far excel anything yet imported in beauty and grandeur. Though such suburban grounds mimic the isolation and retirement of ancient country-houses surrounded with parks, the distinctive feature of the ancient houses is omitted. There are no massed bodies, as it were, of our own trees to give a substance to the view. Are young oaks ever seen in those grounds so often described as park-like? Some time since it was customary for the builder to carefully cut down every piece of timber on the property before putting in the foundations. Fortunately, the influence of a better taste now preserves such trees as chance to be growing on the site at the moment it is purchased. These remain, but no others are planted. A young oak is not to be seen. The oaks that are there drop their acorns in vain, for if one takes root it is at once cut off; it would spoil the laurels. It is the same with elms; the old elms are decaying, and no successors are provided. As for ash, it is doubtful if a young ash is anywhere to be found; if so it is an accident. The ash is even rarer than the rest. In their places are put more laurels, cedar deodaras, various evergreens, rhododendrons, planes. How tame and insignificant are these compared with the oak! Thrice a year the oaks become beautiful in a different way. In spring the opening buds give the tree a ruddy hue; in summer the great head of green is not to be surpassed; in autumn, with the falling leaf and acorn, they appear buff and brown. The nobility of the oak casts the pitiful laurel into utter insignificance. With elms it is the same; they are reddish with flower and bud very early in the year, the fresh leaf is a tender green; in autumn they are sometimes one mass of yellow. Ashes change from almost black to a light green, then a deeper green, and again light green and yellow. Where is the foreign evergreen in the competition? Put side by side, competition is out of the question; you have only to get an artist to paint the oak in its three phases to see this. There is less to be said against the deodara than the rest, as it is a graceful tree; but it is not English in any sense. The point, however, is that the foreigners oust the English altogether. Let the cedar and the laurel, and the whole host of invading evergreens, be put aside by themselves, in a separate and detached shrubbery, maintained for the purpose of exhibiting strange growths. Let them not crowd the lovely English trees out of the place. Planes are much planted now, with ill effect; the blotches where the bark peels, the leaves which lie on the sward like brown leather, the branches wide apart and giving no shelter to birds--in short, the whole ensemble of the plane is unfit for our country. It was selected for London plantations, as the Thames Embankment, because its peeling bark was believed to protect it against the deposit of sooty particles, and because it grows quickly. For use in London itself it may be preferable: for semi-country seats, as the modern houses surrounded with their own grounds assume to be, it is unsightly. It has no association. No one has seen a plane in a hedgerow, or a wood, or a copse. There are no fragments of English history clinging to it as there are to the oak. If trees of the plane class be desirable, sycamores may be planted, as they have in a measure become acclimatised. If trees that grow fast are required, there are limes and horse-chestnuts; the lime will run a race with any tree. The lime, too, has a pale yellow blossom, to which bees resort in numbers, making a pleasant hum, which seems the natural accompaniment of summer sunshine. Its leaves are put forth early. Horse-chestnuts, too, grow quickly and without any attention, the bloom is familiar, and acknowledged to be fine, and in autumn the large sprays of leaves take orange and even scarlet tints. The plane is not to be mentioned beside either of them. Other trees as well as the plane would have flourished on the Thames Embankment, in consequence of the current of fresh air caused by the river. Imagine the Embankment with double rows of oaks, elms, or beeches; or, if not, even with limes or horse-chestnuts! To these certainly birds would have resorted--possibly rooks, which do not fear cities. On such a site the experiment would have been worth making. If in the semi-country seats fast-growing trees are needed, there are, as I have observed, the lime and horse-chestnut; and if more variety be desired, add the Spanish chestnut and the walnut. The Spanish chestnut is a very fine tree; the walnut, it is true, grows slowly. If as many beeches as cedar deodaras and laurels and planes were planted in these grounds, in due course of time the tap of the woodpecker would be heard: a sound truly worth ten thousand laurels. At Kew, far closer to town than many of the semi-country seats are now, all our trees flourish in perfection. Hardy birches, too, will grow in thin soil. Just compare the delicate drooping boughs of birch--they could not have been more delicate if sketched with a pencil--compare these with the gaunt planes! Of all the foreign shrubs that have been brought to these shores, there is not one that presents us with so beautiful a spectacle as the bloom of the common old English hawthorn in May. The mass of blossom, the pleasant fragrance, its divided and elegant leaf, place it far above any of the importations. Besides which, the traditions and associations of the May give it a human interest. The hawthorn is a part of natural English life--country life. It stands side by side with the Englishman, as the palm tree is pictured side by side with the Arab. You cannot pick up an old play, or book of the time when old English life was in the prime, without finding some reference to the hawthorn. There is nothing of this in the laurel, or any shrub whatever that may be thrust in with a ticket to tell you its name; it has a ticket because it has no interest, or else you would know it. For use there is nothing like hawthorn; it will trim into a thick hedge, defending the enclosure from trespassers, and warding off the bitter winds; or it will grow into a tree. Again, the old hedge-crab--the common, despised crab-apple--in spring is covered with blossom, such a mass of blossom that it may be distinguished a mile. Did any one ever see a plane or a laurel look like that? How pleasant, too, to see the clear white flower of the blackthorn come out in the midst of the bitter easterly breezes! It is like a white handkerchief beckoning to the sun to come. There will not be much more frost; if the wind is bitter to-day, the sun is rapidly gaining power. Probably, if a blackthorn bush were by any chance discovered in the semi-parks or enclosures alluded to, it would at once be rooted out as an accursed thing. The very brambles are superior; there is the flower, the sweet berry, and afterwards the crimson leaves--three things in succession. What can the world produce equal to the June rose? The common briar, the commonest of all, offers a flower which, whether in itself, or the moment of its appearance at the juncture of all sweet summer things, or its history and associations, is not to be approached by anything a millionaire could purchase. The labourer casually gathers it as he goes to his work in the field, and yet none of the rich families whose names are synonymous with wealth can get anything to equal it if they ransack the earth. After these, fill every nook and corner with hazel, and make filbert walks. Up and down such walks men strolled with rapiers by their sides while our admirals were hammering at the Spaniards with culverin and demi-cannon, and looked at the sun-dial and adjourned for a game at bowls, wishing that they only had a chance to bowl shot instead of peaceful wood. Fill in the corners with nut-trees, then, and make filbert walks. All these are like old story books, and the old stories are always best. Still, there are others for variety, as the wild guelder rose, which produces heavy bunches of red berries; dogwood, whose leaves when frost-touched take deep colours; barberry, yielding a pleasantly acid fruit; the wayfaring tree; not even forgetting the elder, but putting it at the outside, because, though flowering, the scent is heavy, and because the elder was believed of old time to possess some of the virtue now attributed to the blue gum, and to neutralise malaria by its own odour. For colour add the wild broom and some furze. Those who have seen broom in full flower, golden to the tip of every slender bough, cannot need any persuasion, surely, to introduce it. Furze is specked with yellow when the skies are dark and the storms sweep around, besides its prime display. Let wild clematis climb wherever it will. Then laurels may come after these, put somewhere by themselves, with their thick changeless leaves, unpleasant to the touch; no one ever gathers a spray. Rhododendrons it is unkind to attack, for in themselves they afford a rich flower. It is not the rhododendron, but the abuse of it, which must be protested against. Whether the soil suits or not--and, for the most part, it does not suit--rhododendrons are thrust in everywhere. Just walk in amongst them--behind the show--and look at the spindly, crooked stems, straggling how they may, and then look at the earth under them, where not a weed even will grow. The rhododendron is admirable in its place, but it is often overdone and a failure, and has no right to exclude those shrubs that are fitter. Most of the foreign shrubs about these semi-country seats look exactly like the stiff and painted little wooden trees that are sold for children's toys, and, like the toys, are the same colour all the year round. Now, if you enter a copse in spring the eye is delighted with cowslips on the banks where the sunlight comes, with blue-bells, or earlier with anemones and violets, while later the ferns rise. But enter the semi-parks of the semi-country seat, with its affected assumption of countryness, and there is not one of these. The fern is actually purposely eradicated--just think! Purposely! Though indeed they would not grow, one would think, under rhododendrons and laurels, cold-blooded laurels. They will grow under hawthorn, ash, or beside the bramble bushes. If there chance to be a little pond or "fountain," there is no such thing as a reed, or a flag, or a rush. How the rushes would be hastily hauled out and hurled away with execrations! Besides the greater beauty of English trees, shrubs, and plants, they also attract the birds, without which the grandest plantation is a vacancy, and another interest, too, arises from watching the progress of their growth and the advance of the season. Our own trees and shrubs literally keep pace with the stars which shine in our northern skies. An astronomical floral almanack might almost be constructed, showing how, as the constellations marched on by night, the buds and leaves and flowers appeared by day. The lower that brilliant Sirius sinks in the western sky after ruling the winter heavens, and the higher that red Arcturus rises, so the buds thicken, open, and bloom. When the Pleiades begin to rise in the early evening, the leaves are turning colour, and the seed vessels of the flowers take the place of the petals. The coincidences of floral and bird life, and of these with the movements of the heavens, impart a sense of breadth to their observation. It is not only the violet or the anemone, there are the birds coming from immense distances to enjoy the summer with us; there are the stars appearing in succession, so that the most distant of objects seems brought into connection with the nearest, and the world is made one. The sharp distinction, the line artificially drawn between things, quite disappears when they are thus associated. Birds, as just remarked, are attracted by our own trees and shrubs. Oaks are favourites with rooks and wood-pigeons; blackbirds whistle in them in spring; if there is a pheasant about in autumn he is sure to come under the oak; jays visit them. Elms are resorted to by most of the larger birds. Ash plantations attract wood-pigeons and turtle-doves. Thrushes are fond of the ash, and sing much on its boughs. The beech is the woodpecker's tree so soon as it grows old--birch one of the missel-thrush's. In blackthorn the long-tailed tit builds the domed nest every one admires. Under the cover of brambles white-throats build. Nightingales love hawthorn, and so does every bird. Plant hawthorn, and almost every bird will come to it, from the wood-pigeon down to the wren. Do not clear away the fallen branches and brown leaves, sweeping the plantation as if it were the floor of a ballroom, for it is just the tangle and the wilderness that brings the birds, and they like the disarray. If evergreens are wanted, there are the yew, the box, and holly--all three well sanctioned by old custom. Thrushes will come for the yew berries, and birds are fond of building in the thick cover of high box hedges. Notwithstanding the prickly leaves, they slip in and out of the holly easily. A few bunches of rushes and sedges, with some weeds and aquatic grasses, allowed to grow about a pond, will presently bring moorhens. Bare stones--perhaps concrete--will bring nothing. If a bough falls into the water, let it stay; sparrows will perch on it to drink. If a sandy drinking-place can be made for them the number of birds that will come in the course of the day will be surprising. Kind-hearted people, when winter is approaching, should have two posts sunk in their grounds, with planks across at the top; a raised platform with the edges projecting beyond the posts, so that cats cannot climb up, and of course higher than a cat can spring. The crumbs cast out upon this platform would gather crowds of birds; they will come to feel at home, and in spring time will return to build and sing. TO BRIGHTON The smooth express to Brighton has scarcely, as it seems, left the metropolis when the banks of the railway become coloured with wild flowers. Seen for a moment in swiftly passing, they border the line like a continuous garden. Driven from the fields by plough and hoe, cast out from the pleasure-grounds of modern houses, pulled up and hurled over the wall to wither as accursed things, they have taken refuge on the embankment and the cutting. There they can flourish and ripen their seeds, little harassed even by the scythe and never by grazing cattle. So it happens that, extremes meeting, the wild flower, with its old-world associations, often grows most freely within a few feet of the wheels of the locomotive. Purple heathbells gleam from shrub-like bunches dotted along the slope; purple knapweeds lower down in the grass; blue scabious, yellow hawkweeds where the soil is thinner, and harebells on the very summit; these are but a few upon which the eye lights while gliding by. Glossy thistledown, heedless whither it goes, comes in at the open window. Between thickets of broom there is a glimpse down into a meadow shadowed by the trees of a wood. It is bordered with the cool green of brake fern, from which a rabbit has come forth to feed, and a pheasant strolls along with a mind, perhaps, to the barley yonder. Or a foxglove lifts its purple spire; or woodbine crowns the bushes. The sickle has gone over, and the poppies which grew so thick a while ago in the corn no longer glow like a scarlet cloak thrown on the ground. But red spots in waste places and by the ways are where they have escaped the steel. A wood-pigeon keeps pace with the train--his vigorous pinions can race against an engine, but cannot elude the hawk. He stops presently among the trees. How pleasant it is from the height of the embankment to look down upon the tops of the oaks! The stubbles stretch away, crossed with bands of green roots where the partridges are hiding. Among flags and weeds the moorhens feed fearlessly as we roll over the stream: then comes a cutting, and more heath and hawkweed, harebell, and bramble bushes red with unripe berries. Flowers grow high up the sides of the quarries; flowers cling to the dry, crumbling chalk of the cliff-like cutting; flowers bloom on the verge above, against the line of the sky, and over the dark arch of the tunnel. This, it is true, is summer; but it is the same in spring. Before a dandelion has shown in the meadow, the banks of the railway are yellow with coltsfoot. After a time the gorse flowers everywhere along them; but the golden broom overtops all, perfect thickets of broom glowing in the sunlight. Presently the copses are azure with bluebells, among which the brake is thrusting itself up; others, again, are red with ragged robins, and the fields adjacent fill the eye with the gaudy glare of yellow charlock. The note of the cuckoo sounds above the rushing of the train, and the larks may be seen, if not heard, rising high over the wheat. Some birds, indeed, find the bushes by the railway the quietest place in which to build their nests. Butcher-birds or shrikes are frequently found on the telegraph wires; from that elevation they pounce down on their prey, and return again to the wire. There were two pairs of shrikes using the telegraph wires for this purpose one spring only a short distance beyond noisy Clapham Junction. Another pair came back several seasons to a particular part of the wires, near a bridge, and I have seen a hawk perched on the wire equally near London. The haze hangs over the wide, dark plain, which, soon after passing Redhill, stretches away on the right. It seems to us in the train to extend from the foot of a great bluff there to the first rampart of the still distant South Downs. In the evening that haze will be changed to a flood of purple light veiling the horizon. Fitful glances at the newspaper or the novel pass the time; but now I can read no longer, for I know, without any marks or tangible evidence, that the hills are drawing near. There is always hope in the hills. The dust of London fills the eyes and blurs the vision; but it penetrates deeper than that. There is a dust that chokes the spirit, and it is this that makes the streets so long, the stones so stony, the desk so wooden; the very rustiness of the iron railings about the offices sets the teeth on edge, the sooty blackened walls (yet without shadow) thrust back the sympathies which are ever trying to cling to the inanimate things around us. A breeze comes in at the carriage window--a wild puff, disturbing the heated stillness of the summer day. It is easy to tell where that came from--silently the Downs have stolen into sight. So easy is the outline of the ridge, so broad and flowing are the slopes, that those who have not mounted them cannot grasp the idea of their real height and steepness. The copse upon the summit yonder looks but a short stroll distant; how much you would be deceived did you attempt to walk thither! The ascent here in front seems nothing, but you must rest before you have reached a third of the way up. Ditchling Beacon there, on the left, is the very highest above the sea of the whole mighty range, but so great is the mass of the hill that the glance does not realise it. Hope dwells there, somewhere, mayhap, in the breeze, in the sward, or the pale cups of the harebells. Now, having gazed at these, we can lean back on the cushions and wait patiently for the sea. There is nothing else, except the noble sycamores on the left hand just before the train draws into the station. The clean dry brick pavements are scarcely less crowded than those of London, but as you drive through the town, now and then there is a glimpse of a greenish mist afar off between the houses. The green mist thickens in one spot almost at the horizon; or is it the dark nebulous sails of a vessel? Then the foam suddenly appears close at hand--a white streak seems to run from house to house, reflecting the sunlight: and this is Brighton. "How different the sea looks away from the pier!" It is a new pleasure to those who have been full of gaiety to see, for once, the sea itself. Westwards, a mile beyond Hove, beyond the coastguard cottages, turn aside from the road, and go up on the rough path along the ridge of shingle. The hills are away on the right, the sea on the left; the yards of the ships in the basin slant across the sky in front. With a quick, sudden heave the summer sea, calm and gleaming, runs a little way up the side of the groyne, and again retires. There is scarce a gurgle or a bubble, but the solid timbers are polished and smooth where the storms have worn them with pebbles. From a grassy spot ahead a bird rises, marked with white, and another follows it; they are wheatears; they frequent the land by the low beach in the autumn. A shrill but feeble pipe is the cry of the sandpiper, disturbed on his moist feeding-ground. Among the stones by the waste places there are pale-green wrinkled leaves, and the large yellow petals of the sea-poppy. The bright colour is pleasant, but it is a flower best left ungathered, for its odour is not sweet. On the wiry sward the light pink of the sea-daisies (or thrift) is dotted here and there: of these gather as you will. The presence even of such simple flowers, of such well-known birds, distinguishes the solitary from the trodden beach. The pier is in view, but the sea is different here. Drive eastwards along the cliffs to the rough steps cut down to the beach, descend to the shingle, and stroll along the shore to Rottingdean. The buttresses of chalk shut out the town if you go to them, and rest near the large pebbles heaped at the foot. There is nothing but the white cliff, the green sea, the sky, and the slow ships that scarcely stir. In the spring, a starling comes to his nest in a cleft of the cliff above; he shoots over from the dizzy edge, spreads his wings, borne up by the ascending air, and in an instant is landed in his cave. On the sward above, in the autumn, the yellow lip of the toad-flax, spotted with orange, peers from the grass as you rest and gaze--how far?--out upon the glorious plain. Or go up on the hill by the race-course, the highest part near the sea, and sit down there on the turf. If the west or south wind blow ever so slightly the low roar of the surge floats up, mingling with the rustle of the corn stacked in shocks on the slope. There inhale unrestrained the breeze, the sunlight, and the subtle essence which emanates from the ocean. For the loneliest of places are on the borders of a gay crowd, and thus in Brighton--the by-name for all that is crowded and London-like--it is possible to dream on the sward and on the shore. In the midst, too, of this most modern of cities, with its swift, luxurious service of Pullman cars, its piers, and social pleasures, there exists a collection which, in a few strokes, as it were, sketches the ways and habits and thoughts of old rural England. It is not easy to realise in these days of quick transit and still quicker communication that old England was mostly rural. There were towns, of course, seventy years ago, but even the towns were penetrated with what, for want of a better word, may be called country sentiment. Just the reverse is now the case; the most distant hamlet which the wanderer in his autumn ramblings may visit, is now more or less permeated with the feelings and sentiment of the city. No written history has preserved the daily life of the men who ploughed the Weald behind the hills there, or tended the sheep on the Downs, before our beautiful land was crossed with iron roads; while news, even from the field of Waterloo, had to travel slowly. And, after all, written history is but words, and words are not tangible. But in this collection of old English jugs, and mugs, and bowls, and cups, and so forth, exhibited in the Museum, there is the real presentment of old rural England. Feeble pottery has ever borne the impress of man more vividly than marble. From these they quenched their thirst, over these they laughed and joked, and gossiped, and sang old hunting songs till the rafters rang, and the dogs under the table got up and barked. Cannot you see them? The stubbles are ready now once more for the sportsmen. With long-barrelled flint-lock guns they ranged over that wonderful map of the land which lies spread out at your feet as you look down from the Dyke. There are already yellowing leaves; they will be brown after a while, and the covers will be ready once more for the visit of the hounds. The toast upon this mug would be very gladly drunk by the agriculturist of to-day in his silk hat and black coat. It is just what he has been wishing these many seasons. "Here's to thee, mine honest friend, Wishing these hard times to mend." Hard times, then, are nothing new. "It is good ale," is the inscription on another jug; that jug would be very welcome if so filled in many a field this very day. "Better luck still" is a jug motto which every one who reads it will secretly respond to. Cock-fighting has gone by, but we are even more than ever on the side of fair play, and in that sense can endorse the motto, "May the best cock win." A cup desires that fate should give "Money to him who has spirit to use it, And life to him who has courage to lose it." A mug is moderate of wishes and somewhat cynical:-- "A little health, a little wealth, A little house, and freedom; And at the end a little friend, And little cause to need him." The toper, if he drank too deep, sometimes found a frog or newt at the bottom (in china)--a hint not to be too greedy. There seem to have been sad dogs about in those days from the picture on this piece--one sniffing regretfully at the bunghole of an empty barrel:-- "This cask when stored with gin I loved to taste, But now a smell, alas! must break my fast." Upon a cup a somewhat Chinese arrangement of words is found:-- More beer score Clarke for my the his do trust pay sent I I must has shall if you maltster what for and the These parallel columns can be deciphered by beginning at the last word, "the," on the right hand, and reading up. With rude and sometimes grim humour our forefathers seem to have been delighted. The teapots of our great grandmothers are even more amusingly inscribed and illustrated. At Gretna Green the blacksmith is performing a "Red-Hot Marriage," using his anvil for the altar. "Oh! Mr. Blacksmith, ease our pains, And tie us fast in wedlock's chains." The china decorated with vessels and alluding to naval matters shows how popular was the navy, and how deeply everything concerning Nelson's men had sunk into the minds of the people. Some of the line of battleships here represented are most cleverly executed--every sail and rope and gun brought out with a clearness which the best draughtsman could hardly excel. It is a little hard, however, to preserve the time-honoured imputation upon Jack's constancy in this way on a jug:-- "A sailor's life's a pleasant life, He freely roams from shore to shore; In every port he finds a wife-- What can a sailor wish for more?" Some enamoured potter having produced a masterpiece as a present to his lady destroyed the design, so that the service he gave her might be unique. After gazing at these curious old pieces, with dates of 1754, 1728, and so forth, the mind becomes attuned to such times, and the jug with the inscription, "Claret, 1652," seems quite an easy and natural transition. From the Brighton of to-day it is centuries back to 1754; but from 1754 to 1652 is but a year or two. And after studying these shelves, and getting, as it were, so deep down in the past, it is with a kind of Rip Van Winkle feeling that you enter again into the sunshine of the day. The fair upon the beach does not seem quite real for a few minutes. Before the autumn is too far advanced and the skies are uncertain, a few hours should be given to that massive Down which fronts the traveller from London, Ditchling Beacon, the highest above the sea-level. It is easy of access, the train carries you to Hassock's Gate--the station is almost in a copse--and an omnibus runs from it to a comfortable inn in the centre of Ditchling village. Thence to the Down itself the road is straight and the walk no longer than is always welcome after riding. After leaving the cottages and gardens, the road soon becomes enclosed with hedges and trees, a mere country lane; and how pleasant are the trees after the bare shore and barren sea! The hand of autumn has browned the oaks, and has passed over the hedge, reddening the haws. The north wind rustles the dry hollow stalks of plants upon the mound, and there is a sense of hardihood in the touch of its breath. The light is brown, for a vapour conceals the sun--it is not like a cloud, for it has no end or outline, and it is high above where the summer blue was lately. Or is it the buff leaves, the grey stalks, the dun grasses, the ripe fruit, the mist which hides the distance that makes the day so brown? But the ditches below are yet green with brooklime and rushes. By a gateway stands a tall campanula or bell-flower, two feet high or nearly, with great bells of blue. A passing shepherd, without his sheep, but walking with his crook as a staff, stays and turns a brown face towards me when I ask him the way. He points with his iron crook at a narrow line which winds up the Down by some chalk-pits; it is a footpath from the corner of the road. Just by the corner the hedge is grey with silky flocks of clematis; the hawthorn is hidden by it. Near by there is a bush, made up of branches from five different shrubs and plants. First hazel, from which the yellow leaves are fast dropping; among this dogwood, with leaves darkening; between these a bramble bearing berries, some red and some ripe, and yet a pink flower or two left. Thrusting itself into the tangle, long woody bines of bittersweet hang their clusters of red berries, and above and over all the hoary clematis spreads its beard, whitening to meet the winter. These five are all intermixed and bound up together, flourishing in a mass; nuts and edible berries, semi-poisonous fruit, flowers, creepers; and hazel, with markings under its outer bark like a gun-barrel. This is the last of the plain. Now every step exposes the climber to the force of the unchecked wind. The harebells swing before it, the bennets whistle, but the sward springs to the foot, and the heart grows lighter as the height increases. The ancient hill is alone with the wind. The broad summit is left to scattered furze and fern cowering under its shelter. A sunken fosse and earthwork have slipped together. So lowly are they now after these fourteen hundred years that in places the long rough grass covers and conceals them altogether. Down in the hollow the breeze does not come, and the bennets do not whistle, yet gazing upwards at the vapour in the sky I fancy I can hear the mass, as it were, of the wind going over. Standing presently at the edge of the steep descent looking into the Weald, it seems as if the mighty blast rising from that vast plain and glancing up the slope like an arrow from a tree could lift me up and bear me as it bears a hawk with outspread wings. A mist which does not roll along or move is drawn across the immense stage below like a curtain. There is indeed, a brown wood beneath; but nothing more is visible. The plain is the vaster for its vague uncertainty. From the north comes down the wind, out of the brown autumn light, from the woods below and twenty miles of stubble. Its stratum and current is eight hundred feet deep. Against my chest, coming up from the plough down there (the old plough, with the shaft moving on a framework with wheels), it hurls itself against the green ramparts, and bounds up savagely at delay. The ears are filled with a continuous sense of something rushing past; the shoulders go back square; an iron-like feeling enters into the sinews. The air goes through my coat as if it were gauze, and strokes the skin like a brush. The tide of the wind, like the tide of the sea, swirls about, and its cold push at the first causes a lifting feeling in the chest--a gulp and pant--as if it were too keen and strong to be borne. Then the blood meets it, and every fibre and nerve is filled with new vigour. I cannot drink enough of it. This is the north wind. High as is the hill, there are larks yonder singing higher still, suspended in the brown light. Turning away at last and tracing the fosse, there is at the point where it is deepest and where there is some trifling shelter, a flat hawthorn bush. It has grown as flat as a hurdle, as if trained espalierwise or against a wall--the effect, no doubt, of the winds. Into and between its gnarled branches, dry and leafless, furze boughs have been woven in and out, so as to form a shield against the breeze. On the lee of this natural hurdle there are black charcoal fragments and ashes, where a fire has burnt itself out; the stick still leans over on which was hung the vessel used at this wild bivouac. Descending again by the footpath, the spur of the hill yonder looks larger and steeper and more ponderous in the mist; it seems higher than this, a not unusual appearance when the difference in altitude is not very great. The level we are on seems to us beneath the level in the distance, as the future is higher than the present. In the hedge or scattered bushes, half-way down by the chalk-pit, there grows a spreading shrub--the wayfaring tree--bearing large, broad, downy leaves and clusters of berries, some red and some black, flattened at their sides. There are nuts, too, here, and large sloes or wild bullace. This Ditchling Beacon is, I think, the nearest and the most accessible of the southern Alps from London; it is so near it may almost be said to be in the environs of the capital. But it is alone with the wind. THE SOUTHDOWN SHEPHERD The shepherd came down the hill carrying his greatcoat slung at his back upon his crook, and balanced by the long handle projecting in front. He was very ready and pleased to show his crook, which, however, was not so symmetrical in shape as those which are represented upon canvas. Nor was the handle straight; it was a rough stick--the first, evidently, that had come to hand. As there were no hedges or copses near his walks, he had to be content with this bent wand till he could get a better. The iron crook itself he said was made by a blacksmith in a village below. A good crook was often made from the barrel of an old single-barrel gun, such as in their decadence are turned over to the bird-keepers. About a foot of the barrel being sawn off at the muzzle end, there was a tube at once to fit the staff into, while the crook was formed by hammering the tough metal into a curve upon the anvil. So the gun--the very symbol of destruction--was beaten into the pastoral crook, the emblem and implement of peace. These crooks of village workmanship are now subject to competition from the numbers offered for sale at the shops at the market towns, where scores of them are hung up on show, all exactly alike, made to pattern, as if stamped out by machinery. Each village-made crook had an individuality, that of the blacksmith--somewhat rude, perhaps, but distinctive--the hand shown in the iron. While talking, a wheatear flew past, and alighted near the path--a place they frequent. The opinion seems general that wheatears are not so numerous as they used to be. You can always see two or three on the Downs in autumn, but the shepherd said years ago he had heard of one man catching seventy dozen in a day. Perhaps such wholesale catches were the cause of the comparative deficiency at the present day, not only by actual diminution of numbers, but in partially diverting the stream of migration. Tradition is very strong in birds (and all animated creatures); they return annually in the face of terrible destruction, and the individuals do not seem to comprehend the danger. But by degrees the race at large becomes aware of and acknowledges the mistake, and slowly the original tracks are deserted. This is the case with water-fowl, and even, some think, with sea-fish. There was not so much game on the part of the hills he frequented as he had known when he was young, and with the decrease of the game the foxes had become less numerous. There was less cover as the furze was ploughed up. It paid, of course, better to plough it up, and as much as an additional two hundred acres on a single farm had been brought under the plough in his time. Partridges had much decreased, but there were still plenty of hares: he had known the harriers sometimes kill two dozen a day. Plenty of rabbits still remained in places. The foxes' earths were in their burrows or sometimes under a hollow tree, and when the word was sent round the shepherds stopped them for the hunt very early in the morning. Foxes used to be almost thick. He had seen as many as six (doubtless the vixen and cubs) sunning themselves on the cliffs at Beachy Head, lying on ledges before their inaccessible breeding-places, in the face of the chalk. At present he did not think there were more than two there. They ascended and descended the cliff with ease, though not, of course, the straight wall or precipice. He had known them fall over and be dashed to pieces, as when fighting on the edge, or in winter by the snow giving way under them. As the snow came drifting along the summit of the Down it gradually formed a projecting eave or cornice, projecting the length of the arm, and frozen. Something like this may occasionally be seen on houses when the partially melted snow has frozen again before it could quite slide off. Walking on this at night, when the whole ground was white with snow, and no part could be distinguished, the weight of the fox as he passed a weak place caused it to give way, and he could not save himself. Last winter he had had two lambs, each a month old, killed by a fox which ate the heads and left the bodies; the fox always eating the head first, severing it, whether of a hare, rabbit, duck, or the tender lamb, and "covering"--digging a hole and burying--that which he cannot finish. To the buried carcase the fox returns the next night before he kills again. His dog was a cross with a collie: the old sheep-dogs were shaggier and darker. Most of the sheep-dogs now used were crossed with the collie, either with Scotch or French, and were very fast--too fast in some respects. He was careful not to send them much after the flock, especially after feeding, when, in his own words, the sheep had "best walk slow then, like folk"--like human beings, who are not to be hastened after a meal. If he wished his dog to fetch the flock, he pointed his arm in the direction he wished the dog to go, and said, "Put her back." Often it was to keep the sheep out of turnips or wheat, there being no fences. But he made it a practice to walk himself on the side where care was needed, so as not to employ the dog unless necessary. There is something almost Australian in the wide expanse of South Down sheepwalks, and in the number of the flocks, to those who have been accustomed to the small sheltered meadows of the vales, where forty or fifty sheep are about the extent of the stock on many farms. The land, too, is rented at colonial prices, but a few shillings per acre, so different from the heavy meadow rents. But, then, the sheep-farmer has to occupy a certain proportion of arable land as well as pasture, and here his heavy losses mainly occur. There is nothing, in fact, in this country so carefully provided against as the possibility of an English farmer becoming wealthy. Much downland is covered with furze; some seems to produce a grass too coarse, so that the rent is really proportional. A sheep to an acre is roughly the allowance. From all directions along the roads the bleating flocks concentrate at the right time upon the hillside where the sheep-fair is held. You can go nowhere in the adjacent town except uphill, and it needs no hand-post to the fair to those who know a farmer when they see him, the stream of folk tender thither so plainly. It rains, as the shepherd said it would; the houses keep off the drift somewhat in the town, but when this shelter is left behind, the sward of the hilltop seems among the clouds. The descending vapours close in the view on every side. The actual field underfoot, the actual site of the fair, is visible, but the surrounding valleys and the Downs beyond them are hidden with vast masses of grey mist. For a moment, perhaps, a portion may lift as the breeze drives it along, and the bold, sweeping curves of a distant hill appear, but immediately the rain falls again and the outline vanishes. The glance can only penetrate a few hundred yards; all beyond that becomes indistinct, and some cattle standing higher up the hill are vague and shadowy. Like a dew, the thin rain deposits a layer of tiny globules on the coat; the grass is white with them hurdles, flakes, everything is as it were the eighth of an inch deep in water. Thus on the hillside, surrounded by the clouds, the fair seems isolated and afar off. A great cart-horse is being trotted out before the little street of booths to make him show his paces; they flourish the first thing at hand--a pole with a red flag at the end--and the huge frightened animal plunges hither and thither in clumsy terror. You must look out for yourself and keep an eye over your shoulder, except among the sheep-pens. There are thousands of sheep, all standing with their heads uphill. At the corner of each pen the shepherd plants his crook upright: some of them have long brown handles, and these are of hazel with the bark on; others are ash, and one of willow. At the corners, too, just outside, the dogs are chained, and, in addition, there is a whole row of dogs fastened to the tent pegs. The majority of the dogs thus collected together from many miles of the Downs are either collies, or show a very decided trace of the collie. One old shepherd, an ancient of the ancients, grey and bent, has spent so many years among his sheep that he has lost all notice and observation--there is no "speculation in his eye" for anything but his sheep. In his blue smock frock, with his brown umbrella, which he has had no time or thought to open, he stands listening, all intent, to the conversation of the gentlemen who are examining his pens. He leads a young restless collie by a chain; the links are polished to a silvery brightness by continual motion; the collie cannot keep still; now he runs one side, now the other, bumping the old man, who is unconscious of everything but the sheep. At the verge of the pens there stand four oxen with their yokes, and the long slender guiding-rod of hazel placed lightly across the necks of the two foremost. They are quite motionless, except their eyes, and the slender rod, so lightly laid across, will remain without falling. After traversing the whole field, if you return you will find them exactly in the same position. Some black cattle are scattered about on the high ground in the mist, which thickens beyond them, and fills up the immense hollow of the valley. In the street of booths there are the roundabouts, the swings, the rifle galleries--like shooting into the mouth of a great trumpet--the shows, the cakes and brown nuts and gingerbread, the ale-barrels in a row, the rude forms and trestle tables; just the same, the very same, we saw at our first fair five-and-twenty years ago, and a hundred miles away. It is just the same this year as last, like the ploughs and hurdles, and the sheep themselves. There is nothing new to tempt the ploughboy's pennies--nothing fresh to stare at. The same thing year after year, and the same sounds--the dismal barrel organs, and brazen instruments, and pipes, wailing, droning, booming. How melancholy the inexpressible noise when the fair is left behind, and the wet vapours are settling and thickening around it! But the melancholy is not in the fair--the ploughboy likes it; it is in ourselves, in the thought that thus, though the years go by, so much of human life remains the same--the same blatant discord, the same monotonous roundabout, the same poor gingerbread. The ploughs are at work, travelling slowly at the ox's pace up and down the hillside. The South Down plough could scarcely have been invented; it must have been put together bit by bit in the slow years--slower than the ox; it is the completed structure of long experience. It is made of many pieces, chiefly wood, fitted and shaped and worked, as it were, together, well seasoned first, built up, like a ship, by cunning of hand. None of these were struck out--a hundred a minute--by irresistible machinery ponderously impressing its will on iron as a seal on wax--a hundred a minute, and all exactly alike. These separate pieces which compose the plough were cut, chosen, and shaped in the wheelwright's workshop, chosen by the eye, guided in its turn by long knowledge of wood, and shaped by the living though hardened hand of man. So complicated a structure could no more have been struck out on paper in a deliberate and single plan than those separate pieces could have been produced by a single blow. There are no machine lines--no lines filed out in iron or cut by the lathe to the draughtsman's design, drawn with straight-edge and ruler on paper. The thing has been put together bit by bit: how many thousand, thousand clods must have been turned in the furrows before the idea arose, and the curve to be given to this or that part grew upon the mind as the branch grows on the tree! There is not a sharp edge or sharp corner in it; it is all bevelled and smoothed and fluted as if it had been patiently carved with a knife, so that, touch it where you will, it handles pleasantly. In these curved lines and smoothness, in this perfect adaptability of means to end, there is the spirit of art showing itself, not with colour or crayon, but working in tangible material substance. The makers of this plough--not the designer--the various makers, who gradually put it together, had many things to consider. The fields where it had to work were, for the most part, on a slope, often thickly strewn with stones which jar and fracture iron. The soil was thin, scarce enough on the upper part to turn a furrow, deepening to nine inches or so at the bottom. So quickly does the rain sink in, and so quickly does it dry, that the teams work in almost every weather, while those in the vale are enforced to idleness. Drain furrows were not needed, nor was it desirable that the ground should be thrown up in "lands," rising in the centre. Oxen were the draught animals, patient enough, but certainly not nimble. The share had to be set for various depths of soil. All these are met by the wheel plough, and in addition it fulfils the indefinite and indefinable condition of handiness. A machine may be apparently perfect, a boat may seem on paper, and examined on principles, the precise build, and yet when the one is set to work and the other floated they may fail. But the wheel plough, having grown up, as it were, out of the soil, fulfils the condition of handiness. This handiness, in fact, embraces a number of minor conditions which can scarcely be reduced to writing, but which constantly occur in practice, and by which the component parts of the plough were doubtless unconsciously suggested to the makers. Each has its proper name. The framework, on wheels in front--the distinctive characteristic of the plough--is called collectively "tacks," and the shafts of the plough rest on it loosely, so that they swing or work almost independently, not unlike a field-gun limbered up. The pillars of the framework have numerous holes, so that the plough can be raised or lowered, that the share may dig deep or shallow. Then there is the "cock-pin," the "road-bat" (a crooked piece of wood), the "sherve-wright" (so pronounced)--shelvewright (?)--the "rist," and spindle, besides, of course, the usual coulter and share. When the oxen arrive at the top of the field, and the first furrow is completed, they stop, well knowing their duty, while the ploughman moves the iron rist, and the spindle which keeps it in position, to the other side, and moves the road-bat so as to push the coulter aside. These operations are done in a minute, and correspond in some degree to turning the rudder of a ship. The object is that the plough, which has been turning the earth one way, shall now (as it is reversed to go downhill) continue to turn it that way. If the change were not effected when the plough was swung round, the furrow would be made opposite. Next he leans heavily on the handles, still standing on the same spot; this lifts the plough, so that it turns easily as if on a pivot. Then the oxen "jack round"--that is, walk round--so as to face downhill, the framework in front turning like the fore-wheels of a carriage. So soon as they face downhill and the plough is turned, they commence work and make the second furrow side by side with the first. The same operation is repeated at the bottom, and thus the plough travels straight up and down, always turning the furrow the same way, instead of, as in the valleys, making a short circuit at each end, and throwing the earth in opposite directions. The result is a perfectly level field, which, though not designed for it, must suit the reaping-machine better than the drain furrows and raised "lands" of the valley system. It is somewhat curious that the steam plough, the most remarkable application of machinery to agriculture, in this respect resembles the village-made wheel plough. The plough drawn by steam power in like manner turns the second furrow side by side into the first, always throwing the earth the same way, and leaving the ground level. This is one of its defects on heavy, wet land, as it does not drain the surface. But upon the slopes of the Downs no drains or raised "lands" are needed, and the wheel plough answers perfectly. So perfectly, indeed, does it answer that no iron plough has yet been invented that can beat it, and while the valleys and plains are now almost wholly worked with factory-made ploughs, the South Downs are cultivated with the ploughs made in the villages by the wheelwrights. A wheelwright is generally regularly employed by two or three farms, which keep him in constant work. There is not, perhaps, another home-made implement of old English agriculture left in use; certainly, none at once so curious and interesting, and, when drawn by oxen, so thoroughly characteristic. Under the September sun, flowers may still be found in sheltered places, as at the side of furze, on the highest of the Downs. Wild thyme continues to bloom--the shepherd's thyme--wild mignonette, blue scabious, white dropwort, yellow bedstraw, and the large purple blooms of greater knapweed. Here and there a blue field gentian is still in flower; "eggs and bacon" grow beside the waggon tracks. Grasshoppers hop among the short dry grass; bees and humble-bees are buzzing about, and there are places quite bright with yellow hawkweeds. The furze is everywhere full of finches, troops of them; and there are many more swallows than were flying here a month since. No doubt they are on their way southwards, and stay, as it were, on the edge of the sea while yet the sun shines. As the evening falls the sheep come slowly home to the fold. When the flock is penned some stand panting, and the whole body at each pant moves to and fro lengthways; some press against the flakes till the wood creaks; some paw the dry and crumbling ground (arable), making a hollow in which to lie down. Rooks are fond of the places where sheep have been folded, and perhaps that is one of the causes why they so continually visit certain spots in particular fields to the neglect of the rest. THE BREEZE ON BEACHY HEAD The waves coming round the promontory before the west wind still give the idea of a flowing stream, as they did in Homer's days. Here beneath the cliff, standing where beach and sand meet, it is still; the wind passes six hundred feet overhead. But yonder, every larger wave rolling before the breeze breaks over the rocks; a white line of spray rushes along them, gleaming in the sunshine; for a moment the dark rock-wall disappears, till the spray sinks. The sea seems higher than the spot where I stand, its surface on a higher level--raised like a green mound--as if it could burst in and occupy the space up to the foot of the cliff in a moment. It will not do so, I know; but there is an infinite possibility about the sea; it may do what it is not recorded to have done. It is not to be ordered, it may overleap the bounds human observation has fixed for it. It has a potency unfathomable. There is still something in it not quite grasped and understood--something still to be discovered--a mystery. So the white spray rushes along the low broken wall of rocks, the sun gleams on the flying fragments of the wave, again it sinks and the rhythmic motion holds the mind, as an invisible force holds back the tide. A faith of expectancy, a sense that something may drift up from the unknown, a large belief in the unseen resources of the endless space out yonder, soothes the mind with dreamy hope. The little rules and little experiences, all the petty ways of narrow life, are shut off behind by the ponderous and impassable cliff; as if we had dwelt in the dim light of a cave, but coming out at last to look at the sun, a great stone had fallen and closed the entrance, so that there was no return to the shadow. The impassable precipice shuts off our former selves of yesterday, forcing us to look out over the sea only, or up to the deeper heaven. These breadths draw out the soul; we feel that we have wider thoughts than we knew; the soul has been living, as it were, in a nutshell, all unaware of its own power, and now suddenly finds freedom in the sun and the sky. Straight, as if sawn down from turf to beach, the cliff shuts off the human world, for the sea knows no time and no era; you cannot tell what century it is from the face of the sea. A Roman trireme suddenly rounding the white edge-line of chalk, borne on wind and oar from the Isle of Wight towards the gray castle at Pevensey (already old in olden days), would not seem strange. What wonder could surprise us coming from the wonderful sea? The little rills winding through the sand have made an islet of a detached rock by the beach; limpets cover it, adhering like rivet-heads. In the stillness here, under the roof of the wind so high above, the sound of the sand draining itself is audible. From the cliff blocks of chalk have fallen, leaving hollows as when a knot drops from a beam. They lie crushed together at the base, and on the point of this jagged ridge a wheatear perches. There are ledges three hundred feet above, and from these now and then a jackdaw glides out and returns again to his place, where, when still and with folded wings, he is but a speck of black. A spire of chalk still higher stands out from the wall, but the rains have got behind it and will cut the crevice deeper and deeper into its foundation. Water, too, has carried the soil from under the turf at the summit over the verge, forming brown streaks. Upon the beach lies a piece of timber, part of a wreck; the wood is torn and the fibres rent where it was battered against the dull edge of the rocks. The heat of the sun burns, thrown back by the dazzling chalk; the river of ocean flows ceaselessly, casting the spray over the stones; the unchanged sky is blue. Let us go back and mount the steps at the Gap, and rest on the sward there. I feel that I want the presence of grass. The sky is a softer blue, and the sun genial now the eye and the mind alike are relieved--the one of the strain of too great solitude (not the solitude of the woods), the other of too brilliant and hard a contrast of colours. Touch but the grass and the harmony returns; it is repose after exaltation. A vessel comes round the promontory; it is not a trireme of old Rome, nor the "fair and stately galley" Count Arnaldus hailed with its seamen singing the mystery of the sea. It is but a brig in ballast, high out of the water, black of hull and dingy of sail: still it is a ship, and there is always an interest about a ship. She is so near, running along but just outside the reef, that the deck is visible. Up rises her stern as the billows come fast and roll under; then her bow lifts, and immediately she rolls, and, loosely swaying with the sea, drives along. The slope of the billow now behind her is white with the bubbles of her passage, rising, too, from her rudder. Steering athwart with a widening angle from the land, she is laid to clear the distant point of Dungeness. Next, a steamer glides forth, unseen till she passed the cliff; and thus each vessel that comes from the westward has the charm of the unexpected. Eastward there is many a sail working slowly into the wind, and as they approach, talking in the language of flags with the watch on the summit of the Head. Once now and then the great _Orient_ pauses on her outward route to Australia, slowing her engines: the immense length of her hull contains every adjunct of modern life; science, skill, and civilisation are there. She starts, and is lost sight of round the cliff, gone straight away for the very ends of the world. The incident is forgotten, when one morning, as you turn over the newspaper, there is the _Orient_ announced to start again. It is like a tale of enchantment; it seems but yesterday that the Head hid her from view; you have scarcely moved, attending to the daily routine of life, and scarce recognise that time has passed at all. In so few hours has the earth been encompassed. The sea-gulls as they settle on the surface ride high out of the water, like the mediæval caravals, with their sterns almost as tall as the masts. Their unconcerned flight, with crooked wings unbent, as if it were no matter to them whether they flew or floated, in its peculiar jerking motion somewhat reminds one of the lapwing--the heron has it, too, a little--as if aquatic or water-side birds had a common and distinct action of the wing. Sometimes a porpoise comes along, but just beyond the reef; looking down on him from the verge of the cliff, his course can be watched. His dark body, wet and oily, appears on the surface for two seconds; and then, throwing up his tail like the fluke of an anchor, down he goes. Now look forward, along the waves, some fifty yards or so, and he will come up, the sunshine gleaming on the water as it runs off his back, to again dive, and reappear after a similar interval. Even when the eye can no longer distinguish the form, the spot where he rises is visible, from the slight change in the surface. The hill receding in hollows leaves a narrow plain between the foot of the sward and the cliff; it is ploughed, and the teams come to the footpath which follows the edge; and thus those who plough the sea and those who plough the land look upon each other. The one sees the vessel change her tack, the other notes the plough turning at the end of the furrow. Bramble bushes project over the dangerous wall of chalk, and grasses fill up the interstices, a hedge suspended in air; but be careful not to reach too far for the blackberries. The green sea is on the one hand, the yellow stubble on the other. The porpoise dives along beneath, the sheep graze above. Green seaweed lines the reef over which the white spray flies, blue lucerne dots the field. The pebbles of the beach seen from the height mingle in a faint blue tint, as if the distance ground them into coloured sand. Leaving the footpath now, and crossing the stubble to "France," as the wide open hollow in the down is called by the shepherds, it is no easy matter in dry summer weather to climb the steep turf to the furze line above. Dry grass is as slippery as if it were hair, and the sheep have fed it too close for a grip of the hand. Under the furze (still far from the summit) they have worn a path--a narrow ledge, cut by their cloven feet--through the sward. It is time to rest; and already, looking back, the sea has extended to an indefinite horizon. This climb of a few hundred feet opens a view of so many miles more. But the ships lose their individuality and human character; they are so far, so very far, away, they do not take hold of the sympathies; they seem like sketches--cunningly executed, but only sketches--on the immense canvas of the ocean. There is something unreal about them. On a calm day, when the surface is smooth as if the brimming ocean had been straked--the rod passed across the top of the measure, thrusting off the irregularities of wave; when the distant green from long simmering under the sun becomes pale; when the sky, without cloud, but with some slight haze in it, likewise loses its hue, and the two so commingle in the pallor of heat that they cannot be separated--then the still ships appear suspended in space. They are as much held from above as upborne from beneath. They are motionless, midway in space--whether it is sea or air is not to be known. They neither float nor fly; they are suspended. There is no force in the flat sail, the mast is lifeless, the hull without impetus. For hours they linger, changeless as the constellations, still, silent, motionless, phantom vessels on a void sea. Another climb up from the sheep path, and it is not far then to the terrible edge of that tremendous cliff which rises straighter than a ship's side out of the sea, six hundred feet above the detached rock below, where the limpets cling like rivet heads, and the sand rills run around it. But it is not possible to look down to it--the glance of necessity falls outwards, as a raindrop from the eaves is deflected by the wind, because it _is_ the edge where the mould crumbles; the rootlets of the grass are exposed; the chalk is about to break away in flakes. You cannot lean over as over a parapet, lest such a flake should detach itself--lest a mere trifle should begin to fall, awakening a dread and dormant inclination to slide and finally plunge like it. Stand back; the sea there goes out and out, to the left and to the right, and how far is it to the blue overhead? The eye must stay here a long period, and drink in these distances, before it can adjust the measure, and know exactly what it sees. The vastness conceals itself, giving us no landmark or milestone. The fleck of cloud yonder, does it part it in two, or is it but a third of the way? The world is an immense cauldron, the ocean fills it, and we are merely on the rim--this narrow land is but a ribbon to the limitlessness yonder. The wind rushes out upon it with wild joy; springing from the edge of the earth, it leaps out over the ocean. Let us go back a few steps and recline on the warm dry turf. It is pleasant to look back upon the green slope and the hollows and narrow ridges, with sheep and stubble and some low hedges, and oxen, and that old, old sloth--the plough--creeping in his path. The sun is bright on the stubble and the corners of furze; there are bees humming yonder, no doubt, and flowers, and hares crouching--the dew dried from around them long since, and waiting for it to fall again; partridges, too, corn-ricks, and the roof of a farmhouse by them. Lit with sunlight are the fields, warm autumn garnering all that is dear to the heart of man, blue heaven above--how sweet the wind comes from these!--the sweeter for the knowledge of the profound abyss behind. Here, reclining on the grass--the verge of the cliff rising a little, shuts out the actual sea--the glance goes forth into the hollow unsupported. It is sweeter towards the corn-ricks, and yet the mind will not be satisfied, but ever turns to the unknown. The edge and the abyss recall us; the boundless plain, for it appears solid as the waves are levelled by distance, demands the gaze. But with use it becomes easier, and the eye labours less. There is a promontory standing out from the main wall, whence you can see the side of the cliff, getting a flank view, as from a tower. The jackdaws occasionally floating out from the ledge are as mere specks from above, as they were from below. The reef running out from the beach, though now covered by the tide, is visible as you look down on it through the water; the seaweed, which lay matted and half dry on the rocks, is now under the wave. Boats have come round, and are beached; how helplessly little they seem beneath the cliff by the sea! On returning homewards towards Eastbourne stay awhile by the tumulus on the slope. There are others hidden among the furze; butterflies flutter over them, and the bees hum round by day; by night the nighthawk passes, coming up from the fields and even skirting the sheds and houses below. The rains beat on them, and the storm drives the dead leaves over their low green domes; the waves boom on the shore far down. How many times has the morning star shone yonder in the East? All the mystery of the sun and of the stars centres around these lowly mounds. But the glory of these glorious Downs is the breeze. The air in the valleys immediately beneath them is pure and pleasant; but the least climb, even a hundred feet, puts you on a plane with the atmosphere itself, uninterrupted by so much as the tree-tops. It is air without admixture. If it comes from the south, the waves refine it; if inland, the wheat and flowers and grass distil it. The great headland and the whole rib of the promontory is wind-swept and washed with air; the billows of the atmosphere roll over it. The sun searches out every crevice amongst the grass, nor is there the smallest fragment of surface which is not sweetened by air and light. Underneath, the chalk itself is pure, and the turf thus washed by wind and rain, sun-dried and dew-scented, is a couch prepared with thyme to rest on. Discover some excuse to be up there always, to search for stray mushrooms--they will be stray, for the crop is gathered extremely early in the morning--or to make a list of flowers and grasses; to do anything, and, if not, go always without any pretext. Lands of gold have been found, and lands of spices and precious merchandise; but this is the land of health. There is the sea below to bathe in, the air of the sky up hither to breathe, the sun to infuse the invisible magnetism of his beams. These are the three potent medicines of nature, and they are medicines that by degrees strengthen not only the body but the unquiet mind. It is not necessary to always look out over the sea. By strolling along the slopes of the ridge a little way inland there is another scene where hills roll on after hills till the last and largest hides those that succeed behind it. Vast cloud-shadows darken one, and lift their veil from another; like the sea, their tint varies with the hue of the sky over them. Deep narrow valleys--lanes in the hills--draw the footsteps downwards into their solitude, but there is always the delicious air, turn whither you will, and there is always the grass, the touch of which refreshes. Though not in sight, it is pleasant to know that the sea is close at hand, and that you have only to mount to the ridge to view it. At sunset the curves of the shore westward are filled with a luminous mist. Or if it should be calm, and you should like to look at the massive headland from the level of the sea, row out a mile from the beach. Eastwards a bank of red vapour shuts in the sea, the wavelets--no larger than those raised by the oar--on that side are purple as if wine had been spilt upon them, but westwards the ripples shimmer with palest gold. The sun sinks behind the summit of the Downs, and slender streaks of purple are drawn along above them. A shadow comes forth from the cliff; a duskiness dwells on the water; something tempts the eye upwards, and near the zenith there is a star. Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. Edinburgh & London [Transcriber's note: The inconsistent hyphenation of the original has been retained in this etext.] 
43200	----	[Transcriber's Note: Italicized text indicated by underscores. 12-3/4 represents whole and fractional parts of numbers.] CORNELL NATURE-STUDY LEAFLETS BEING A SELECTION, WITH REVISION, FROM THE TEACHERS' LEAFLETS, HOME NATURE-STUDY LESSONS, JUNIOR NATURALIST MONTHLIES AND OTHER PUBLICATIONS FROM THE COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE, CORNELL UNIVERSITY, ITHACA, N.Y., 1896-1904 STATE OF NEW YORK--DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE NATURE-STUDY BULLETIN NO. 1 [Illustration] ALBANY J. B. LYON COMPANY, PRINTERS 1904 LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL. COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE, CORNELL UNIVERSITY, ITHACA, N. Y. Hon. C. A. WIETING, _Commissioner of Agriculture_, Albany, N. Y.: SIR.--I submit herewith as a part of the Annual Report of 1903 a number of the nature-study publications for reprinting. Most of these publications are out of print and the call for them still continues. These publications have practically all arisen under your supervision, and under the directorship of Professor I. P. Roberts. Nature-study work should begin in the primary grades. It is a fundamental educational process, because it begins with the concrete and simple, develops the power of observation, relates the child to its environment, develops sympathy for the common and the near-at-hand. By the time the child has arrived at the fifth or sixth grade he should be well prepared for specific work in the modern environmental geography, in the industries, or in other exacter common-life subjects. Nature-study is a necessary foundation for the best work in biology, physiography and agriculture. Since it is content work, it is also equally important as a preparation in all expression work, as in English, number and reading. In most present-day rural schools it may well continue through the eighth grade; and, if well taught, it may even take the place very profitably of some of the "science" of some of the higher schools. Its particular sphere, however, in a well-developed school, is below the sixth grade, possibly below the fifth. But even if the term nature-study ceases at the fifth or sixth grade, the nature-study method will persist throughout the school course,--the method of dealing first-hand and in their natural setting with objects, phenomena and affairs, and of proceeding from the simple and undissected to the complex and remote. The reader should bear in mind that the College of Agriculture has no organic connection with the public school system of New York State, and that its nature-study work is a propaganda. From first to last the College has been fortunate in having the sympathy, aid, and approval of the State Department of Public Instruction, and now of the new Education Department. The time is now near at hand when nature-study will be adequately recognized in the school system of the State, and then the nature-study work of the College of Agriculture may take new form. In these reprinted leaflets the reader will find many methods of presentation of a great variety of subject-matter. A wide range has purposely been included, in the hope that any interested teacher may find at least one or two leaflets that will be suggestive in his own work. Our own ideas as to what is a valuable leaflet have changed greatly since the work was begun; and it is to be expected that they will continue to change with the progress of the work and the development of the schools. It would be an interesting review if we were to summarize our own experiences with our own work. The leaflet that is most praised by the critics may be the least useful in practice. The greatest danger is that of making the work too complete, too rigid and too formidable. L. H. BAILEY, _Director College of Agriculture._ CONTENTS. PART I. TEACHERS' LEAFLETS. Leaflet. Page. The Schoolhouse 9 L. H. Bailey. I. What is Nature-Study? 11 L. H. Bailey. II. The Nature-Study Movement 21 L. H. Bailey. III. An Appeal to the Teachers of New York State 31 L. H. Bailey. IV. What Is Agricultural Education? 45 L. H. Bailey. V. Suggestions for Nature Study Work 55 Anna Botsford Comstock. VI. A Summer Shower 81 Ralph S. Tarr. VII. A Snow Storm 93 Anna Botsford Comstock. VIII. A Handful of Soil: What It Is 99 Ralph S. Tarr. IX. A Handful of Soil: What It Does 115 L. A. Clinton. X. The Brook 125 J. O. Martin. Introduction by L. H. Bailey. XI. Insect Life of a Brook 135 Mary Rogers Miller. XII. Life in an Aquarium 141 Mary Rogers Miller. XIII. A Study of Fishes 157 H. D. Reed. XIV. The Opening of a Cocoon 167 Mary Rogers Miller. XV. A Talk about Spiders 171 John Henry Comstock. XVI. Life History of the Toad 185 Simon Henry Gage. XVII. Life in a Terrarium 207 Alice I. Kent. XVIII. Directions for Collecting and Preserving Insects 213 Anna Botsford Comstock. XIX. Some Tent-Makers 227 Anna Botsford Comstock. XX. Mosquitoes 237 Mary Rogers Miller. XXI. The Ways of the Ant 243 Anna Botsford Comstock. XXII. The Birds and I 253 L. H. Bailey. XXIII. The Early Birds 261 Louis Agassiz Fuertes. XXIV. The Woodpeckers 269 Anna Botsford Comstock. XXV. The Chickadee 279 Anna Botsford Comstock. XXVI. The White-Breasted Nuthatch 283 Anna Botsford Comstock. XXVII. About Crows 287 Mary Rogers Miller. XXVIII. How a Squash Plant Gets Out of the Seed 291 L. H. Bailey. XXIX. How the Trees Look in Winter 297 L. H. Bailey. XXX. One Way of Drawing Trees in Their Winter Aspects 307 Charles W. Furlong. XXXI. Four Apple Twigs 317 L. H. Bailey. XXXII. The Burst of Spring 327 L. H. Bailey. XXXIII. Evergreens and How They Shed Their Leaves 333 H. P. Gould. XXXIV. The Clovers and Their Kin 349 Anna Botsford Comstock. XXXV. How Plants Live Together 361 L. H. Bailey. XXXVI. Planting a Plant 367 L. H. Bailey. XXXVII. Cuttings and Cuttings 369 L. H. Bailey. XXXVIII. A Children's Garden 379 L. H. Bailey. XXXIX. A Hill of Potatoes 385 I. P. Roberts. XL. The Hepatica 391 Anna Botsford Comstock. XLI. Jack-in-the-Pulpit 395 Anna Botsford Comstock. XLII. Indian Corn 397 Anna Botsford Comstock. XLIII. The Ripened Corn 401 Anna Botsford Comstock. XLIV. The Uses of Food Stored in Seeds 409 Anna Botsford Comstock. XLV. The Life History of a Beet 415 Mary Rogers Miller. XLVI. Pruning 417 Mary Rogers Miller. XLVII. Study of a Tree 423 Anna Botsford Comstock. XLVIII. The Maple in February 431 Anna Botsford Comstock. XLIX. The Red Squirrel or Chickaree 435 Anna Botsford Comstock. L. Improvement of School Grounds 437 John W. Spencer. PART II. CHILDREN'S LEAFLETS. The Child's Realm 451 L. H. Bailey. LI. A Snow Storm 453 Alice G. McCloskey. LII. A Plant at School 455 L. H. Bailey. LIII. An Apple Twig and an Apple 467 L. H. Bailey. LIV. Twigs in Late Winter 473 Alice G. McCloskey. LV. Pruning 475 Alice G. McCloskey. LVI. The Hepatica 477 Alice G. McCloskey. LVII. Jack-in-the-Pulpit 479 Alice G. McCloskey. LVIII. Dandelion 481 Alice G. McCloskey and L. H. Bailey. LIX. Maple Trees in Autumn 483 Alice G. McCloskey. LX. A Corn Stalk 485 Alice G. McCloskey. LXI. In the Corn Fields 487 Alice G. McCloskey. LXII. The Alfalfa Plant 489 L. H. Bailey and John W. Spencer. LXIII. The Red Squirrel 495 Alice G. McCloskey. LXIV. Robin 499 L. H. Bailey. LXV. Crows 501 Alice G. McCloskey. LXVI. A Friendly Little Chickadee 503 Alice G. McCloskey. LXVII. The Family of Woodpeckers 505 Alice G. McCloskey. LXVIII. Deserted Birds' Nests 515 Alice G. McCloskey. LXIX. The Poultry Yard: Some Thanksgiving Lessons 517 Alice G. McCloskey and James E. Rice. LXX. Little Hermit Brother 529 Anna Botsford Comstock. LXXI. A Home for Friendly Little Neighbors 537 Alice G. McCloskey. LXXII. Moths and Butterflies 545 Alice G. McCloskey. LXXIII. The Paper Makers 551 Alice G. McCloskey. LXXIV. Some Carpenter Ants and Their Kin 555 Alice G. McCloskey. LXXV. A Garden All Your Own 559 John W. Spencer. LXXVI. The Gardens and the School Grounds 569 John W. Spencer. LXXVII. Something for Young Farmers 573 John W. Spencer. LXXVIII. Bulbs 577 John W. Spencer. LXXIX. A Talk About Bulbs by the Gardener 581 C. E. Hunn. LXXX. Horses 589 Alice G. McCloskey and I. P. Roberts. PART I. TEACHERS' LEAFLETS. PUBLICATIONS DESIGNED TO AID THE TEACHER WITH SUBJECT-MATTER, TO INDICATE THE POINT OF VIEW, AND TO SUGGEST A METHOD OF PRESENTATION. THE SCHOOL HOUSE. BY L. H. BAILEY. In the rural districts, the school must become a social and intellectual centre. It must stand in close relationship with the life and activities of its community. It must not be an institution apart, exotic to the common-day lives; it must teach the common things and put the pupil into sympathetic touch with his own environment. Then every school house will have a voice, and will say: I teach The earth and soil To them that toil, The hill and fen To common men That live right here; The plants that grow, The winds that blow, The streams that run In rain and sun Throughout the year; And then I lead, Thro' wood and mead, Thro' mold and sod, Out unto God With love and cheer. I teach! LEAFLET I. WHAT IS NATURE-STUDY?[1] BY L. H. BAILEY. [1] Paragraphs adapted from Teachers' Leaflet, No. 6, May 1, 1897, and from subsequent publications. [Illustration] Nature-study, as a process, is seeing the things that one looks at, and the drawing of proper conclusions from what one sees. Its purpose is to educate the child in terms of his environment, to the end that his life may be fuller and richer. Nature-study is not the study of a science, as of botany, entomology, geology, and the like. That is, it takes the things at hand and endeavors to understand them, without reference primarily to the systematic order or relationships of the objects. It is informal, as are the objects which one sees. It is entirely divorced from mere definitions, or from formal explanations in books. It is therefore supremely natural. It trains the eye and the mind to see and to comprehend the common things of life; and the result is not directly the acquiring of science but the establishing of a living sympathy with everything that is. The proper objects of nature-study are the things that one oftenest meets. Stones, flowers, twigs, birds, insects, are good and common subjects. The child, or even the high school pupil, is first interested in things that do not need to be analyzed or changed into unusual forms or problems. Therefore, problems of chemistry and of physics are for the most part unsuited to early lessons in nature-study. Moving things, as birds, insects and mammals, interest children most and therefore seem to be the proper objects for nature-study; but it is often difficult to secure such specimens when wanted, especially in liberal quantity, and still more difficult to see the objects in perfectly natural conditions. Plants are more easily had, and are therefore usually more practicable for the purpose, although animals and minerals should by no means be excluded. If the objects to be studied are informal, the methods of teaching should be the same. If nature-study were made a stated part of a rigid curriculum, its purpose might be defeated. One difficulty with our present school methods is the necessary formality of the courses and the hours. Tasks are set, and tasks are always hard. The best way to teach nature-study is, with no hard and fast course laid out, to bring in some object that may be at hand and to set the pupils to looking at it. The pupils do the work,--they see the thing and explain its structure and its meaning. The exercise should not be long, not to exceed fifteen minutes perhaps, and, above all things, the pupil should never look upon it as a "recitation," nor as a means of preparing for "examination." It may come as a rest exercise, whenever the pupils become listless. Ten minutes a day, for one term, of a short, sharp, and spicy observation lesson on plants, for example, is worth more than a whole text-book of botany. The teacher should studiously avoid definitions, and the setting of patterns. The old idea of the model flower is a pernicious one, because it does not exist in nature. The model flower, the complete leaf, and the like, are inferences, and pupils should always begin with things and phenomena, and not with abstract ideas. In other words, the ideas should be suggested by the things, and not the things by the ideas. "Here is a drawing of a model flower," the old method says; "go and find the nearest approach to it." "Go and find me a flower," is the true method, "and let us see what it is." Every child, and every grown person too, for that matter, is interested in nature-study, for it is the natural way of acquiring knowledge. The only difficulty lies in the teaching, for very few teachers have had experience in this informal method of drawing out the observing and reasoning powers of the pupil without the use of text-books. The teacher must first of all feel in natural objects the living interest which it is desired the pupils shall acquire. If the enthusiasm is not catching, better let such teaching alone. Primarily, nature-study, as the writer conceives it, is not knowledge. He would avoid the leaflet that gives nothing but information. Nature-study is not "method." Of necessity each teacher will develop a method; but this method is the need of the teacher, not of the subject. Nature-study is not to be taught for the purpose of making the youth a specialist or a scientist. Now and then a pupil will desire to pursue a science for the sake of the science, and he should be encouraged. But every pupil may be taught to be interested in plants and birds and insects and running brooks, and thereby his life will be the stronger. The crop of scientists will take care of itself. It is said that nature-study teaching is not thorough and therefore is undesirable. Much that is good in teaching has been sacrificed for what we call "thoroughness,"--which in many cases means only a perfunctory drill in mere facts. One cannot teach a pupil to be really interested in any natural object or phenomenon until the pupil sees accurately and reasons correctly. Accuracy is a prime requisite in any good nature-study teaching, for accuracy is truth and it develops power. It is better that a pupil see twenty things accurately, and see them himself, than that he be confined to one thing so long that he detests it. Different subjects demand different methods of teaching. The method of mathematics cannot be applied to dandelions and polliwogs. The first essential in nature-study is actually to see the thing or the phenomenon. It is positive, direct, discriminating, accurate observation. The second essential is to understand why the thing is so, or what it means. The third essential is the desire to know more, and this comes of itself and thereby is unlike much other effort of the schoolroom. The final result should be the development of a keen personal interest in every natural object and phenomenon. Real nature-study cannot pass away. We are children of nature, and we have never appreciated the fact so much as we do now. But the more closely we come into touch with nature, the less do we proclaim the fact abroad. We may hear less about it, but that will be because we are living nearer to it and have ceased to feel the necessity of advertising it. Much that is called nature-study is only diluted and sugar-coated science. This will pass. Some of it is mere sentimentalism. This also will pass. With the changes, the term nature-study may fall into disuse; but the name matters little so long as we hold to the essence. All new things must be unduly emphasized, else they cannot gain a foothold in competition with things that are established. For a day, some new movement is announced in the daily papers, and then, because we do not see the head lines, we think that the movement is dead; but usually when things are heralded they have only just appeared. So long as the sun shines and the fields are green, we shall need to go to nature for our inspiration and our respite; and our need is the greater with every increasing complexity of our lives. All this means that the teacher will need helps. He will need to inform himself before he attempts to inform the pupil. It is not necessary that he become a scientist in order to do this. He goes as far as he knows, and then says to the pupil that he cannot answer the questions that he cannot. This at once raises him in the estimation of the pupil, for the pupil is convinced of his truthfulness, and is made to feel--but how seldom is the sensation!--that knowledge is not the peculiar property of the teacher but is the right of any one who seeks it. Nature-study sets the pupil to investigating for himself. The teacher never needs to apologize for nature. He is teaching merely because he is an older and more experienced pupil than his pupil is. This is the spirit of the teacher in the universities to-day. The best teacher is the one whose pupils the farthest outrun him. In order to help the teacher in the rural schools of New York, we have conceived of a series of leaflets explaining how the common objects can be made interesting to children. Whilst these are intended for the teacher, there is no harm in giving them to the pupil; but the leaflets should never be used as texts from which to make recitations. Now and then, take the children for a ramble in the woods or fields, or go to the brook or lake. Call their attention to the interesting things that you meet--whether you yourself understand them or not--in order to teach them to see and to find some point of sympathy; for every one of them will some day need the solace and the rest which this nature-love can give them. It is not the mere information that is valuable; that may be had by asking someone wiser than they, but the inquiring and sympathetic spirit is one's own. The pupils will find their regular lessons easier to acquire for this respite of ten minutes with a leaf or an insect, and the school-going will come to be less perfunctory. If you must teach drawing, set the picture in a leaflet before the pupils for study, and then substitute the object. If you must teach composition, let the pupils write on what they have seen. After a time, give ten minutes now and then to asking the children what they saw on their way to school. Now, why is the College of Agriculture at Cornell University interesting itself in this work? It is trying to help the farmer, and it begins with the most teachable point--the child. The district school cannot teach technical professional agriculture any more than it can teach law or engineering or any other profession or trade, but it can interest the child in nature and in rural problems, and thereby join his sympathies to the country at the same time that his mind is trained to efficient thinking. The child will teach the parent. The coming generation will see the result. In the interest of humanity and country, we ask for help. How to make the rural school more efficient is one of the most difficult problems before our educators, but the problem is larger than mere courses of study. Social and economic questions are at the bottom of the difficulty, and these questions may be beyond the reach of the educator. A correspondent wrote us the other day that an old teacher in a rural school, who was receiving $20 a month, was underbid 50 cents by one of no experience, and the younger teacher was engaged for $19.50, thus saving the district for the three months' term the sum of $1.50. This is an extreme case, but it illustrates one of the rural school problems. One of the difficulties with the rural district school is the fact that the teachers tend to move to the villages and cities, where there is opportunity to associate with other teachers, where there are libraries, and where the wages are sometimes better. This movement is likely to leave the district school in the hands of younger teachers, and changes are very frequent. To all this there are many exceptions. Many teachers appreciate the advantages of living in the country. There they find compensations for the lack of association. They may reside at home. Some of the best work in our nature-study movement has come from the rural schools. We shall make a special effort to reach the country schools. Yet it is a fact that new movements usually take root in the city schools and gradually spread to the smaller places. This is not the fault of the country teacher; it comes largely from the fact that his time is occupied by so many various duties and that the rural schools do not have the advantage of the personal supervision which the city schools have. _Retrospect and Prospect after five years' work._[2] [2] From Bull. 206, Sixth Report of Extension Work, 1902. To create a larger public sentiment in favor of agriculture, to increase the farmer's respect for his own business,--these are the controlling purposes in the general movement that we are carrying forward under the title of nature-study. It is not by teaching agriculture directly that this movement can be started. The common schools in New York will not teach agriculture to any extent for the present, and the movement, if it is to arouse a public sentiment, must reach beyond the actual farmers themselves. The agricultural status is much more than an affair of mere farming. The first undertaking, as we conceive the problem, is to awaken an interest in the things with which the farmer lives and has to do, for a man is happy only when he is in sympathy with his environment. To teach observation of common things, therefore, has been the fundamental purpose. A name for the movement was necessary. We did not wish to invent a new name or phrase, as it would require too much effort in explanation. Therefore, we chose the current and significant phrase "nature-study," which, while it covers many methods and practices, stands everywhere for the opening of the mind directly to the common phenomena of nature. We have not tried to develop a system of nature-study nor to make a contribution to the pedagogics of the subject. We have merely endeavored, as best we could, to reach a certain specific result,--the enlarging of the agricultural horizon. We have had no pedagogical theories, or, if we have, they have been modified or upset by the actual conditions that have presented themselves. Neither do we contend that our own methods and means have always been the best. We are learning. Yet we are sure that the general results justify all the effort. Theoretical pedagogical ideals can be applied by the good teacher who comes into personal relations with the children, and they are almost certain to work out well. These ideals cannot always be applied, however, with persons who are to be reached by means of correspondence and in a great variety of conditions, and particularly when many of the subjects lie outside the customary work of the schools. Likewise, the subjects selected for our nature-study work must be governed by conditions and not wholly by ideals. We are sometimes asked why we do not take up topics more distinctly agricultural or economic. The answer is that we take subjects that teachers will use. We would like, for example, to give more attention to insect subjects, but it is difficult to induce teachers to work with them. If distinctly agricultural topics alone were used, the movement would have very little following and influence. Moreover, it is not our purpose to teach technical agriculture in the common schools, but to inculcate the habit of observing, to suggest work that has distinct application to the conditions in which the child lives, to inspire enthusiasm for country life, to aid in home-making, and to encourage a general movement towards the soil. These matters cannot be forced. In every effort by every member of the extension staff, the betterment of agricultural conditions has been the guiding impulse, however remote from that purpose it may have seemed to the casual observer. We have found by long experience that it is unwise to give too much condensed subject-matter. The individual teacher can give subject-matter in detail because personal knowledge and enthusiasm can be applied. But in general correspondence and propagandist work this cannot be done. With the Junior Naturalist, for example, the first impulse is to inspire enthusiasm for some bit of work which we hope to take up. This enthusiasm is inspired largely by the organization of clubs and by the personal correspondence that is conducted between the Bureau and these clubs and their members. It is the desire, however, to follow up this general movement with instruction in definite subject-matter with the teacher. Therefore, a course in Home Nature-study was formally established under the general direction of Mrs. Mary Rogers Miller. It was designed to carry on the experiment for one year, in order to determine whether such a course would be productive of good results and to discover the best means of prosecuting it. These experimental results were very gratifying. Nearly 2,000 New York teachers are now regularly enrolled in the Course, the larger part of whom are outside the metropolitan and distinctly urban conditions. Every effort is made to reach the rural teacher. In order that the work may reach the children, it must be greatly popularized and the children must be met on their own ground. The complete or ideal leaflet may have little influence. For example, I prepared a leaflet on "A Children's Garden" which several people were kind enough to praise. However, very little direct result was secured from the use of this leaflet until "Uncle John" began to popularize it and to make appeals to teachers and children by means of personal talks, letters and circulars. So far as possible, his appeal to children was made in their own phrase. The movement for the children's garden has now taken definite shape, and the result is that more than 26,000 children in New York State are raising plants during the present year. Another illustration of this kind may be taken from the effort to improve the rural school grounds. I wrote a bulletin on "The Improvement of Rural School Grounds," but the tangible results were very few. Now, however, through the work of "Uncle John" with the teachers and the children, a distinct movement has begun for the cleaning and improving of the school grounds of the State. This movement is yet in its infancy, but several hundred schools are now in process of renovation, largely through the efforts of the children. The idea of organizing children into clubs for the study of plants and animals, and other outdoor subjects, originated, so far as our work is concerned, with Mr. John W. Spencer himself an actual, practical farmer. His character as "Uncle John" has done much to supply the personality that ordinarily is lacking in correspondence work, and there has been developed amongst the children an amount of interest and enthusiasm which is surprising to those who have not watched its progress. The problems connected with the rural schools are probably the most difficult questions to solve in the whole field of education. We believe, however, that the solution cannot begin directly with the rural schools themselves. It must begin in educational centres and gradually spread to the country districts. We are making constant efforts to reach the actual rural schools and expect to utilize fully every means within our power, but it is work that is attended with many inherent difficulties. We sometimes feel that the agricultural status can be reached better through the hamlet, village, and some of the city schools than by means of the little red school house on the corner. By appeals to the school commissioners in the rural districts, by work through teachers' institutes, through farmers' clubs, granges and other means we believe that we are reaching farther and farther into the very agricultural regions. It is difficult to get consideration for purely agricultural subjects in the rural schools themselves. Often the school does not have facilities for teaching such subjects, often the teachers are employed only for a few months, and there is frequently a sentiment against innovation. It has been said that one reason why agricultural subjects are taught less in the rural schools of America than in those of some parts of Europe, is because of the few male teachers and the absence of school gardens. We have met with the greatest encouragement and help from very many of the teachers in the rural schools. Often under disadvantages and discouragements they are carrying forward their part of the educational work with great consecration and efficiency. In all the educational work we have been fortunate to have the sympathy and co-operation of the State Department of Public Instruction. We do not expect that all teachers nor even a majority will take up nature-study work. It is not desirable that they should. We are gratified, however, at the large number who are carrying it forward. This Cornell nature-study movement is one small part of a general awakening in educational circles, a movement which looks towards bringing the child into actual contact and sympathy with the things with which he has to do. This work is taking on many phases. One aspect of it is its relation to the teaching of agriculture and to the love of country life. This aspect is yet in its early experimental stage. The time will come when institutions in every State will carry on work along this line. It will be several years yet before this type of work will have reached what may be considered an established condition, or before even a satisfactory body of experience shall have been attained. Out of the varied and sometimes conflicting methods and aims that are now before the public, there will develop in time an institution-movement of extension agricultural teaching. The literature issued by the Bureau of Nature-Study is of two general types: that which is designed to be of more or less permanent value to the teacher and the school; and that which is of temporary use, mostly in the character of supplements and circulars designed to meet present conditions or to rally the teachers or the Junior Naturalists. The literature of the former type is now republished and is to be supplied gratis to teachers in New York State. The first publication of the Bureau of Nature-Study was a series of teachers' leaflets. This series ran to twenty-two numbers. It was discontinued in May, 1901, because it was thought that sufficient material had then been printed to supply teachers with subjects for a year's work. It was never intended to publish these leaflets indefinitely. Unfortunately, however, some persons have supposed that because these teachers' leaflets were discontinued we were lessening our efforts in the nature-study work. The fact is that later years have seen an intensification of the effort and also a strong conviction on the part of all those concerned that the work has permanent educative value. We never believed so fully in the efficiency of this kind of effort as at the present time. LEAFLET II. THE NATURE-STUDY MOVEMENT.[3] BY L. H. BAILEY. [3] Reprinted from the Proceedings of the National Educational Association, 1903. Paper read in general session at Boston, July, 1903. The nature-study movement is the outgrowth of an effort to put the child into contact and sympathy with its own life. It is strange that such a movement is necessary. It would seem to be natural and almost inevitable that the education of the child should place it in intimate relation with the objects and events with which it lives. It is a fact, however, that our teaching has been largely exotic to the child; that it has begun by taking the child away from its natural environment; that it has concerned itself with the subject-matter rather than with the child. This is the marvel of marvels in education. Let me illustrate by a reference to the country school. If any man were to find himself in a country wholly devoid of schools, and were to be set the task of originating and organizing a school system, he would almost unconsciously introduce some subjects that would be related to the habits of the people and to the welfare of the community. Being freed from traditions, he would teach something of the plants and animals and fields and people. Yet, as a matter of fact, what do our rural schools teach? They usually teach the things that the academies and the colleges and the universities have taught--that old line of subjects that is supposed, in its higher phases, to lead to "learning." The teaching in the elementary school is a reflection of old academic methods. We really begin our system at the wrong end--with a popularizing and simplifying of methods and subjects that are the product of the so-called higher education. We should begin with the child. "The greatest achievement of modern education," writes Professor Payne, "is the gradation and correlation of schools, whereby the ladder of learning is let down from the university to secondary schools, and from these to the schools of the people." It is historically true that the common schools are the products of the higher or special schools, and this explains why it is that so much of the common-school work is unadapted to the child. The kindergarten and some of the manual-training, are successful revolts against all this. It seems a pity that it were ever necessary that the ladder of learning be "let down;" it should be stood on the ground. The crux of the whole subject lies in the conception of what education is. We all define it in theory to be a drawing out and a developing of the powers of the mind; but in practice we define it in the terms of the means that we employ. We have come to associate education with certain definite subjects, as if no other sets of subjects could be made the means of educating a mind. One by one, new subjects have forced themselves in as being proper means for educating. All the professions, natural science, mechanic arts, politics, and last of all agriculture, have contended for a place in educational systems and have established themselves under protest. Now, any subject, when put into pedagogic form, is capable of being the means of educating a man. The study of Greek is no more a proper means of education than the study of Indian corn is. The mind may be developed by means of either one. Classics and calculus are no more divine than machines and potatoes are. We are much in the habit of speaking of certain subjects as leading to "culture;" but this is really factitious, for "culture" is the product only of efficient teaching, whatever the subject-matter may be. So insistent have we been on the employing of "culture studies" that we seem to have mistaken the means of education for the object or result of education. What a man is, is more important than what he knows. Anything that appeals to a man's mind is capable of drawing out and training that mind; and is there any subject that does not appeal to some man's mind? The subject may be Sanskrit literature, hydraulics, physics, electricity, or agriculture--all may be made the means whereby men and women are educated, all may lead to what we ought to know as culture. The particular subject with which the person deals is incidental, for "A man's a man for a' that and a' that." Is there, then, to be no choice of subjects? There certainly is. It is the end of education to prepare the man or woman better to live. The person must live with his surroundings. He must live with common things. The most important means with which to begin the educational process, therefore, are those subjects that are nearest the man. Educating by means of these subjects puts the child into first-hand relation with his own life. It expands the child's spontaneous interest in his environment into a permanent and abiding sympathy and philosophy of life. I never knew an exclusive student of classics or philosophy who did not deplore his lack of touch with his own world. These common subjects are the natural, primary, fundamental, necessary subjects. Only as the child-mind develops should it be taken on long flights to extrinsic subjects, distant lands, to things far beyond its own realm; and yet, does not our geography teaching still frequently begin with the universe or with the solar system? In the good time coming, geography will not begin with a book at all, as, in fact, it does not now with many teachers. It may end with one. It will begin with physical features in the very neighborhood in which the child lives--with brooks and lakes and hills and fields. Education should begin always with objects and phenomena. We are living in a text-book and museum age. First of all, we put our children into books, sometimes even into books that tell about the very things at the child's door, as if a book about a thing were better than the thing itself. So accustomed are we to the book-route that we regard any other route as unsystematic, unmethodical, disconnected. Books are only secondary means of education. We have made the mistake of considering them primary. This mistake we are rapidly correcting. As the book is relegated to its proper sphere, we shall find ourselves free to begin with the familiar end of familiar things. Not only are we to begin with common objects and events, but with the child's natural point of contact with them. Start with the child's sympathies; lead him on and out. We are to develop the child, not the subject. The specialists may be trusted to develop the subject-matter and to give us new truth. The child is first interested in the whole plant, the whole bug, the whole bird, as a living, grooving object. It is a most significant fact that most young children like plants, but that most youths dislike botany. The fault lies neither in the plants nor in the youths. A youth may study cells until he hates the plant that bears the cells. He may acquire a technical training in cells, but he may be divorced from objects with which he must live, and his life becomes poorer rather than richer. I have no objection to minute dissection and analysis, but we must be very careful not to begin it too early nor to push it too far, for we are not training specialists: we are developing the power that will enable the pupil to get the most from his own life. As soon as the pupil begins to lose interest in the plant or the animal itself, stop! There is still another reason for the study of the common things in variety: it develops the power to grasp the problems of the day and to make the man resourceful. A young man who has spent all his time in the schoolroom is usually hopelessly helpless when he encounters a real circumstance. I see this remarkably illustrated in my own teaching, for I have young men from the city and from farms. The farm boy will turn his hand to twenty things where the city boy will turn his to one. The farm boy has had to meet problems and to solve them for himself: this is sometimes worth more than his entire school training. Why does the farm boy make his way when he goes to the city? It is no mere incident to one's life that he be able to think in the thought of his own time. Even though one expect to devote himself wholly to a dead language, in school he should study enough natural science and enough technology to enable him to grasp living problems. I fear that some institutions are still turning out men with mediæval types of mind. Now, therefore, I come again to my thesis,--to the statement that the end and purpose of nature-study is to educate the young mind by means of the subjects within its own sphere, by appealing to its own sympathetic interest in them, in order that the person's life may be sweeter, deeper, and more resourceful. Nature-study would not necessarily drive any subject from the curriculum; least of all would it depreciate the value of the "humanities;" but it would restore to their natural and proper place the subjects that are related to the man. It would begin with things within the person's realm. If we are to interest children--or grown-ups, either, for that matter--we must begin by teaching the things that touch their lives. Where there is one person that is interested in philology, there are hundreds that are interested in engines and in wheat. From the educational point of view, neither the engine nor the wheat is of much consequence, but the men who like the engines and who grow the wheat are immeasurably important and must be reached. There are five millions of farms in the United States on which chickens are raised, and also thousands of city and village lots where they are grown. I would teach chickens. I would reach Men by means of the Old Hen. How unrelated much of our teaching is to the daily life is well shown by inquiries recently made of the children of New Jersey by Professor Earl Barnes. Inquiries were made of the country school children in two agricultural counties of the State as to what vocation they hoped to follow. As I recall the figures, of the children at seven years of age 26 per cent desired to follow some occupation connected with country life. Of those at fourteen years, only 2 per cent desired such occupation. This remarkable falling off Professor Barnes ascribes in part to the influence of the teacher in the country schools, who is usually a town or city girl. The teacher measures everything in terms of the city. She talks of the city. She returns to the city at the end of the week. In the meantime, all the beauty and attractiveness and opportunity of the country may be unsuggested. Unconsciously both to teacher and pupil, the minds of the children are turned toward the city. There results a constant migration to the city, bringing about serious social and economic problems; but from the educational point of view the serious part of it is the fact that the school training may unfit the child to live in its normal and natural environment. It is often said that the agricultural college trains the youth away from the farm; the fact is that the mischief is done long before the youth enters college. Let me give another illustration of the fact that dislike of country life is bred very early in the life of the child. In a certain rural school in New York State, of say forty-five pupils, I asked all those children that lived on farms to raise their hands; all hands but one went up. I then asked those who wanted to live on the farm to raise their hands; only that one hand went up. Now, these children were too young to feel the appeal of more bushels of potatoes or more pounds of wool, yet they had thus early formed their dislike of the farm. Some of this dislike is probably only an ill-defined desire for a mere change, such as one finds in all occupations, but I am convinced that the larger part of it was a genuine dissatisfaction with farm life. These children felt that their lot was less attractive than that of other children; I concluded that a flower garden and a pleasant yard would do more to content them with living on the farm than ten more bushels of wheat to the acre. Of course, it is the greater and better yield that will enable the farmer to supply these amenities; but at the same time it must be remembered that the increased yield itself does not arouse a desire for them. I should make farm life interesting before I make it profitable. Of course, nature-study is not proposed merely as a means of keeping youth in the country; I have given these examples only to illustrate the fact that much of our teaching is unrelated to the circumstances in which the child lives--and this is particularly true of teaching in the rural schools. Nature-study applies to city and country conditions alike, acquiring additional emphasis in the country from the fact that what we call "nature" forms the greater part of the environment there. But the need to connect the child with itself is fundamental to all efficient teaching. To the city child the problems associated with the city are all-important; but even then I should give much attention to the so-called "nature subjects;" for these are clean, inspiring, universal. "Back to nature" is an all-pervading tendency of the time. We must distinguish sharply between the purposes of nature-study and its methods. Its purposes are best expressed in the one word "sympathy." By this I do not mean sentimentalism or superficiality or desultoriness. The acquiring of sympathy with the things and events amongst which one lives is the result of a real educational process--a process as vital and logical and efficient as that concerned in educating the older pupil in terms of fact and "science." Nature-study is not "natural history," nor "biology," nor even elementary science. It is an attitude, a point of view, a means of contact. Nature-study is not merely the adding of one more thing to a curriculum. It is not co-ordinate with geography, or reading, or arithmetic. Neither is it a mere accessory, or a sentiment, or an entertainment, or a tickler of the senses. It is not a "study." It is not the addition of more "work." It has to do with the whole point of view of elementary education, and therefore is fundamental. It is the full expression of personality. It is the practical working out of the extension idea that has become so much a part of our time. More than any other recent movement, it will reach the masses and revive them. In time it will transform our ideals and then transform our methods. The result of all this changing point of view I like to speak of as a new thing. Of course, there is no education that is wholly new in kind; and it is equally true that education is always new, else it is dead and meaningless. But this determination to cast off academic methods, to put ourselves at the child's point of view, to begin with the objects and phenomena that are near and dear to the child, is just now so marked, and is sure to be so far-reaching in its effects, that I cannot resist the temptation to collect these various movements, for emphasis, under the title of the "new education." "Nature-study" is another name for this new education. It is a revolt from the too exclusive science-teaching and book-teaching point of view, a protest against taking the child first of all out of its own environment. It is a product of the teaching of children in the elementary schools. The means and methods in nature-study are as varied as the persons who teach it. Most of the criticism of the movement--even among nature-study folk themselves--has to do with means and methods rather than with real ideals. We are now in the epoch when we should overlook minor differences and all work together for the good of a common cause. There is no one subject and no one method that is best. While it is not my purpose to enter into any discussion of the methods of teaching nature-study, I cannot refrain from calling attention to what I believe to be some of the most serious dangers, (1) I would first mention the danger of giving relatively too much attention to mere subject-matter or fact. Nowhere should the acquiring of mere information be the end of an educational process, and least of all in nature-study, for the very essence of nature-study is spirit, sympathy, enthusiasm, attitude toward life. These results the youth gains naturally when he associates in a perfectly free and natural way with objects in the wild. Science-teaching has fallen short of its goal in the elementary schools--and even in the colleges and universities--by insisting so much on the subject-matter that the pupil is overlooked. In standing so rigidly for the letter, we have missed the spirit. President Eliot has recently called attention to this danger: "College professors heretofore have been apt to think that knowledge of the subject to be taught was the sufficient qualification of a teacher; but all colleges have suffered immeasurable losses as a result of this delusion." (2) A second danger is the tendency to make the instruction too long and too laborious. As soon as the child becomes weary of giving attention, the danger-point is reached; for thereafter there is loss in the spirit and enthusiasm, however much may be gained in dry subject-matter. I believe that even in high schools and colleges we make mistakes by demanding too long-continued application to one subject. Short, sharp, enthusiastic exercises, with pith and point, of five to ten minutes' duration, are efficient and sufficient for most purposes, particularly with beginners. (3) A third danger is the practice of merely telling or explaining. Set the child to work, and let the work be within his own realm. Pollen, lichens, capsules, lymphatics, integuments--these are not within the child's range; they smack of the museum and the text-book. Yet it appears to be the commonest thing to put mere children at the subject of cross-fertilization; they should first be put, perhaps, at flowers and insects. I wish that in every schoolroom might be hung the motto, "Teaching, not telling." (4) A fourth point I ought to mention is the danger of clinging too closely to the book habit; this I have already touched on. We are gradually growing out of the book slavery, even in arithmetic and grammar and history. This means a distinct advance in the abilities of the teacher. Of all subjects that should not be taught by the book, nature-study is chief. Its very essence is freedom from tradition and "method." I wish that there were more nature-study books; but they are most useful as sources of fact and inspiration, not as class texts. The good teacher of nature-study must greatly modify the old idea of "recitations." I wish to quote again from President Eliot: "Arithmetic is a very cheap subject to teach; so are spelling and the old-fashioned geography. As to teaching history in the old-fashioned way, anybody could do that who could hear a lesson recited. To teach nature-studies, geometry, literature, physiography, and the modern sort of history requires well-informed and skillful teachers, and these cost more than the lesson-hearers did." (5) Finally, we must come into contact with the actual things, not with museums and collections. Museums are little better than books unless they are regarded as secondary means. The museum has now become a laboratory. The living museum must come more and more into vogue,--living birds, living plants, living insects. The ideal laboratory is the out-of-doors itself; but for practical school purposes this must be supplemented. The most workable living laboratory of any dimensions is the school garden. The true school garden is a laboratory plat; time is coming when such a laboratory will be as much a part of a good school equipment as blackboards and charts and books now are. It will be like an additional room to the school building. Aside from the real school garden, every school premises should be embellished and improved as a matter of neighborhood and civic pride; for one cannot expect the child to rise above the conditions in which he is placed. All these dangers cannot be overcome by any "system" or "method;" they must be solved one by one, place by place, each teacher for himself. Whenever nature-study comes to be rigidly graded and dressed and ordered, the breath of life will be crushed from it. It is significant that everywhere mere "method" is giving way to individualism. In time, the methods of teaching nature-study will crystallize and consolidate around a few central points. The movement itself is well under way. It will persist because it is vital and fundamental. It will add new value and significance to all the accustomed work of the schools; for it is not revolutionary, but evolutionary. It stands for naturalness, resourcefulness, and for quickened interest in the common and essential things of life. We talk much about the ideals of education; but the true philosophy of life is to idealize everything with which we have to do. LEAFLET III. AN APPEAL TO THE TEACHERS OF NEW YORK STATE.[4] BY L. H. BAILEY. [4] Supplement to Home Nature-Study Course, March, 1904. (Vol. V, No. 6.) [Illustration] The kernel of modern educational development is to relate the school-training to the daily life. Much of our education is not connected with the conditions in which the pupils live and is extraneous to the lives that they must lead. The free common schools are more recent in development than universities, colleges and academies and they are even yet essentially academic and in many ways undemocratic. They teach largely out of books and of subjects that have little vital relation with things that are real to the child. The school work is likely to be exotic to the pupil. The child lives in one world, and goes to school in another world. Every subject has teaching-power when put into pedagogic form. The nearer this subject is to the child, the greater is its teaching power, other conditions being comparable; and the more completely does it put him into touch with his environment and make him efficient and happy therein. In time, all subjects in which men engage will be put in form for teaching and be made the means of training the mind. The old subjects will not be banished, but rather extended; but the range of subjects will be immensely increased because we must reach all people in terms of their daily experience. How all these subjects are to be handled as school agencies, we cannot yet foresee, nor is it my purpose now to discuss the question; but it is certain that the common things must be taught. And the common subjects are as capable of being made the means of developing the imagination and the higher ideals as are many of the traditional subjects. [Illustration: _Fig. 1. Junior Gardeners beginning the work of cleaning up a New York school ground._] Great numbers of our people are in industrial and agricultural environments. By means of the industrial and agricultural trades they must live. These trades must be made more efficient; and the youth must be educated to see in them more than a mere livelihood. These industrial and agricultural subjects must be put more and more into schools. My own interest lies at present more with the agricultural subjects, and these are the occasion for this appeal. The so-called "industrial" and commercial subjects have already been put into schools with good effect: the agricultural subjects now must come within the school horizon. Probably one million and more of the people of New York State live on farms. This is approximately one in seven of our entire population. Moreover, every person is interested in the out-of-doors and in the things that grow therein. The future agricultural efficiency of New York State will depend on the school training more than on any other single factor; and on the agricultural efficiency of the State will depend, to an important extent, its economic supremacy. New York is the fourth State in total agricultural wealth, being exceeded only by Illinois, Iowa and Ohio. All the country children should be reached in terms of the country. Most of our school books are made for the city and town rather than for the country. The problem of the development of the rural school is the most important single educational problem now before us; and it is essentially an agricultural problem. [Illustration: _Fig. 2. Junior Gardeners at work in a New York school ground. The grounds are now ready for planting. The mail carrier now calls and the pupils take the mail home._] My appeal, therefore, is to every teacher in New York State, whether in country or city--for the city teacher makes public opinion, helps to set educational standards, and many of the country children go to school in the cities. I do not wish to press agriculture into the schools as a mere professional subject, but I would teach--along with the customary school work--the objects and phenomena and affairs of the country as well as of the city. The schools lead away from the country rather than towards it. All this I do not regard as a fault of the schools, but merely as a limitation due to the fact that the schools are still in process of evolution. It requires time to adapt a means to an end, and the schools are not to be criticised. But we must do our best to hasten the evolution. Schools, colleges and universities have only begun to reach the people effectively: these institutions must eventually touch every vital and homely problem, for they are to be the controlling factors in our civilization. Any subject that is worthy a person's attention out of school is also worthy his attention in school. [Illustration: _Fig. 3. Sugar beets and a fourteen-year-old experimenter. (Supt. Kern, Illinois.)_] I heard a good story the other day of an occurrence of many years ago illustrating the fact that school training may be wholly exotic to the pupil. The story was told in Ogdensburg, and Heuvelton is near by. The class in geography was on exhibition, for there were visitors. The questions were answered quickly: "How far is it from Rome to Corinth?" "From Rome to Constantinople?" "From Paris to Rome?" A visitor was asked whether he had any questions to propound. He had one: "How far is it from Heuvelton to Ogdensburg?" No one answered; yet the visitor said that none of the pupils would be likely to go from Rome to Constantinople, but that every one of them would go from Heuvelton to Ogdensburg. Not only must the school teach in terms of its own environment, but more and more it must become the intellectual and social center of the neighborhood or district. Every modern rural school building should be attractive enough to induce clubs of many kinds to hold meetings in it. In the old "lyceum" days the school house was an important gathering place. These days are mostly past, but better days should be coming: the school should connect at every point with the life of the community. Any event, however small, that centers the attention of the people at the school house is a beginning and is worth while. A year ago the children and teacher in one of our district schools began the work of "cleaning up" the premises. The picture (Fig. 1) shows them at work. Later, when the grounds were renovated and ready for the planting, boxes were placed for the reception of the mail for those who do not live on the carrier's route: this is the beginning of a centering of attention at the school house. I think that the boxes might have been more attractive and perhaps better placed, but this will come in time: a beginning has been made. When once the people of any community come to think of the school house as a meeting-place for old folks as well as for children, what may we not expect of the rural school? We need adult education as well as juvenile education. I have now no course of study to propose for agricultural or country-life subjects in the schools, but I would like to know how many teachers in the State desire to take up certain work of this nature as an experiment. The College of Agriculture will be glad to suggest the kind of work, if need be. The western states are undertaking this work: we must not be behind. It is endorsed by Superintendent Skinner, as will be seen from the letter published at the close of this pamphlet. To be effective and meaningful, this work should deal directly with the things,--handling the things, studying the things, learning from the things. This is nature-study. To commit to memory something about things is of little consequence. We are too closely committed to books. We are often slaves to books. Books are only secondary or incidental means of educating, particularly in nature-study subjects. We have known the book-way of educating for so long a time that many of us have come to accept it as a matter of course and as the only way. A New York school man recently told me an incident that illustrates this fact singularly well. In the Cattaraugus Indian Reservation he opened a school in which at first he employed only manual-training and nature-study work. Soon one of the children left school. The teacher sought the mother and asked why. The mother replied that there was no use in sending the child to school because the teacher had given it no books to study. So slavishly have we followed the book-route that even the Indian accepts it as the only road to schooling! [Illustration: _Fig. 4. Prize corn and a ten-year-old experimenter in one of Supt. Kern's districts, Illinois.]_ SCHOOL-GARDENS. Many lines of work might be suggested for an occasional period. Perhaps the best one for spring is a school-garden. In time, every good school will have its garden, as it now has charts and blackboards and books. A school-garden is a laboratory-room added to the school house. It may be five feet square or ten times that much. The children prepare the land,--lessons in soils, soil physics; sow the seed,--lessons in planting, germination, and the like; care for the plants,--lessons in transplanting, struggle for existence, natural enemies, conditions that make for the welfare of the plants. The older pupils may be organized into experiment clubs, as they are being organized in parts of Illinois (see article on "Learning by Doing," by Supt. O. J. Kern, Review of Reviews, Oct., 1903, p. 456). We can help you in this school-gardening work. [Illustration: _Fig. 5. "Learning by doing." A new kind of school work in Illinois, under the direction of Supt. Kern._] OTHER WORK. If not school-gardens, take up other lines of work,--study the school premises, the nearby brook or field, an apple tree, or any other common object or phenomenon. If there is any special agricultural industry in the neighborhood, discuss it and set the pupils at work on it. Any of these common-day subjects will interest the children and brighten up the school work; and the pursuit of them will teach the children the all-important fact that so few of us ever learn,--the fact that the commonest and homeliest things are worthy the best attention of the best men and women. IMPROVING THE SCHOOL GROUNDS. Just now, the improving of school grounds is a pressing subject. As a preliminary to the actual improving of the grounds, suppose that the following problems were set before the pupils: 1. _Exercises on the Grounds._ 1. _Area._--Measure the school grounds, to determine the lengths and widths. Draw an outline map showing the shape. The older pupils may compute the square surface area. The distances may be compared, for practice, in feet, yards and rods. (Arithmetic.) [Illustration: _Fig. 6. Using the Babcock milk test at Professor Hollister's School, Corinth, N. Y._] 2. _Contour._--Is the area level, or rough, or sloping? Determine how great the slope is by sighting across a carpenter's level. In what direction does the ground slope? Is the slope natural, or was it made by grading? The older pupils may draw a cross-section line, to a scale, to show what the slope is. (Geography.) 3. _Fences._--What parts of the area are fenced? What kind of fence? Total length of fence? Give opinion whether this fence is needed, with reasons. Is the fence in good repair? If not, what should be done to remedy it? (Arithmetic, language.) 4. _Soil._--What is the nature of the soil--clay, sand, gravel, field loam? Was subsoil spread on the surface when the grounds were graded? Is the soil poor or rich, and why do you think so? Is it stony? What can be done to improve the soil? (Geography, language.) 5. _Ground cover._--What is on the ground--sod or weeds, or is it bare? What do you think would be the best ground cover, and why? (Geography, language.) 6. _Trees and bushes._--How many trees and bushes are there on the ground? Were they planted, or did they come up of themselves? Make a map showing where the principal ones are. Name all the kinds, putting the trees in one list and the bushes in another. Do any of the trees need pruning, and why? State whether any of them have been injured or are unhealthy. (Geography, language.) 7. _Tenants._--What animals live or have lived on the school premises? What birds' nests do you find (these may be found in winter)? Hornets' nests? Perhaps you can find cocoons or egg-masses of insects in winter, and the active insects themselves in spring and fall. What birds visit the place? Do rabbits or mice or moles or frogs inhabit the premises? (Geography, language.) 8. _Natural features._--Describe any strong natural features, as rocks, ponds, streams, groves. What views do you get from the school grounds? (Geography, language.) 2. _Exercises on the School Structures._ 9. _Buildings._--How many buildings are on the grounds, including sheds, etc.? Give the sizes in lengths and widths. Brick or wood? Color? Make a map or chart showing the position of these structures, being careful to have the buildings properly proportioned with reference to the entire area. (Language, geography.) 10. _Repairs needed._--Describe what condition the structures are in. Tell whether repairs are needed on foundations, side walls, roof, belfry, chimney, steps, doors, windows, paint. (Language.) 11. _Flag pole._--Where is your flag pole? Could it be in a better place? How tall is it above ground? How much in diameter at the base? What kind of wood? Painted? How deep in the ground? When was it put up? What repairs does it need? (Language.) 3. _General Exercises._ 12. _History._--When was the land set aside for a school? When was the school house built? Who built it? (History, language.) 13. _Cost._--Try to find out what the land cost. What the building cost. Are they worth as much now? (History, language.) 14. _Government._--Determine what officers have general control of the school. How did they come to be officers? How long do they hold office? What are the duties of each? Determine whether your school receives any aid from the State. (Government.) 15. _Improvement._--Tell what you think should be done to improve the school grounds and the school structures. (Language.) 16. _Photographs._--The teacher or some pupil should photograph the school premises, and send the picture to us. We want at least one picture of every rural school house and grounds in the State. Even a very poor photograph is better than none. _Experiment Garden._--Every school ground should have at least one small plat on which the children can grow some plant that is useful in that community. Just now alfalfa is demanding much attention from farmers, and it is certain soon to become a very important farm crop in New York State. It is used for pasturage and for hay. When once established, it lives for years. It is allied to clover and is a handsome plant for any school grounds. Will not the teacher suggest to the children that they make an alfalfa bed along one side of the school grounds? It will be attractive and will teach many lessons to pupils and parents even if it is only a few square feet in size. We want to put an alfalfa plat on every rural school ground in the State. _We will supply the seed free._ Alfalfa is easy to grow if only a few essential principles are kept in mind. We will send full directions to any one who applies. From year to year we will give nature-study lessons on these alfalfa plats. We are anxious to start work of the above kind. It can be done at any time of the year. We are already in touch with more than 400 school grounds, but we want to reach every rural school ground in the State. _Will not the teacher send to us the best piece of work done by any pupil in any of the foregoing sixteen problems?_ These papers we will file, as showing the conditions of the premises of the particular school. They will enable us to see the progress that is being made from year to year in the improvement of your school premises. They will also enable us better to give advice, when called upon to do so. Sometimes we can send to the particular school a man to give advice on the spot. Sending the best reports to the University will be a reward to the most diligent pupils. Send all reports to John W. Spencer, Nature-Study Bureau, Ithaca, N. Y. We desire to put in the rural school houses of the State some good pictures of country and farm scenes. These pictures will be artistic reproductions of meritorious photographs, and large enough to hang on the walls of the school room. With each picture will be sent instructions for framing in order to make the picture more attractive. We shall choose eight such pictures for distribution the present school year. _We will send one of these pictures free to any rural school in the State that takes up two of the problems given above; and all of them to schools that take up the sixteen problems._ We expect to publish lists of all schools, with teachers' names, that take up this work in improving the premises of rural schools. [Illustration: _Fig. 7. Junior Naturalists making ready for planting. Tompkins Co., N. Y._] To one who is not teaching in the public schools, all this work seems to be simple enough. Such persons are likely to be impatient that more rapid progress is not made in introducing agricultural and common-life subjects into the schools. But the teacher knows that all this work requires patience and skill. It cannot as yet be forced into the schools and still retain spontaneity and vitality. It must come gradually, and prove itself as it goes. Probably all public school teachers are now agreed that the schools should be put closely in line with the life of their various communities. The questions now to be solved are chiefly those of means and methods, and of arousing the school constituencies to the new points of view. A full and free discussion of the whole subject is now needed. The time is hardly yet ripe for very definite courses of study in these new fields. Many schools are already teaching these new subjects with entire success: these schools can serve the cause by making their experience public. LETTERS ON THE SUBJECT. [Illustration: _Fig. 8. Junior Gardeners at work in one of the New York Schools._] However, this circular is merely an appeal. It is an inquiry for suggestions and co-operation. I desire to know what can be accomplished in the schools of New York State in the direction of inspiring and useful work for children that live in the country or are interested in the country. I am sure that something needs to be done: just what is most feasible and best the teachers must largely determine. As further suggestions, I append two letters from New York teachers: _From A. M. Hollister, Principal of the Corinth Public Schools, Saratoga Co., N. Y._ "I am sending you under separate cover a picture of my class at work with the Babcock test machine (Fig. 6). We have used the machine both as a means of instruction in physics and chemistry and as a general demonstration before the different classes in the school. It beautifully illustrates some very important principles of physics and chemistry. The most marvellous effect, however, has been shown in the quality of the milk sold in the village. Milk was sold showing a test as low as 2.9 per cent butter fat. Almost as soon as the first testing was reported, the milk showed 3.8 per cent butter fat. Milk has been sent to the school from a number of dairymen with request for a test on particular cows that the parties might base their purchases of cows on the results of the test. "In regard to the gardening with some of our boys, I would say that both boys and parents are much interested in the subject. We shall doubtless start about forty gardens of one-tenth acre each. The boys are to keep an exact account of all expenses to study methods, and to do all the work. I am anticipating results in a number of directions. The boys will be given something to do and to interest themselves in, which of itself is an important thing for a village boy. It will also develop a power of observation and ingenuity. We wish to get all the information we can on potato, tomato and squash culture. Other things will be suggested during the winter." _Approval of the Superintendent of Public Instruction._ (_Published by permission._) "For many years I have been making earnest efforts to induce teachers, pupils and patrons to improve and beautify the school buildings and school surroundings of our State. Some progress has been made, but much remains to be done. "I heartily welcome the coöperation of every agency which can contribute to this result. We must interest parents and teachers in this work, but to obtain the best results I have always found that we must first interest the children. Once a spirit of enthusiasm is awakened in the children, it is easy to keep them interested and busy. "I have long appreciated the earnest assistance of representatives of Cornell University in arousing the interest of pupils, and I heartily commend the plan outlined by the College of Agriculture to make a study of the schoolhouse and school grounds a practical part of the daily education of the child. A child's surroundings have much to do with his education. The result of such systematic study as is suggested must surely be a steadily increasing determination to remedy defects and correct any evil which may exist. When the attention of children is directed to existing conditions which bring discomfort, it will not be difficult to induce them to devise ways and means to improve matters. "I shall watch the result of your efforts with deep interest, and stand ready to coöperate with you in every way. "Very sincerely yours, "CHARLES R. SKINNER, "ALBANY, _Dec._ 17, 1903. _State Superintendent._" LEAFLET IV. WHAT IS AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION?[5] BY L. H. BAILEY. [5] Cornell Countryman, June, 1904. Agricultural education has made great progress within the past few years. Methods are crystallizing and at the same time the field is enlarging. We once thought of agricultural education as wholly special or professional, but we now conceive of it as an integral part of general and fundamental educational policy. As a college or university subject it is necessarily technical and semi-professional; but college work must articulate with the common-school work, as language and science now articulate with the schools. That is, agricultural subjects are now to be considered as a part of primary and secondary school work, leading naturally to special work in the same subjects for those who desire technical training. In the schools the subjects are to be treated non-professionally, as primary means of educating the child. The reason for using these subjects as means of educating lies in the principle that the child should be educated in terms of its own life rather than wholly in subjects that are foreign to its horizon and experience. It is most surprising that, while the theory of education is that the person shall be trained into efficiency, we nevertheless have employed subjects that have little relation to the individual child's effectiveness. Not long since my father showed me a letter that he received from a school girl in 1851. It read as follows: "I seat myself expressly for the purpose to finish this letter which has been long begun. I go to school room to Mr. Wells and study parsing mental Philosophy grammar and penciling." This sounds as if it came from "The Complete Letter-Writer." This person lived on a farm. She lives on a farm to this day. Her parents and grandparents lived on a farm. The family had no expectation of living elsewhere than on a farm. Yet, in her entire school life, I presume there was not a single hour devoted to any subject directly connected with the farm or with the country. If her studies touched life in any way that she could comprehend, it was probably in habits of thought of the city and of the academician rather than in anything that appealed to her as related to the life she was to lead. It is small wonder that the farm has been devoid of ideals, and that the attraction has been to leave it. The direction of the stream determines the course of the river. The future course of education will develop many means of training the child mind. Heretofore these means have been few and the result has been narrow. We shall see agricultural, commercial, social subjects put into pedagogic form and be made the agencies whereby minds are drawn out. These will be at least as efficient as the customary methods that we happen thus far to have employed. How much of one or how much of another is a detail that must be left to the future. Nor does it follow that the old-time subjects are to pass away. They will be an important part of the system, but not the whole system. These new subjects are now coming into the schools as rapidly, perhaps, as they can be assimilated. It is a general feeling that our schools already are overcrowded with subjects; and this may be true. The trouble is that while we are introducing new ideas as to subjects, we are still holding to old ideas as to curriculums and courses of study. We will break up our schools into different kinds; we will employ more teachers; we will not endeavor to train all children alike; we will find that we may secure equal results from many kinds of training; we will consider the effect on the pupil to be of much greater importance than the developing of the particular subject that he pursues; there are many men of many minds; some system will be evolved whereby individual capabilities will be developed to the full; the means will be related to the pupil: one of the factors will be subjects making up the environment of the pupil that lives in the country. My plea, therefore, is that agricultural and country life subjects become the means of educating some of the pupils of at least some of the schools. To be sure, we have already introduced "natural science" into many of the schools, but, for the most, part, this has worked down from the college and, necessarily, it usually stops at the high school. We need something much more vital for the secondary schools than science as commonly taught. The great nature-study movement is an expression, as yet imperfect, of the feeling that there should be some living connection between the school life and the real life. A college of agriculture, therefore, is as much interested in the common schools as a college of arts and sciences is. It should be a part of a system, however informal that system may be, not an establishment isolated from other educational agencies. But even as a college it will reach more persons than it has ever reached in the past. In any self-sustaining commonwealth it is probable that one-third of the people must be intimately associated with the soil. These people need to be as well-trained as those who follow the mechanic trades or the professions. It is immensely difficult to put these agricultural subjects into teachable form and to reach the agricultural people in a way that will mean much to them, because agriculture is a compound of many wonderfully diverse trades in every conceivable kind of natural conditions. Nor can one institution in each large state or province hope eventually to reach all these people, any more than one institution can reach all those who would best be taught in terms of books. But there must be at least one institution that is well equipped for the very highest kind of effort in these fields; Congress long ago recognized this fact in the establishment of the land-grant colleges, and all persons who are informed on agricultural education also now recognize it. The agricultural colleges have been handicapped from the first for lack of funds. It is now coming to be recognized that the highest kind of effort in these colleges cannot be sustained on a farm that pays for itself nor by means that are copied from the customary college work in "humanities" and "science." If it is to be efficient, agricultural education of a university grade is probably more expensive to equip and maintain than any other kind of education. Once it was thought that the agricultural college should be wholly separate from any "classical" institution. The oldest of the existing American agricultural colleges, the Michigan institution, is established on this principle. So are the Massachusetts, Iowa and Pennsylvania colleges and a number of others. It is natural that this should have been the feeling in the original movement for the establishment of these colleges, for the movement was itself a protest and revolt from the existing education. Time, however, has put agricultural subjects on an equal pedagogical plane with other subjects, and there is no more reason why the agriculture should be segregated by itself than that the architecture or law or fine arts should be. The agricultural colleges connected with universities are now beginning to grow rapidly. This is illustrated in the great development of the agricultural colleges at the universities in Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nebraska, Missouri, Ohio, and elsewhere. It was once thought that the agricultural student would be "looked down upon" in a university or in a college with other departments. This was once true. It was true once, also, of the student in natural science and mechanic arts. Pioneers are always marked men. The only way to place agricultural students on an equality with other students is to place them on an equality. These remarks are made in no disparagement of the separate agricultural colleges, but only to illustrate the character of the growth of agricultural education. No doubt the separate colleges blazed the way. They stand for an idea that we would not like to dispense with. Every state and territory has one college founded on the land grant, and in the Southern states there are two, one for the whites and one for the blacks; in nearly half of the states these colleges are separate institutions. But the fact remains that the college connected with the university is to have the broader field in the future. Its very connection dignifies it and gives it parity. It draws on many resources that the separate college knows not of, unless, indeed, the separate college develops these resources for itself. The tendency, therefore, is for every ambitious separate college to develop the accessory resources, in the way of equipment in general science, literature, the arts; for agricultural education is constantly coming to be of a higher grade. The separate agricultural and mechanical colleges are rapidly becoming essentially industrial universities, giving general training but with the emphasis on the technical subjects. It is strange how far this principle of education by isolation has been carried in the development of the agricultural colleges. Not only have the colleges been separated from other educational enterprises, but in many cases they have been planted far in the open country, partly on the theory that the farm boy, of all others, should be removed from temptation and from the allurements of other occupations. It was the early theory, also, that the agricultural student must be compelled to do manual labor in order that he be put in sympathy with it and that his attention be isolated from tendencies that might divert him from farming. These methods seem to have rested on the general theory that if you would make a man a farmer you must deprive him of everything but farming. It would be interesting to try to estimate how much this general attitude on the part of the agricultural colleges was itself responsible for the very inferiority of position that the agricultural student was supposed to occupy. This attitude tended to maintain a traditional class distinction or even to create such a distinction. Agricultural education must be adapted to its ends; but it must also be able to stand alone in competition with all other education without artificial props. It is no longer necessary that the agricultural student wear blinders. On the other hand, the farm point of view must be kept constantly before the student, as the engineering point of view is kept before the student in a college of civil engineering; but we are coming to a new way of accomplishing this. Mere teaching of the sciences that underlie agricultural practice will not accomplish it; nor, on the other hand, will drill in mere farm practice accomplish it. It is not the purpose of an agricultural college to make men farmers, but to educate farmers. We are not to limit the student's vision to any one occupation, but to make one occupation more meaningful and attractive than it has ever been before. From the farmer's point of view a leading difficulty with the college course is that it sometimes tends to slacken a man's business energy. One cannot at the same time pursue college studies and commercial business; and yet farming is a business. In a four years' course some students are likely to incur certain habits of ease that are difficult to overcome upon their return to the farm. How much this is a fault of the courses of instruction and how much a personal equation of the student is always worth considering. But if this is a fault of college work it is generic and not peculiar to colleges of agriculture. Experience has now shown that a compulsory labor system is no preventive of this tendency, at least not with students of college and university age. Student labor is now a laboratory effort, comparable with laboratory work in medicine or mechanic arts. The mature student must have some other reason for laboring than merely a rule that labor is required. However, it is yet largely an unsolved problem with the agricultural colleges as to just how the stirring business side of farming can be sufficiently correlated with the courses of study to keep the student in touch and sympathy with affairs. With the passing of compulsory student labor there has no doubt been a reaction in the direction of too little utilization of the college farm in schemes of education; but we shall now get back to the farm again, but this time on a true educational basis. Nothing is more significant of the development of the agricultural colleges than the recent splitting up of the professorships. From agricultural chemistry as a beginning, in one form or another, there have issued a dozen chairs, first one subject and then another being separated as a teachable and administrative entity. Even the word "agriculture" is now being dropped from the professorships, for this is a term for a multitude of enterprises, not for a concrete subject. Horticulture was one of the first protuberances to be lopped off; and even this must very soon be divided into its component parts, for there is little relationship between the effort that grows apples and that grows orchids or between the market garden and landscape gardening. Even the chair of agronomy, the newest department of the colleges, must soon be separated into its units. Forty years ago mechanic arts was undivided. Who then would have prophesied such professorships as experimental engineering, electrical engineering, marine engineering, railroad engineering, naval architecture, machine design? The progress of the dividing up of the mechanic arts and civil engineering marks the rate of our progress, in the terms of the Land Grant Act, "to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life." All trades, classes and professions are to be reached with a kind of education that is related to their work. One by one we are reaching persons in all walks and all places. Socially, there are centuries of prejudice against the farmer. When education is finally allowed to reach him in such a way as to be indispensable to him, it will at last have become truly democratic. In this spirit agriculture is divided into its teachable units. The lists of divisions of the teaching force or curriculum in the larger agricultural colleges illustrate this admirably. In Illinois, for example, the title of professors and instructors are associated with such divisions as thremmatology, agronomy, pomology, olericulture, floriculture, soil physics, dairy husbandry, dairy manufacture, horses, beef cattle, swine husbandry, farm crops. At Cornell the coördinate departments of instruction in the College of Agriculture are classified as agricultural chemistry, economic entomology, soils, agronomy, horticulture, animal husbandry with its sub-department of poultry husbandry, dairy industry, agricultural engineering and architecture, the farm home, rural economy and sociology, out-door art (including landscape gardening), nature-study for teachers, besides miscellaneous courses--making altogether thirteen divisions. The courses now offered in the Cornell College of Agriculture, not including the winter-courses, are 76, of which 71 are to be given in the next academic year. Nearly all these courses comprise a half-year's work. While all this subdividing represents progress there are disadvantages attending it, because it tends to give a partial view of the subject. The larger number of farmers must engage in general "mixed husbandry" rather than in specialties. Farming is a philosophy, not a mere process. The tendency of the inevitable subdividing of the subjects is to force the special view rather than the general view, as if, in medicine, students were to become specialists rather than general practitioners. The farm-philosophy idea was represented by the older teachers of agriculture. Of these men Professor Roberts is a typical example, and his work in making students to be successful, all-around farmers is not yet sufficiently appreciated. Much of this farm philosophy is now coming into the courses of instruction under the titles of rural economy, rural economics, rural sociology and the like. I have sometimes thought that the time may come when we will again have professors of "agriculture" who will coördinate and synthesize the work of the agronomist, soil physicist, chemist, dairyman and others. However, the dividing has not yet worked any harm, and perhaps my fears are ungrounded; and it is certain that with increasing knowledge and specialization the courses of instruction must still further divide. Another most significant development in agricultural education is the change in attitude towards the college farm. Once it was thought that the college estate should be run as a "model farm." However, a farm that sets a pattern to the farmer must be conducted on a commercial basis; yet it is manifest that it is the province of a college to devote itself to education, not primarily to business. A farm cannot be a "model" for all the kinds of farming of the commonwealth; and if it does not represent fairly completely the agriculture of the state, it misses its value as a pattern. At all events the pattern-farm idea is practically given up. It is then a question whether the farm shall be used merely to "illustrate,"--to display kinds of tools, examples of fences and fields, breeds of stock. This conception of the college farm is comparable with the old idea of "experiments" in agricultural chemistry: the teacher performed the experiments for the students to see. The prevailing idea of the college farm is now (or at least, I think, soon must be) that it shall be used as a true laboratory, as the student in chemistry now works first-hand with his materials instead alone of receiving lectures and committing books. Is a student studying cattle? The herds are his for measurements, testing as to efficiency, studying in respect to heredity, their response to feeding, their adaptability to specific purposes, and a hundred other problems. Cattle are as much laboratory material for the agricultural student as rocks are for the geological student or plants for the botanical student. Technical books were once kept only in libraries; now they are kept also in laboratories and are laboratory equipment. College museums were once only for display; now they are also for actual use by the student. Barns are laboratories, to be as much a part of the equipment of a college of agriculture as shops are of mechanic arts. They should be in close connection with the main buildings, not removed to some remote part of the premises. Modern ideas of cleanliness and sanitation are bound to revolutionize the construction and care of barns. There is no reason why these buildings should be offensive. It was once thought that dissecting rooms and hospitals should be removed from proximity to other buildings; but we have now worked these laboratories integrally into the plans of colleges. Time has now come for a closer assembling of the college barns with the college classrooms. Likewise the entire farm is no doubt to be used in the future as a laboratory, at least in the institutions of university grade--except such part as is used for pure investigation and research. Where, then, shall the student go to see his model barn? To these farms themselves; here a stock farm; there a fruit farm; elsewhere a dairy farm. The shops in the colleges of mechanic arts have long since come to be true laboratories; they do not engage in railroading or manufacturing. They do not try to "pay their way;" if they do pay their way this fact is only an incidental or secondary consideration. A college of agriculture is a teaching institution: it must have equipment and laboratories. It will be seen that the word "agriculture" has taken on a new and enlarged meaning. The farmer is not only a producer of commodities: he is a citizen, a member of the commonwealth, and his efficiency to society and the state depends on his whole outlook. Also his personal happiness depends on his outlook. He must concern himself not alone with technical farming, but also with all the affairs that make up an agricultural community: good roads, organizations, schools, mail routes, labor movements, rural architecture, sanitation, the æsthetic aspect of the country. One will be struck with the new signification of "agriculture" if he scan the titles of publications that issue from governmental agricultural departments, agricultural experiment stations, agricultural nature-study bureaus, agricultural colleges. I cannot close this sketch without calling attention to the fact that the college of agriculture has obligations to the farmers of its commonwealth. The very fact that every college of agriculture in North America is supported by public funds imposes this obligation. Moreover, the colleges of agriculture and mechanic arts stand for true democratic effort, for they have a definite constituency that they are called upon to aid. It is desirable that as many persons as possible shall assemble at the college itself, but those who cannot go to college still have the right to ask for help. This is particularly true in agriculture, in which the interests are widely separated and incapable of being combined and syndicated. Thereupon has arisen the great "extension" movement that, in one way or another, is now a part of the work of every agricultural college. Education was once exclusive; it is now in spirit inclusive. The agencies that have brought about this change of attitude are those associated with so-called industrial education, growing chiefly out of the forces set in motion by the Land Grant Act of 1862. This Land Grant is the Magna Charta of education: from it in this country we shall date our liberties. LEAFLET V. SUGGESTIONS FOR NATURE-STUDY WORK.[6] BY ANNA BOTSFORD COMSTOCK. [6] Syllabus of Lectures: Nature-Study (Animal and Plant Life), Mrs. A. B. Comstock. [Illustration] Suggestions for nature-study must necessarily be more or less general. Nature-study should be a matter of observation on the part of the pupils. The teacher's part is to indicate points for observation and not to tell what is to be seen. After the child has observed all that it is possible for him to see, the remainder of the story may be told him or may be read. The objects of nature-study should be always in the teacher's mind. These are, primarily, to cultivate the child's power of observation and to put him in sympathy with out-of-door life. Having these objects clearly in mind, the teacher will see that the spending of a certain amount of time each day giving lessons is not the most important part of the work. A great amount of nature-study may be done without spending a moment in a regular lesson. In the case of all the things kept in the schoolroom--_i. e._, growing plants, insects in cages and aquaria, tame birds and domestic animals--the children will study the problems for themselves. The privilege of watching these things should be made a reward of merit. The use of nature-study readers should be restricted. The stories in these should not be read until after the pupils have completed their own observations on the subjects of the stories. Stories about adventures of animals and adventures with animals may always be read with safety, as these do not, strictly speaking, belong to nature-study. They belong rather to literature and may be used most successfully to interest the child in nature. Blackboard drawings and charts should be used only to illustrate objects too small for the pupil to see with the naked eye. The pupil must also be made to understand that the object drawn on the board is a real enlargement of the object he has studied with his unaided eye. The use of a simple lens often contributes much interest to the work of observation. The compound microscope may be used to show some exceptionally interesting point, as the compound eyes of insects, the scales on the butterfly's wing, or the viscid thread of the spider. But this is by no means necessary. Nature-study work does not actually require the use of either microscope or lens, although the latter is a desirable adjunct. The great danger that besets the teacher just beginning nature-study is too much teaching, and too many subjects. In my own work I would rather a child spent one term finding out how one spider builds its orb web than that he should study a dozen different species of spiders. If the teacher at the end of the year has opened the child's mind and heart in two or three directions nature-ward, she has done enough. In teaching about animals, teach no more of the anatomy than is obviously connected with the distinctive habits of each one; _i. e._, the hind legs of a grasshopper are long so that it can jump, and the ears of a rabbit are long so that it can hear the approach of its foes. While it is desirable for the teacher to know more than she teaches, in nature-study she may well be a learner with her pupils since they are likely any day to read some page of nature's book never before read by human eyes. This attitude of companionship in studying with her pupils will have a great value in enabling her to maintain happy and pleasant relations with them. It has also great disciplinary value. _Reasons for and against graded courses in nature-study._ The question whether there should be a graded course in nature-study is decidedly a query with two answers. The reasons why there should not be a graded course, are: 1st. The work should be spontaneous and should be suggested each day by the material at hand. Mother Nature follows no schedule. She refuses to produce a violet one day, an oriole the next, and a blue butterfly on the third. 2d. A graded course means a hard and fast course which each teacher must follow whether or not her tastes and training coincide with it. 3d. There is no natural grading of nature-study work. A subject suited for nature-study may be given just as successfully in the first as in the fifth grade. There is only one reason why a nature-study course should be graded, and that is so cogent that it outweighs all the reasons on the other side: the training of the grade teacher in nature-study is at present so limited in subject-matter that if the course were ungraded the same work would be given over and over in the successive grades until the pupils became utterly weary of it. To many a pupil in the lower grades to-day, nature-study means the sprouting of beans and peas and nothing more. As a matter of experience, we believe that after a nature-study subject is once studied it should be dropped entirely, the pupil should not again meet it in the schoolroom until he finds it in its respective science in the high school or college. On this account, we have been persuaded that a graded course, or at least a consecutive course, is necessary. The following suggestions about grading the course are given with a hope of being helpful, and not because we believe that the courses indicated are necessarily the best courses possible. We have graded each subject so that a teacher may follow her own tastes and inclinations, and may not be forced to teach zoology when her interests are entirely with botany, or vice versa. We have tried to give a distinctive trend to the observations for each year, and have suggested a line along which the work may be done. As a matter of fact, however, the time to study any living thing is when you chance to find it. If you find an interesting caterpillar or cricket or bird, study it, whatever your grade of work. The probabilities are that it may be long before you chance upon these same species again. It has been the experience of most teachers that the lower grades are much more interested in nature-study than are the higher. Especially are the seventh and eighth grades difficult to interest. Therefore, we have made this part of the course economic in its bearing, hoping that this may appeal to the grown-up feeling of pupils of these grades. INSECTS. FIRST GRADE. The first year of work with insects may well be restricted to familiarizing the pupils with the three most striking phases in the life of insects with complete metamorphosis, _i. e._, the larvæ, the pupæ, and the winged insects. Moths and butterflies are especially adapted for this work with the small children. _Fall work._--In September there are still many caterpillars feeding. Bring them in the schoolroom and feed them in breeding cages. For different forms of cheap breeding cages, see Insect Life, pp. 326-330; Cornell Teachers' Leaflet, No. 5 (No. XIX, this volume); Lessons in Nature-Study, p. 45. During October many of the hairy caterpillars will be found hurrying along in quest of suitable winter quarters. These should be brought in and put in box cages having sand or dirt in the bottom. They are seeking secluded corners in which to curl up and hide during the cold weather. Some of them pass the winter in their cocoons, and some do not. Insect Life, pp. 239-241; Manual for Study of Insects, pp. 317-324; Moths and Butterflies, (_b_), pp. 191-198. Bring in as many cocoons as possible. November or December, after the leaves have fallen from the trees, is the best time in which to hunt for the cocoons of _Cecropia_, _Promethea_, and _Cynthia_. Insect Life, pp. 194-196; Moths and Butterflies, (_b_), pp. 119-180. Teach the pupils the difference between the cocoon and the pupa. The pupa is the quiescent form of the insect. The cocoon is the silken bag covering it, and is always made by the caterpillar before it changes to a pupa. If possible bring in some butterfly larvæ. In September many may be found. The cabbage butterfly especially is always with us. Insect Life, p. 245. Also the larvæ of the black swallow-tail may be easily found. Insect Life, p. 243; Everyday Butterflies, p. 130; Moths and Butterflies, (_b_), p. 39. Show the children (do not tell them) that the butterfly caterpillars do not make cocoons, but that the naked pupa is suspended by a silk button, and in some cases also by a silk thread. Many teachers complain that but few of the moths are able to get out of the cocoons. The usual reason for this is that in the heated atmosphere of the schoolroom the cocoons become too dry. To obviate this, the cocoons should be dipped in water every week or two. _Spring work._--During the spring term use the apple-tree tent-caterpillars. Cornell Teachers' Leaflet, No. 5 (No. XIX, this volume); Moths and Butterflies, (_b_) p. 201. Show the four stages of the insect: egg, caterpillar, pupa, and moth. Pay especial attention to the way in which the caterpillars grow. _Summary of methods._--This whole year's work may be done with no regular "lessons," and all the time required will be the care of the breeding cages and the time given to hunting for the caterpillars and cocoons. The child's reading may be selected from the many stories of the caterpillars, moths and butterflies. Yet be very careful to make each child understand that he himself is studying out the especial story of each caterpillar and cocoon in the schoolroom. SECOND GRADE. The plan for the second year is to continue the study of the life-histories of insects. The pupil, having learned the different stages of the moths and butterflies, should learn that all insects do not experience such marvelous changes of form. _Fall work._--Arrange a breeding cage like figs. 288, 289, Insect Life, p. 329, placing fresh sod in the flower pot and covering the lamp chimney with a square of wire netting. Push the glass chimney down into the earth so as to allow no crevices through which the insects may escape. In such a cage, place grasshoppers and crickets of all sizes, and study their growth. Insect Life, pp. 33-37. Show the pupils that the young grasshopper looks like the old one except that the wings are shorter; the same is true of crickets. Keep the sod damp so the grass will not become dry; and when it gets too old replace it with other sod. A good way to keep these insects alive and to keep the children interested in them is to plant wheat and grass seed in several flower pots, and then to move the glass chimney from pot to pot, giving the insects fresh pasturage when needed. As early as possible start some aquaria. Cornell Teachers' Leaflet, No. 11 (No. XII, this volume); Insect Life, pp. 330-332. The mosquito is one of the most available insects for study in the aquarium. Insect Life, pp. 131-136; Lessons in Nature-Study, p. 12. The nymphs of dragon flies and damsel flies and many others may be studied during the entire winter. Insect Life, pp. 140-142; Cornell Teachers' Leaflet, No. 11 (No. XII, this volume); Outdoor Studies, p. 54. Those that have cannibalistic habits should be kept apart, each one in a separate jar. They may be fed by dropping into the jar a bit of raw beefsteak tied to the end of a string. The purpose of the string is that the uneaten meat may be withdrawn before it decays. It should not be left in the water more than twenty-four hours. The insects do not need feeding more than twice a week. _Spring work._--In the spring get new material for the aquaria. In pools where there are many dead leaves look for the caddice worms that build the log cabin cases, for these may be kept in aquaria that have no running water. Insect Life, p. 149. While we advise the introduction of the aquaria during the second year, their use should be continued during the following four grades; there are always new things to study in ponds and streams, and nothing so fascinates a child as watching the movements of these little denizens of the water. _Summary of methods._--There need be no set lessons in the work of the second year, unless the teacher in a few words, now and then, chooses to call attention to certain things as the occasion seems to demand. The object of the year's work is to teach the pupil the life histories of insects which have no quiescent or pupa stage, and this should be accomplished by simple observation of specimens bred in the schoolroom. THIRD GRADE. The general subject of this year's work may well be the Homes of Insects. This is a most interesting topic, and if well taught will inspire the pupils to much individual observation and collecting. The questions to be asked concerning insect homes are: Of what material are they made? How are they made? What is the purpose of the home? Is it made by the insect for itself to live in, or is it made by the mother for the protection of her young? Is it made as a protection for the insects while they are eating, or do they go out to feed and come back only to rest and spend the night or day? _Fall work._--Leaf rollers: Insect Life, p. 206; Ways of the Six-Footed, p. 119. Leaf miners: Insect Life, p. 208; Ways of the Six-Footed, p. 29. Galls: Insect Life, p. 210; Outdoor Studies, pp. 18, 38-39. Fall web worm: Insect Life, p. 200. Scallop shell moth: Insect Life, p. 201. Nests of silver spotted skipper: Insect Life, p. 203; Everyday Butterflies, p. 190. Bag worms: Insect Life, p. 204. Ant lions: Outdoor Studies, p. 81. Carpenter bees: Ways of the Six-Footed, p. 108. Tiger beetle larvæ: Insect Life, pp. 270-272. All kinds of cocoons are found by the children. Ask concerning the cocoons: Where did you find them? Were they in protected places? Why? Of these nests there are many more than those mentioned above. In fact, to one who sees what he looks at, every plant, every tree, every fence corner and every foot along the country path contains many most interesting homes. The leaf rollers and leaf miners are the most common and most easily found of all. _Spring work._--The spring work in this subject may be to study the way in which caddice worms make their houses; take a caddice worm out of its house and watch it build another. This is a new phase of the study of caddice worms. Ways of the Six-Footed, p. 133. Study the homes of beetles under sticks and stones, and find the homes of the engraver beetles under bark. Insect Life, p. 216. This work must necessarily be done by the pupils out of school hours, and their discoveries and specimens of homes should be made topics for lessons for the whole school. During this term begin a butterfly calendar, made on the same plan as the bird calendar. A collection of butterflies might be started for the schoolroom in connection with the calendar. Study the specimens caught and determine whether they hibernated as adults or chrysalids. If their wings are battered and torn, they spent the winter as adults. If they are bright in colors and their wings perfect, they spent the winter in the chrysalis state. Hints for collecting insects: Cornell Teachers' Leaflet, No. 7 (No. XVIII, this volume); Insect Life, pp. 283-314 and pp. 48-49. How to Know the Butterflies. _Summary of methods._--The work in the third grade, as outlined, requires a lesson period now and then when single specimens are brought in by individual pupils. Each pupil should examine the specimen, and after that the lesson may be given. FOURTH GRADE. After having studied Insect Homes, the pupils will be ready to take up the broader subject, How Insects Live. The work of this year may be given on this subject. In order to study the life-histories of insects, the pupils should know some things about insect anatomy. If the work as indicated in the previous grades has been followed, the pupils know the number of legs, wings, and compound eyes most insects have, without ever having killed a specimen or having received a special lesson in insect anatomy. Now teach the children how insects breathe and how they eat. Show the spiracles on the body of any caterpillar which is not hairy; they may be seen on the abdomen of a grasshopper or of a butterfly that has not too many large scales to cover them. After they have seen these spiracles or breathing pores, give a lesson, illustrated by chart or blackboard, showing that these holes lead to the breathing tubes of the body. Manual for the Study of Insects, pp. 73-75. To show how insects eat, allow the pupils to watch the following insects in the breeding cages while feeding: a grasshopper; a leaf beetle (potato beetle is a good example); any caterpillar; an ant; and a wasp. Show that all these have mouth parts made for biting. Let the pupils see an aphid sucking the juice of a plant; this may be done by bringing in a twig infested by aphids. Let the pupils see the water bugs in the aquarium eat. Insect Life, pp. 123-131, and pp. 137-140. Let them watch a fly, a honey bee, and, if possible, a butterfly or moth, eat. All these have mouth parts made for sucking. All this work should be original investigation on the part of the pupils. After the pupils find out how insects breathe and eat, let them see how each insect lives a life adapted to its own peculiar needs. Try to feed some cabbage worms on clover or grass. Then try turnip or mustard leaves, and watch the result. Change the potato beetle larvæ to some other plant, and watch the result. Let the pupils first find out how the insects breathe in the water. Each insect in the aquarium tells a different story as to its way of getting air. The teacher will find all these stories indicated in the chapters in Insect Life devoted to pond and brook insects. Call especial attention to protective coloring of insects. Show that when an insect resembles its surroundings in color it is thereby enabled to escape its enemies; or, if need be, is enabled to creep upon its prey unobserved. Note the color of the grasshopper in the road; color of meadow grasshopper; color of the caterpillars of the cabbage butterfly (green and hard to find). Notice the shape and color of walking sticks; color of the katydids. Note the bright color of the larvæ of potato beetle. Why? (They are distasteful to birds, and their colors advertise the fact.) Study the Monarch butterfly and the Viceroy. Everyday Butterflies, p. 95 and p. 297; Ways of the Six-Footed, p. 39. Bring out strongly in all this work that the insect in order to live must have its special food plant and must escape notice of its enemies. This is the proper place to begin the study of the valuable work done by birds in destroying insects. In addition to this general work, study especially the wasps. Solitary Wasps: Mud daubers. Bring in their nests and examine them. Ways of the Six-Footed, p. 96. How are the nests provisioned, and for what purpose were they made? Find, if possible, nests of other solitary wasps. Insect Life, p. 218, p. 262, p. 264. Social Wasps: Bring in a deserted nest of yellow-jackets. Of what is it made? How? What for? Do the wasps store honey? Do they live as a colony during the winter? All these questions may be answered by a pupil who knows of a yellow-jackets' nest in the fall and watches it during the winter. For the teacher there are discussions of these insects in Manual for Study of Insects, pp. 660-664. Wasps and their Ways. Continue the butterfly collection and the butterfly calendar. _Spring work._--In the spring, begin a collection of moths for the schoolroom. Insect Life, p. 50. Caterpillars and Moths. In the spring, notice when the first house-flies appear. What happens to the house-fly in winter? (Send for Circular No. 35, second series, Div. of Entomology of Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C., for the life-history of the house-fly.) Explain that one female destroyed early in the season means thousands fewer late in the season. Encourage the children to bring to the schoolroom all sorts of flies and compare them with the house-fly. The object of this is to teach something of the wonderful variety of forms among small and inconspicuous insects. Make a collection of flies for the schoolroom. For description of flies, see Insect Life, pp. 83-84. A good plan for the spring work is to keep the pupils interested in the first appearance, after the vicissitudes of winter, of each insect which it is possible for them to find. Note that insects do not appear before their food plants appear. _Summary of objects and methods._--The questions to be answered during the whole year's work are: How do the Insects live,--on what do they feed? How do they escape their enemies? What happens to them in winter? How are the new broods started in the spring? The work is chiefly observation, but occasional lessons may be given and stories may be told to keep the interest in the work from flagging. FIFTH GRADE. _Fall work._--Study the Bees and Ants. Fit up ants' nests. Insect Life, p. 278. Teach the whole life-history by allowing the pupils to colonize the nests. Manual for Study of Insects, pp. 633-639; Insect Life, p. 271. Make observations upon the _eggs, pupæ, workers, males, females_. What are the winged forms that appear in swarms in June and July. Let the pupils observe the relation of ants to aphids. This may be done on almost any shrub or roadside plant. Home Nature-Study Lesson 1904, No. 8. The teacher should read Sir John Lubbock's "Ants, Bees and Wasps." Many stories on these subjects may be told and read, especially those concerning the habits of exotic ants and ant wars which the children are not likely to see; also of the slave-making ants. These slave-making ants are quite common in New York State; their nests may be found under stones. They resemble the brown mound-builder ant; the slaves are black. _Spring work._--In the spring work in this grade, study the habits of the honey bee. An observation hive is desirable but not necessary. Bring in the honeycomb filled with honey. If there are apiarists in your neighborhood, they will gladly give you specimens of brood in the comb. Read The Bee People and the Manual for Study of Insects, p. 673. Develop all the facts of the wonderful life in the hive by letting the pupils observe them as far as possible. Then give them the many interesting stories: Story of the Workers. Story of the Queen. Story of the Drone. Story of the Bee Larva. Story of Honey Making. Story of Wax and Comb Making. Story of the Swarm. In connection with the study of the honey bee, study the bumble bee. Manual for Study of Insects, pp. 672-673; Insect Life, p. 256. Begin with the study of the big queen that appears in May or June. Show that she is of great benefit to us and must not be harmed or frightened. Let the bumble bee's nest be a problem for summer observation, and finish the study in the next grade in the fall. _Summary of objects and methods._--The work of this year should have for its objects the harmonious life of social insects; their unselfish work for each other; their devotion to their respective colonies; their ways of building and of defending their habitations. The work should be based upon observations made by the pupils in and out of the schoolroom. Many lessons should be given, mostly in the form of stories. Ways of the Six-Footed, pp. 55-94. SIXTH GRADE. _Fall work._--Study the spiders. Lessons in Nature-Study, p. 103; Insect Life, pp. 223-232. Cornell Teachers' Quarterly, final number (No. XV, this volume). In order to study spiders, they need not be handled with bare hands. While all spiders are venomous to the same extent, perhaps, that a mosquito or a bee is venomous, there is only one species in the eastern United States (and that is very rare) the bite of which need be feared by human beings. The use of spiders in nature-study does not have to do with handling living specimens, but rather with the habits of the different species and the building of the webs. In catching spiders to bring into the schoolroom, use the method indicated by Professor Kellogg in Nature-Study Lessons. Capture the specimen by the use of a pill box: take the box in one hand and the cover in the other, and catch the spider by suddenly closing the box over it. The pupils should be made to observe the chief differences between spiders and insects; _i. e._, spiders have two regions of the body instead of three as in insects; eight legs instead of six, simple eyes instead of compound. Compare spiders with daddy-long-legs. If the teacher chooses to kill a specimen and show the arrangement of the eyes and the spinnerets under the microscope, she may do so. This is not necessary, although I have seen it done successfully in the sixth grade. Diagrams and blackboard drawings may be used instead of the microscope. Let the pupils observe the uses of silk by the spider: 1. Snare for prey. 2. To enwrap prey when first entangled. 3. Nests for eggs. 4. Lining for habitations. 5. Means of locomotion. Introduce the grass spider into the schoolroom in glass jars containing grass sod, and let the pupils observe it at work. Encourage a study of cobwebs. Capture the owner of an orb web, and bring it in a glass jar to the schoolroom. Try to give it its natural environment; _i. e._, some sort of frame or branch of tree on which it may fasten its web. The orb web: 1. How is it made? 2. Of how many kinds of silk? 3. The way the spiral thread is arranged as shown by drawings. 4. The position of the spider on the web. 5. The way the spider passes from one side of the web to the other. 6. The way it treats its prey when the victim is once entangled. The engineering ability shown in making this web is one of the most marvelous things in all the realm of animal life. These observations may well cover two months of this term. Study the ballooning spiders, the jumping spiders, the running spiders, and the crab spiders. Study as many egg-sacs of spiders as possible. Another topic for study during the fall term is the Songs of Insects. Insect Life, p. 235. Bring in the katydids, crickets, and meadow grasshoppers, place them in cages containing green sod, and observe them while they are singing. Note that only the males sing. Show the ears of the crickets, katydids, and meadow grasshoppers in the elbows of their front legs. The ear of the grasshopper is on the side of the segment of the abdomen next to the thorax. Ways of the Six-Footed, pp. 3-27. Study snowy tree cricket. Manual for Study of Insects, p. 118. If possible, get a cicada as these insects continue to sing through the warm days of September. Show the cover to the drums on the lower side of the common cicada. Cornell Nature-Study Bulletin, No. 1, p. 24 (No. VI, this volume). This can be made a most interesting subject, and pupils should be encouraged to do observation work outside of school. Begin a general collection for schoolroom. _Spring work._--Continue making a general collection for the schoolroom, and specialize in this direction. When an insect is brought in and added to the collection, if the teacher knows the insect, a lesson should be given on its life and habits. This connecting of the life and habits of the insects with the collection of dead specimens is of greater value from a nature-study point of view than the collection itself. _Summary of methods._--While this year's work must be based on the observations of the pupils in the schoolroom and out-of-doors, yet many interesting lessons may be given by the teacher. SEVENTH GRADE. The study of this entire year may be the relation of insects to flowers. Most of the references are given in the Plant-life work for this grade. The insect work may be limited to: What insects visit flowers? How do they carry pollen? How does each kind of insect reach the nectar? Which insects are robbers, and which are true pollen carriers? The use of pollen by insects. Outdoor Studies, pp. 7-12. Take up the study of golden rod and its insect visitors, _i. e._, let the pupils watch a bunch of golden rod and note all the insect visitors. For directions concerning this work see Outdoor Studies, pp. 29-46. In the same way take up the study of asters and the late flowers, and their insect visitors. Describe the visitor; what it does; what part of the plant it visits. _Summary of objects and methods._--The object of this whole year's work is to show the beautiful inter-relation between insects and flowers. The studies must necessarily be made in the field. But many delightful lessons may be given on the structure of flowers, that make of greatest use to the flowers the work of insect visitors. EIGHTH GRADE. The object of this year's work is the economic side of insect-study. Many pupils do not continue these studies to high school or college. Yet if they have homes with gardens or trees in city or country, they must learn to cope with the many insect enemies that feed upon cultivated plants. They should also learn to discriminate between insect friends and foes. They should learn the best methods of combating the foes and preserving the friends. Explain first that in fighting an insect enemy we must know how it eats. If it inserts its beak in the stem of the plant there is no use trying to kill it by putting poison on the leaves. COMMON INSECT FOES. To be studied in the schoolroom: _Fall work._--Codlin-moth. Insect Life, p. 180. Show work on an apple, and give methods of destroying it. Plum curculio. Insect Life, p. 182. The pomace flies. Insect Life, p. 184. Scale insects. Manual for Study of Insects, pp. 165-174. Potato beetle. Manual for Study of Insects, p. 176. _Spring work._--Tussock moths and canker worms. Circular No. 9, 2d Series, Dept. Agr., Div. of Ent., Washington, D. C.; Cornell Teachers' Circular, No. 1. Cabbage worms. How to Know the Butterflies. Currant worms. Manual for Study of Insects, pp. 613-614. Plant lice or aphids. Insect Life, pp. 177-178. Carpet beetle. Circular No. 5, 2d Series, Dept. Agr., Washington, D. C.; Manual for Study of Insects, p. 539. Clothes moth. Manual for Study of Insects, pp. 257-258; Circular No. 36, 2d Series, Dept. Agr., Washington, D. C. Tent caterpillar. Cornell Teachers' Leaflet, No. 5 (No. XIX, this volume). A study of spraying should be made. Insects and Insecticides, pp. 39-56. Spray Calendar, distributed free by the Cornell Agricultural Experiment Station. Important Insecticides. Farmers' Bulletin No. 127, Dept. Agr., Washington, D. C. INSECT FRIENDS. _Fall work._--Lady bugs. Insect Life, p. 179. Aphis lions. Insect Life, p. 178; Ways of the Six-Footed, p. 125. Red clover and the bumble bee. Parasitic insects. Manual for Study of Insects, pp. 621-630. _Spring work._--Bees and orchard in blossom. _Summary of methods._--The observations may be made in the schoolroom or out-of-doors. There should be observations of experiments in spraying. This may be accomplished in most localities by encouraging the pupils to visit orchards undergoing the operation of spraying. However, by means of syringe or watering pot, the infested plants brought into the schoolroom may be sprayed and the results noted. Lessons should be given on the importance of preserving insect friends while we are destroying insect enemies. OTHER ANIMALS ADAPTED FOR NATURE-STUDY. _The Toad and Frog._ The study of either of these two species is delightful spring work for any grade. Cornell Teachers' Leaflet, No. 9 (No. XVI, this volume); Wilderness Ways, p. 25. _Salamanders or Efts._ Familiar Life of the Roadside. _Fishes._ Observations upon goldfish or minnows kept in an aquarium should be made the basis of lessons upon the life of fishes. Study: (1) The shape of the body; see how it is especially adapted to rapid movement through the water. (2) The shape and arrangement of the fins, and their uses. (3) How the fish propels itself through the water. (4) How the fish breathes. (5) The shape of the fish's mouth, and how and what it eats. (6) Experiment to ascertain the ability of the fish to see and hear. Cornell Teachers' Leaflet, No. 21 (Nos. XIII and XXXVI, this volume). Encourage observations of habits of different species of fish common in our ponds and streams. Study their eggs and the places where they are found. Teach the children the reason for the game laws, and impress upon them a true respect for those laws. Food and Game Fishes. _Mice._ Some house mice in an improvised cage may be placed in the schoolroom, and the habits of the little creatures observed. Give them paper to see how they make their nests. Note how and what they eat, and how they clean themselves. Note shape of teeth and their use. If possible, study the wild mice. Squirrels and Other Fur Bearers, p. 111; Wild Life, p. 171. _Squirrels and Chipmunks._ The work on these animals must be based on out-of-door observations. Try to get the pupils to discover for themselves answers to the following questions: How and where do they travel? What do they eat? Where and how do they carry their food? Do they store it for winter? If so, where? What do they do in winter? Squirrels and Other Fur Bearers, p. 15, p. 134; Wild Neighbors, p. 1. _Rabbits._--A domesticated rabbit should, if possible, be kept in the schoolyard so that the pupils may make their own observations upon its habits. Let them study: How and what it eats. The shape of its teeth. The form and use of the ears. How does it travel? What sort of tracks does it make, and why? From these observations lead the pupils to think of the life of the wild rabbit, how it is adapted to escape from its enemies and to get its food. Ways of Wood Folk, p. 41; Story of Raggylug. _Guinea pigs._--These little animals are easily kept in the schoolroom, and, though not particularly interesting in their habits, they prove attractive to the smaller children and may be studied in the same way as the other animals. _Domestic animals._--These need not be studied in the schoolroom, as the pupils, if they have opportunity, can make the observations at home. Studies of the horse, cow, pig, sheep, and goat, and also the cat and dog may be made most interesting. Such questions as these may be asked concerning each: What is the characteristic form of the animal? What is its clothing? What does it eat? How are its teeth adapted to its food? What is its chief use to man? How does it travel, slow or fast? How are its feet adapted to its way of running or walking? Has it a language? How many emotions can it express by sound? How many can it express by action? How does it fight, and what are its weapons? What sort of life did its wild ancestors live? How did they get their food, and how did they escape from their enemies? _Summary of methods of nature-study of animals._--Study only so much anatomy as is clearly adapted to the animal's ways of living. Observations made by the pupils should be arranged into lessons by either pupil or teacher. Such lessons make excellent English themes, and they may be adapted to any grade. BIRDS. Begin the study of birds by the careful study of some domesticated species that may be observed closely and for a long period. The hen is perhaps the best for this purpose. Study carefully all of the adaptations of her anatomy to her life necessities. Study shape of her body; the feathers; the bill; her food; how she eats; drinks; the shape of her feet; their covering; how she sees; hears; smells; sleeps; study the life of a chick; study the language of chick, hen and cock; embryology of a chick. Study a robin or some bird that builds near houses. Note all its habits from the time it appears in spring until autumn. Bird houses and bird protection. Usefulness of birds. Our Native Birds, Lange. Publications of U. S. Dept. Agr. _Summary of methods._--It is much more important that the pupil know the habits of one species than that he should know by name many species. Therefore encourage patient watching and careful observation concerning the things which birds do. Such observations may be made into lessons by pupil or by teacher for the benefit of all the pupils. First Book of Birds, and Second Book of Birds; Bird Lore; The Story of the Birds; Bird Neighbors. PLANTS. FIRST GRADE. _Fall term._--Let the children study the different forms and the colors of leaves. By no means teach the botanical terms for all the shapes of leaves; simply let the children gather and bring in all the different kinds of leaves they can find. Let them draw the different forms in their blank books. Press leaves and mount them. The object of this work is to give the child an idea of the great number of leaf forms and colors, and to get him interested in observing them. References: Botany, Bailey, pp. 90-100; Lessons with Plants, pp. 79-90; Gray's How Plants Grow, chapter on Leaves and Forms of Leaves; Elements of Botany, pp. 89-93. _Winter and spring terms._--Let the children study vegetables. The following questions should be answered concerning a vegetable. What part of the plant is it? Does it grow below or above ground? What sort of leaf has it? What sort of flower? What sort of fruit or seed? Lessons with Plants, pp. 353, 356, 364; First Studies, pp. 50, 51, 174; Botany, Bailey, pp. 31-37; Cornell Teachers' Quarterly, No. 7 (No. XXXIX, this volume). SECOND GRADE. Teach the use of the flower. Do this by bringing in all flowers possible, and show that as the flower fades the fruit becomes evident. Let the pupils observe for themselves the fact that the flower exists for the sake of the fruit. Interest the pupils in all kinds of fruits and seeds. This is not the place to teach seed dispersion, but simply the forms and colors of fruits and seeds. Let the pupils also observe that insects carry pollen from flower to flower. Do not give the explanation of this to children of this age, but let them see the bees at work. For this work see Plant World, by Mrs. Bergen, pp. 80-107. Let the pupils observe the following things in plant physiology: Flowers sleep: Botany, Bailey, p. 50; Lessons with Plants, p. 402; Plants, Coulter, pp. 9, 10, 48; Elements of Botany, p. 98. Plants turn toward the light: Elements of Botany, p. 100; Botany, Bailey, p. 50; First Studies, p. 136. Effect of frost on flowers and leaves. _Winter and spring work._--Seed germination: First Studies, pp. 1-24; Lessons with Plants, pp. 316-331; Botany, Bailey, pp. 164-171; Cornell Teachers' Leaflet, No. 1 (No. XXVIII, this volume); Plants, p. 307; Lessons in Nature-Study, p. 22. Let the pupils observe in the field: Position of leaves when first open. A Reader in Botany, by Newell, Part I, p. 84. Position of leaves and flowers in the rain. First Studies, p. 135; Elements of Botany, pp. 175-176; Plants, p. 51. THIRD GRADE. _Fall work._--The fall work of this grade may be (1) The way flowers make fruit, _i. e._, the way the fruit is formed from the flower. (2) The dispersion of seeds. Fruits. First Studies, pp. 168-171; Lessons with Plants, pp. 251-310; Botany, Bailey, pp. 147-157. Seed dispersion. First Studies, p. 176; Plant World, pp. 133-156; Little Wanderers, by Morley; Seed Dispersal, by Beal; Cornell Teachers' Quarterly, No. 2 (No. VIII, this volume); Seed Travelers, by Weed; Botany, Bailey, p. 158. Let the pupils observe: "How some plants get up in the world." First Studies, p. 150; Lessons with Plants, p. 396; Botany, Bailey, p. 108. _Spring work._--Opening of the buds. Lessons with Plants, pp. 48-63; First Studies, p. 33. Arrangement of buds. Lessons with Plants, pp. 63-69. Expansion of bark. Lessons with Plants, pp. 69-72. FOURTH GRADE. The object of this year's work may be the teaching of the value of earth, air, light, and water upon plants. _Fall work._--Experiments to show these to be carried on in schoolroom. Experiments to show value of earth to plants: (1) Plant seeds in fertile earth; poor earth; clean sand or sawdust. (2) Plant seeds in sawdust and on cotton batting placed on water in a jar. Experiments to show use of light to plants: (1) Sow seeds in two boxes of earth prepared just alike. Place one in the window, one in a dark closet, and note results. (2) Place house plants from greenhouse in a window, and note change of position of leaves. (3) The story of the sunflower. Experiments showing use of water to plants: (1) Place a very much wilted cut plant in water, and note result. (2) Place seeds in earth which is dry, and in earth which is kept moist. (3) Plant seeds on batting floating on a tumbler of water, and note results. These experiments should extend over several weeks. _Winter and spring work._--Begin the study of trees. Choose some tree in the schoolyard, if possible, and make this the basis of the work. The following is an outline for the study of a maple tree: Begin observations in January. Make drawings of the tree, showing the relations of branches to trunk and general outline. Note the following details: The color of trunk and branches in January, and the color in February and March; when the buds begin to swell; the arrangement of buds; watch closely to determine whether a bud develops into a blossom or a leaf; the peculiarities of bark on trunk and branches; do the leaves or the blossoms appear first; the shape and color of the blossoms; draw them and study them thoroughly; the color and position of the leaves when they first appear; draw the different stages of the unfolding of the leaves; keep a calendar of all the year's history of the tree; when in full leaf make another drawing of the whole tree; study the tree from below, and if possible from above, to show arrangement of leaves in reference to light; make drawings of the fruit when it is formed; study how it travels; when the first autumn tints appear; make colored drawings of the tree in its autumn foliage, and note when leaves begin to fall and when the branches are finally bare; note different form of maple in the open and maple in the forest. In connection with the year's history of the tree, study the tree from an economic point of view. Make a special study of sugar-making in connection with the maple tree. Study maple wood. To do this get a quarter section of a piece of maple log and study the grain lengthwise and in cross sections. Study all the industries possible in which maple is used. Devote one notebook to all the work on the maple tree, and at the end summarize the observations. For drawing of trees, see Cornell Teachers' Leaflet, No. 12 (Nos. XXIX and XXX, this volume). Home Nature-Study, Vol. V, Nos. 2, 5. FIFTH GRADE. The work during this grade may be devoted to plant physiology. For this work use First Studies of Plant Life, Atkinson. The experiments described in this book are simple and excellent; they give the pupil definite knowledge of the life processes of plants, and the use to the plant of roots, stems, leaves, flowers, and fruit. Continue studies of trees. Select some other species than the one studied during the last grade. Study it in the same way. Note the differences between the two. Two or three contrasting species may thus be studied. SIXTH GRADE. Having studied in the previous year the uses of different parts of the plant, the pupil will be fitted now to take up the general subject of weeds. Take some common forms and let the pupils observe that they grow where other plants do not grow, or that they drive out other plants; then study the special reasons why each kind of weed is able to do these things. Botany, Bailey, pp. 214-222; Elements of Botany, pp. 196-205. During the autumn another subject for study in this grade is _Mushrooms_. Lead the pupils to see how these flowerless plants produce seed, and let them bring in as many forms as possible. Do not try to teach which mushrooms are poisonous. Lessons with Plants, p. 347; Mushrooms, by Atkinson. _Winter work._--Evergreen trees. Cornell Teachers' Leaflet, No. 13 (No. XXXIII, this volume). _Spring work._--The spring work may well be the making of a calendar for trees and plants. Keep a record each day of the leafage of plants, the appearance of weeds, and the appearance of blossoms of fruit trees and all common flowers. Record which appear first, leaves or blossoms. This work will be good preparation for the study of the "struggle for existence," which comes in the next grade. SEVENTH GRADE. The work for this year, both fall and spring, may be the study of the cross fertilization of flowers. Choose a few of the common flowers, and let the pupils study the means by which pollen is carried from flower to flower. In studying any flower fertilized by insects always ask: Where is the nectary? Where in relation to the nectary are the stigma and the anthers? What path must the insect follow in order to get the nectar? Do the flowers attract insects by color? By fragrance? What insects do you find visiting the flowers studied? Lessons with Plants, pp. 224-245; Plants, Coulter, pp. 109-137; Elements of Botany, pp. 182-196; Readers in Botany, Newell, Part II, p. 86; Plant World, Bergen, pp. 57-127; Ten New England Blossoms, Weed. The cross fertilization of flowers is only one adaptation for succeeding in the struggle for existence. Study as many other ways of insuring the continuance of a plant as is possible. Botany, Bailey, pp. 197-217; Lessons with Plants, pp. 15-20; Elements of Botany, pp. 199-212. Study plant communities. Botany, Bailey, pp. 219-227; Plant Relations, pp. 146, 162, 168; Plant Structures, p. 313; Cornell Teachers' Leaflet, No. 19 (No. XXXV, this volume). EIGHTH GRADE. It seems to be the experience of most teachers that pupils of the seventh and eighth grades are with difficulty kept interested in nature-study. This is probably due to the fact that the methods suited to earlier grades are not suited to these. Pupils of this age, now feeling "grown up," are attracted only by more mature work. They may be interested in some of the following subjects: _Horticulture and Gardening._--Cornell Teachers' Leaflets. Garden-Making; The Pruning-Book; The Principles of Fruit-Growing; The Principles of Vegetable-Gardening, all by Bailey. Plant Culture, by Goff. _Forestry._--Relations of forests to preservation of rain-fall and streams. Preservation of Forests. Use of Forests. Reforesting waste lands, etc. A Primer of Forestry by Pinchot, United States Department Agriculture. A First Book of Forestry, Roth. _Ferns._--Study and make collections of all the ferns of the locality. Make drawings of each fern and its fruiting organs, and press and mount the specimens with full accounts of habits and locality of the plant. How to Know the Ferns, Mrs. Parsons; Gray's Botany; Our Ferns, Clute. BIBLIOGRAPHY.[7] [7] This list comprises some of the books that have been helpful to me. It is not intended to be complete. Good new books are constantly appearing. The teacher should endeavor to keep up with the new books. INSECTS. Every Day Butterflies. S. H. Scudder. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. $2.00. Insect Life. J. H. Comstock. D. Appleton & Co. $1.25. Lessons in Nature-Study. Jenkins & Kellogg. W. B. Harrison, $1.00. Manual for Study of Insects. J. H. Comstock. Comstock Pub. Co. $3.75. Moths and Butterflies. (a) Julia P. Ballard. Putnam's Sons. $1.50. Moths and Butterflies. (b) Mary C. Dickerson. Ginn & Co. $2.50. Stories of Insect Life. Weed & Murtfeldt. Ginn & Co. 35 cents. Outdoor Studies. James B. Needham. American Book Co. 40 cents. Bee People. Margaret W. Morley. A. C. McClurg. $1.25. The Butterfly Book. W. J. Holland. Doubleday, Page & Co. $3.00. Caterpillars and Their Moths. Eliot and Soule. The Century Co. $2.00. Wasps and Their Ways. Margaret W. Morley. Dodd, Mead & Co. $1.50. The Ways of the Six-Footed. Anna Botsford Comstock. Ginn & Co. 40 cents. How to Know the Butterflies. J. H. and Anna Botsford Comstock. D. Appleton & Co. $2.25. ANIMALS OTHER THAN INSECTS. Animal Life. Jordan & Kellogg. D. Appleton & Co. $1.25. Familiar Fish. Eugene McCarthy. D. Appleton & Co. $1.50. Story of the Fishes. James N. Baskett. D. Appleton & Co. 65 cents. Familiar Life of the Roadside. Schuyler Mathews. D. Appleton & Co. $1.75. Squirrels and Other Fur Bearers. John Burroughs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. $1.00. Wild Life in Orchard and Field. Harper & Bros. Wild Neighbors. The Macmillan Co. Ernest Ingersoll. $1.50 each. Kindred of the Wild. Roberts. L. C. Page. $2.00. Wild Life Near Home. Dallas Lore Sharp. The Century Co. $2.00. Four Footed Americans. Wright. The Macmillan Co. $1.50. American Animals. Stone & Cram. Doubleday, Page & Co. $4.00. Food and Game Fishes. Jordan & Evermann. Doubleday, Page & Co. $4.00. Various books that deal with animals from the story or narrative point of view will be found to be interesting and helpful. They are often useful in arousing an interest in the subject. There are many good animal books not mentioned in the above list. Birds. Bird Homes. A. R. Dugmore. Doubleday, Page & Co. $2.00. Bird Life (with colored plates). Frank M. Chapman. D. Appleton & Co. $5.00. Bird Neighbors. Neltje Blanchan. Doubleday, Page & Co. $2.00. Birds of Village and Field. Florence Merriam. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. $2.00. First Book of Birds. Olive Thorne Miller. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. $1.00. Second Book of Birds. Olive Thorne Miller. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. $1.00. Our Native Birds. D. Lange. The Macmillan Co. $1.00. Story of the Birds. James N. Baskett. D. Appleton & Co. 65 cents. How to Attract the Birds. Neltje Blanchan. Doubleday, Page & Co. $1.35. The Bird Book. Eckstorm. D. C. Heath & Co. 80 cents. The Relations of Birds to Man. Weed & Dearborn. Lippincott. $2.50. The Woodpeckers. F. H. Eckstorm. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. $1.00. Bird Lore. A magazine. The Macmillans. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. $1.00. PLANT LIFE. Botany; an Elementary Text for Schools. L. H. Bailey. The Macmillan Co. $1.00. Corn Plants. F. L. Sargent. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 60 cents. Elements of Botany. J. Y. Bergen. Ginn & Co. $1.10. Familiar Flowers of Field and Garden. S. Mathews. D. Appleton & Co. $1.75. First Studies in Plant Life. George F. Atkinson. Ginn & Co. 70 cents. Flowers and Their Friends. Margaret W. Morley. Ginn & Co. 60 cents. Flowers of Field, Hill and Swamp. C. Creevey. Harper & Bros. $2.50. Glimpses at the Plant World. Fanny D. Bergen. Ginn & Co. 35 cents. A Guide to the Wild Flowers. Alice Lounsberry. Frederick A. Stokes Co. $2.50. How Plants Grow. Asa Gray. American Book Co. 80 cents. How to Know the Ferns. Mrs. Frances Theodore Parsons. Chas. Scribner's Sons. $1.50. Our Ferns in Their Haunts. Clute. Stokes Co. $2.00. How to Know the Wild Flowers. Mrs. Wm. Starr Dana. Chas. Scribner's Sons. $2.00. Lessons With Plants. L. H. Bailey. The Macmillan Co. $1.10. Little Wanderers. Margaret W. Morley. Ginn & Co. 35 cents. Mushrooms. George F. Atkinson. Andrus & Church, Ithaca, N. Y. $3.00. Plants; a text-book of botany. J. M. Coulter. D. Appleton & Co. $2.00. Plants and Their Children. Mrs. Wm. Starr Dana. American Book Co. 65 cents. Reader in Botany. J. H. Newell. 2 vols. Ginn & Co. 70 cents. Seed Dispersal. W. J. Beal. Ginn & Co. 40 cents. Ten New England Blossoms. Clarence M. Weed. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. $1.25. With the Wild Flowers, $1.00; Field, Forest and Wayside Flowers, $1.50. Maud Going. Baker, Taylor & Co. Flowers and Their Insect Visitors. Gibson. Newson & Co. $1.00. TREES. A Guide to the Trees. Alice Lounsberry. Frederick A. Stokes Co. $2.50. Familiar Trees and Their Leaves. S. Mathews. D. Appleton & Co. $1.75. Our Native Trees. Our Native Shrubs. Harriet Keeler. Chas. Scribner's Sons. $2.00 each. A Primer of Forestry. Pinchot. U. S. Dept. Agri. Getting Acquainted with the Trees. J. H. McFarland. Outlook Co. $1.75. The First Book of Forestry. Roth. Ginn & Co. $1.00. Among Green Trees. Julia E. Rogers. Mumford. $3.00. Trees, Shrubs and Vines. Parkhurst. Chas. Scribner's Sons. $1.50. Practical Forestry. John Gifford. D. Appleton & Co. $1.20. * * * * * The Nature-Study Idea. L. H. Bailey. Doubleday, Page & Co. $1.00. Science Sketches. David Starr Jordan. McClurg & Co. $1.50. Poetry of the Seasons. Mary I. Lovejoy. Silver, Burdette & Co. 60 cents. Nature in Verse. Mary I. Lovejoy. Silver, Burdette & Co. 60 cents. Nature Pictures by American Poets. The Macmillan Co. $1.25. Arbor Day Manual. Charles Skinner. Bardeen & Co. $2.50. Songs of Nature. John Burroughs. McClure, Phillips & Co. $1.50. Among Flowers and Trees. Wait & Leonard. Lee & Shepherd. $2.00. LEAFLET VI. A SUMMER SHOWER.[8] BY R. S. TARR. [8] Teachers' Leaflet, No. 14: Cornell Nature-Study Bulletin, June, 1899. [Illustration] A Rainstorm comes, the walks are wet, the roads are muddy. Then the sun breaks through the clouds and soon the walks are no longer damp and the mud of the road is dried. Where did the water come from and where has it gone? Let us answer these questions. A kettle on the stove is forgotten and soon a cracking is heard; the housewife jumps to her feet for the kettle is dry. The kettle was filled with water, but it has all boiled away; and where has it gone? Surely into the air of the room, for it can be seen issuing as "steam" and then disappearing from view, as if by magic. The heat of the fire has changed the liquid water to a gas as invisible as the air itself. This gas is _water vapor_. [Illustration: _Fig. 9. A glass of cold water on which vapor has condensed in drops._] Do you wish to prove that the water vapor is there, although unseen? Then, if the day is cool, watch the window and notice the drops of water collect upon it. Or, if the day is warm, bring an ice-cold glass or pitcher into the room and see the drops collect upon it (Fig. 9). People sometimes say, when drops of water collect on a glass of cold water, that the glass is "sweating;" but see whether the same thing will not happen with a cold glass that does not contain water. These two simple observations teach us two very important facts: (1) That heat will change liquid water to an invisible vapor, or gas, which will float about in the air of a room; and (2) that cold will cause some of the vapor to change back to liquid water. Let us observe a little further. The clothes upon the line on wash day are hung out wet and brought in dry. If the sun is shining they probably dry quickly; but will they not dry even if the sun is not shining? They will, indeed; so here is another fact to add to our other two, namely (3) that the production of vapor from water will proceed even when the water is not heated. This change of water to vapor is called _evaporation_. The water evaporates from the clothes; it also evaporates from the walks after a rain, from the mud of the road, from the brooks, creeks and rivers, and from ponds, lakes, and the great ocean itself. Indeed, wherever water is exposed to the air some evaporation is taking place. Yet heat aids evaporation, as you can prove by taking three dishes of the same kind and pouring the same amount of water into each, then placing one on the stove, a second in the sun, and a third in a cool, shady place, as a cellar, and watching to see which is the last to become dry. About three-fourths of the earth's surface is covered by water, so that the air is receiving vapor all the time. In fact, every minute thousands of barrels of water-vapor are rising into the atmosphere from the surface of the ocean. The air is constantly moving about, forming winds, and this load of vapor is, therefore, drifted about by the winds, so that the air you are breathing may have in it vapor that came from the ocean hundreds or even thousands of miles away. You do not see the vapor, you are perhaps not even aware that it is there; yet in a room 10 feet high and 20 feet square there is often enough vapor, if it could all be changed back to water to fill a two-quart measure. There is a difference in the amount of vapor from time to time. Some days the air is quite free from it, and then clothes will dry rapidly. On other days the air is damp and humid; then people say it is "muggy," or that the "humidity is high." On these muggy days in summer the air is oppressive because there is so much vapor in it. Near the sea, where there is so much water to evaporate, the air is commonly more humid or moist than in the interior, away from the sea, where there is less water to evaporate. We have seen that there is some vapor in all air, and that there is more at some times than at others. We have also seen how it has come into the air, and that cold will cause it to condense to liquid water on cold window panes and on water glasses. There are other ways in which the vapor may be changed to liquid. After a summer day, even when there has been no rain, soon after the sun sinks behind the western horizon the grass becomes so damp that one's feet are wet in walking through it. The dew is "falling." During the daytime the grass is warmed by the sun; but when the sun is gone it grows cooler, much as a stove becomes cool when the fire is out. This cool grass chills the air near it and changes some of the vapor to liquid, which collects in drops on the grass, as the vapor condenses on the outside of a glass of ice water. In the opposite season of the year, on a cold winter's day, when you step out of a warm house into the chilly air, a thin cloud, or fog, forms as you expel the air from your lungs, and you say that you can "see your breath." What you really see are the little drops of water formed as the vapor-laden breath is chilled on passing from the warm body to the cold air. The vapor is condensed to form a tiny mist. [Illustration: _Fig. 10. A wreath of fog settled in a valley with the hilltops rising above it._] Doubtless you have seen a wreath of fog settling in a valley at night; or in the morning you may have looked out upon a fog that has gathered there during the night (Fig. 10). If your home happens to be upon a hillside, perhaps you have been able to look down upon the fog nestled there like a cloud on the land, which it really is. Such a fog is caused in very nearly the same way as the tiny fog made by breathing. The damp air in the valley has been chilled until the vapor has condensed to form tiny mist or fog particles. Without doubt you can tell why this fog disappears when the sun rises and the warm rays fall upon it. On the ocean there are great fogs, covering the sea for hundreds of miles; they make sailing dangerous, because the sailors cannot see through the mist, so that two vessels may run together, or a ship may be driven upon the coast before the captain knows it. Once more, this is merely condensed vapor caused by chilling air that has become laden with vapor. This chilling is often caused when warm, damp winds blow over the cold parts of the ocean. This leads the way to an understanding of a rain storm; but first we must learn something about the temperature of the air. The air near the ground where we live is commonly warmer than that above the ground where the clouds are. People who have gone up in balloons tell us so; and now scientific men who are studying this question are in the habit of sending up great kites, carrying thermometers and other instruments, in order to find out about the air far above the ground. [Illustration: _Fig. 11. Fog clouds among the valleys in the mountains, only the mountain peaks projecting above them._] It is not necessary, however, to send up a kite or a balloon to prove this. If your home is among mountains, or even among high hills, you can prove it for yourself; for often, in the late autumn, when it rains on the lower ground, it snows upon the mountain tops, so that when the clouds have cleared away the surface of the uplands is robed in white (Fig. 12). In the springtime, or in the winter during a thaw, people living among these highlands often start out in sleighs on a journey to a town, which is in the valley, and before they reach the valley their horses are obliged to drag the sleigh over bare ground. It is so much warmer on the lower ground that the snow melts away much more quickly than it does among the hills. The difference in temperature is, on the average, about one degree for every three hundred feet, so that a hill top rising twelve hundred feet above a valley would have an average temperature about four degrees lower than the valley. Now some mountains, even in New York, rise thousands of feet above the surrounding country. They rise high into the regions of cold air, so that they are often covered with snow long before any snow has fallen on the lowlands; and the snow remains upon them long after it has disappeared from the lower country (Fig. 12). [Illustration: _Fig. 12. A mountain whitened by snow on the top, while there is no snow at the base._] Some mountains are so lofty that it never rains upon them, but snows instead; and they are never free from snow, even in mid-summer. If one climbs to the top of such peaks he finds it always very cold there. While he is shivering from the cold he can look down upon the green fields where the birds are singing, the flowers blossoming and the men, working in the fields, are complaining of the heat. [Illustration: _Fig. 13. A mountain peak snow capped, and covered on the very crest by a cloud._] One who watches such a mountain as this, or in fact any mountain peak, will notice that it is frequently wrapped in clouds (Fig. 13). Damp winds blowing against the cold mountains are chilled and the vapor is condensed. If one climbs through such a cloud, as thousands of people have done when climbing mountains, he often seems to pass through nothing but a fog, for really many clouds are only fogs high in the air. (Fig. 14). But very often rain falls from these clouds that cling to the mountain sides. The reason for this is easy to understand. As the air comes against the cold mountains so much vapor is condensed that some of the tiny fog particles grow larger and larger until they become mist particles, which are too heavy to float in the air. They then begin to settle; and as one particle strikes against another, the two unite, and this continues until perhaps a dozen have joined together so as to form a good-sized drop, which is so heavy that it is obliged to fall to the ground as rain. [Illustration: _Fig. 14. Clouds clinging to the mountain sides. If one were climbing these mountains he would find himself, in passing through the clouds, either in a fog or a mist._] Let us now look at our summer storms. These do not form about mountain peaks; yet what has been said about the mountains will help us to understand such showers. It is a hot summer day. The air is muggy and oppressive, so that the least exertion causes a perspiration, and even in the shade one is uncomfortably hot. Soon great banks of clouds appear (Fig. 15),--the "thunder heads,"--and people say "a thunder shower is coming, so that we will soon have relief from this oppressive heat." The clouds draw near, lightning is seen and thunder heard, and from the black base of the cloud, torrents of water fall upon the earth. If we could have watched this cloud from the beginning, and followed it on its course, we would have seen some facts that would help explain it. Similar clouds perhaps began to form over your head in the early afternoon and drifted away toward the east, developing into thunder storms many miles to the east of you. On such a day as this, the air near the ground is so damp that it gives up vapor easily, as you can prove by allowing a glass of ice water to stand on a table and watching the drops of water gather there, causing the glass to "sweat" (Fig. 9). The sun beats down upon the heated ground and the surface becomes like a furnace, so that the air near the ground is warmed. [Illustration: _Fig. 15. A "thunder head," or cumulus cloud._] Air that is warm is lighter than cool air, and, being lighter, will rise, for the heavy cool air will settle and push it up, as a chip of wood will rise in a pail of water, because it is lighter than the water which pushes it to the top. This is why the warm air rises from a furnace, or a stove, or a lamp. It is the reason why the hot air rises through a house chimney; undoubtedly you can find other illustrations, as ventilation, and can find abundant opportunity to prove that warm air will rise. The warm, moist air near the ground becomes so light that the heavy air above settles down and pushes it up, so that an uprising current of air is formed above the heated ground, much as an uprising current of hot air rises through the chimney when the stove is lighted. Rising thousands of feet into the sky the warm air reaches such a height, and finally comes to a place so cool, that some of the vapor must be condensed, forming fog particles, which in turn form a cloud. On such a day, if you will watch a cloud, you will notice that its base is flat (Fig. 15); and this flat base marks the height above ground where the temperature of the atmosphere is low enough to change the vapor to fog particles. Of course the air still rises somewhat above this base and continues to get cooler, and to have more and more vapor condensed. This makes a pile of clouds resting on a level base, but with rounded tops (Fig. 15). Sometimes the base of these summer clouds, called cumulus clouds, is a mile above the ground and their tops fully a mile higher than this. [Illustration: _Fig. 16. Photograph of a lightning flash._] Just as on the mountain side, where the drops grow larger until they must fall, so here, fog particles grow to drops of such a size that they are too heavy to float. This growth is often aided by the violent currents of air, which sometimes tumble and toss the clouds about so that you can see the commotion from the ground. These currents blow one particle against another, forming a single drop from the collision of two; then still others are added until the rain drop is so heavy that it must fall. But sometimes the air currents are so rapid that the drops are carried on up, higher and higher, notwithstanding the fact that they are heavy. Then they may be carried so high, and into air so cold, that they are frozen, forming hail. These "hailstones" cannot sink to the ground until they are thrown out of the violent currents, when they fall to the ground, often near the edge of the storm. Some hailstones are of great size; you will find it interesting to examine them. If you do this, notice the rings of clear and clouded ice that are often to be seen. These are caused when the hail, after forming, settles to a place where it melts a little, then is lifted again by another current, growing larger by the addition of more vapor. This continues until finally the ice ball sinks to the ground. There is thunder and lightning in such storms. Few things in nature are grander than these, and those who will watch the lightning flash will see many beautiful and interesting sights (Fig. 16). Sometimes the flash goes from cloud to cloud, again from the cloud to the ground. No one knows exactly why the lightning comes; but we do know that it is an electric spark, something like that which one can often see pass from the trolley to the wire of an electric car line. The main difference is that the spark in a thunder storm is a powerful lightning bolt that passes over a space of thousands of feet and often does great damage where it strikes. The thunder is a sound which may be compared to the crack heard when a spark passes from the trolley, though of course the noise is very much louder. The crack of the lightning echoes and reverberates among the clouds, often changing to a great rumble; but this rumbling is mainly caused by the echo, the sound from the lightning being a loud crack or crash like that which we sometimes hear when the lightning strikes near by. Some of the vapor of the air, on condensing, gathers on solid objects like grass, or glass; but some, as fog, floats about in the air. Really this, too, is often gathered around solid objects. Floating about in the air are innumerable bits of "dust" which you can see dancing about in the sunlight when a sunbeam enters a dark room. Some of these "dust" particles are actual dust from the road, but much of it is something else, as the pollen of plants, microbes, and the solid bits produced by the burning of wood or coal. Each bit serves as a tiny nucleus on which the vapor condenses; and so the very "dust" in the air aids in the formation of rain by giving something solid around which the liquid can gather. The great amount of dust in the air near the great city of London is believed to be one of the causes for the frequent fogs of that city. That there is dust in the air, and that the rain removes it, is often proved when a dull hazy air is changed to a clear, bright air by a summer shower. Watch to find instances of this. Indeed, after such a hazy day, when the rain drops first begin to fall, if you will let a few drops fall upon a sheet of clean white paper, and then dry it, you will find the paper discolored by the dust that the rain brought with it. So the rain purifies the air by removing from it the solids that are floating in it. These are only a few of the things of interest that you can see for yourself by studying the air. Watch the sky; it is full of interest. See what you can observe for yourself. Watch especially the clouds, for they are not only interesting but beautiful (Fig. 17). Their forms are often graceful, and they change with such rapidity that you can notice it as you watch them. Even in the daytime the colors and shadows are beautiful; but at sunrise and at sunset the clouds are often changed to gorgeous banks of color. [Illustration: _Fig. 17. A sky flecked with clouds high in the air._] Watch the clouds and you will be repaid; look especially for the great piles of clouds in the east during the summer when the sun is setting (Fig. 18). Those lofty banks, tinged with silver and gold, and rising like mountains thousands of feet into the air, are really made of bits of fog and mist. Among them vapor is still changing to water and rain drops are forming, while violent currents are whirling the drops about, and perhaps lifting them to such a height that they are being frozen into hailstones. Far off to the east, beneath that cloud, rain is falling in torrents, lightning is flashing and thunder crashing, though you cannot hear it because it is so far away. [Illustration: _Fig. 18. The cloud banks of a thunder storm on the horizon._] You see the storm merely as a brightly lighted and beautifully colored cloud mass in the sky; but the people over whom it is hanging find it a threatening black cloud, the source of a furious wind, a heavy rain, and the awe-inspiring lightning. To them it may not be beautiful, though grand in the extreme; and so, too, when the summer thunder shower visits you in the early evening, you may know that people to the west of you are probably looking at its side and top and admiring its beauty of form and color. The storm passes on, still to the eastward, and finally the cloud mass entirely disappears beneath the eastern horizon; but if you watch, you will see signs that it is still there, though out of sight; for in the darkness of the night you can see the eastern horizon lighted by little flashes, the source of which cannot be seen. You call it "heat lightning," but it is really the last signal that we can see of the vanishing thunder storm, so far away that the sound of the crashing thunder cannot be heard. You watch the mysterious flashes; they grow dimmer and dimmer and finally you see them no more. Our summer shower is gone. It has done what thousands of others have done before, and what thousands of others will do in the future. It has started, moved off, and finally disappeared from sight; and as it has gone it has told us a story. You can read a part of this story if you will; and in reading it will find much that interests. LEAFLET VII. A SNOW STORM.[9] BY ANNA BOTSFORD COMSTOCK. The snow had begun in the gloaming, And busily all the night Had been heaping field and highway With a silence deep and white. Every pine and fir and hemlock Wore ermine too dear for an earl, And the poorest twig on the elm-tree Was ridged inch deep with pearl. From sheds new-roofed with Carrara Came Chanticleer's muffled crow The stiff rails were softened to swan's-down And still fluttered down the snow. --_Lowell._ [9] Home Nature-Study Course, December, 1903. [Illustration] The storm which Lowell describes so delightfully is the first soft, gentle snow fall that comes in November or early December. "The silence deep and white" settles like a benediction over the brown, uneven landscape, and makes of it a scene of enchantment. Very different from this is the storm that comes when the winter cold is most severe and winter winds most terrific. Then the skies are as white as the fields, with never a sign of blue; if the sun appears at all, it shines cold instead of warm, and seems but a vague white spot behind the veil of upward, downward whirling snowflakes; the wild wind takes the "snow dust" in eddies across the fields and piles it at the fences in great drift billows with overhanging crests. On such a day the snow is so cold and dry, the clouds so low and oppressive, the bare trees so brown and bleak, that we shiver even though we gaze on the dreary scene from the window of a warm and comfortable room. [Illustration: _Fig. 19. Snow crystals enlarged._] But another change is sure to come. Some February day the wind will veer suddenly to the south and breathe warm thawing breaths over the white frozen world. Then will the forests appear in robes of vivid blue-purple against the shining hills; and in the mornings the soft blue of the horizon will shade upward into rose-color and still upward into yellow and beryl green; these hues are never seen on the forest or in the sky except when the snow covers the earth to the horizon line. The eye that loves color could ill afford to lose from the world the purples and blues which bring contrast into the winter landscape. The snow storm to our limited understanding, begins with a miracle--the miracle of crystallization. Why should water freezing freely in the air be a part of geometry, the six rays of the snow crystal growing at an angle one to another, of sixty degrees? Or as if to prove geometry divine beyond cavil, sometimes the rays include angles of twice sixty degrees. Then why should the decorations of the rays assume thousands of intricate, beautiful forms, each ray of a flake ornamented exactly like its five sisters? And why should the snowflake formed in the higher clouds of the upper air be tabular in shape but still, in cross section, show that it is built on the plan of six radii? Look at it as we will, the formation of a crystal is a beautiful mystery and is as unfathomable as is the mystery of life. [Illustration: _Fig. 20. Snow crystals enlarged._] I am indebted to the courtesy of Mr. R. G. Allen, Section Director for New York of the U. S. Weather Bureau, for suggestions in making out the following questions. The beautiful pictures of snow crystals illustrating this lesson were made from photographs taken by Mr. W. A. Bentley of Jericho, Vt. It is our desire to interest all teachers in the natural history of a snow storm, to the end that "they may love the country better and be content to live therein." A thermometer hung in a sheltered, open place away from the warmth of the house is a necessary preliminary to the proper observation of the phenomena of a snow storm. Dark woolen cloth is the best medium on which to catch and observe snow crystals. [Illustration: _Fig. 21. "With a silence deep and white."_] QUESTIONS ON A SNOW STORM. 1. What causes snow? 2. At what temperature do snow crystals form? 3. How do the clouds appear before a snow storm? 4. What is the temperature of the air before the storm? 5. What is the direction of the wind before the storm? 6. Does the storm come from the same direction as the wind? 7. What are the conditions of the wind and temperature when the snow crystals are most perfect in form? 8. What are these conditions when the snow crystals are matted together in great flakes? 9. What are these conditions when the snow crystals appear sharp and needle-like? 10. Are the snow crystals of the same storm similar in structure and decoration? 11. What is the difference in structure between a snowflake and a hail stone? 12. What is sleet? 13. What is the difference between hoar frost and snow? 14. Does the temperature rise or fall during a snow storm? 15. Is it colder or warmer after a snow storm has passed than it was before it began? 16. What are the conditions of weather which cause a blizzard? 17. Why does a covering of snow prevent the ground from freezing so severely as it would if bare? 18. Why is snow a bad conductor of heat? 19. Pack snow in a quart cup until it is full and let it melt; then tell how full the cup is of water. What do you infer from this? 20. Have you ever observed the grass to be green beneath snow drifts? Tell why. 21. Does snow evaporate as well as melt? 22. How does snow benefit the farmer and the fruit grower? 23. Do the snow storms in your locality come from one general direction all winter? LEAFLET VIII. A HANDFUL OF SOIL: WHAT IT IS.[10] BY R. S. TARR. [10] Nature-Study Quarterly, No. 2: Leaflet 15. [Illustration] Wind drifts a seed from the parent plant until it settles to the ground, perhaps in a field or by the roadside, or even in the schoolyard. There it remains through the long winter; but with the return of spring, encouraged by the warm sunlight, the seed awakens from its dormant condition, breaks open the seed-cover and sends leaves into the air and roots into the ground. No one planted the seed; yet the plant has made its way in the world and it thrives until it has given to other seeds the same opportunity to start in life. Had the seed fallen upon a board or a stone it might have sent out leaves and roots; but it could never have developed into a plant, for something necessary would have been lacking. What is there in the soil that is so necessary to the success of plant life? How has it come to be there? What is this soil that the plants need so much? These are some of the questions which we will try to answer. One readily sees that the soil furnishes a place in which the plants may fix themselves,--an anchorage, as it were. It is also easy to see that from the soil the plants obtain a supply of water; and, moreover, that this water is very necessary, for the vegetation in a moist country suffers greatly in time of drought, and few plants are able to grow in a desert region because there is so little water. You can make a desert in the schoolroom and contrast it with moist soil by planting seeds in two dishes of soil, watering one, but furnishing no water to the other. That water is necessary to plants is also proved by the plant itself. The sap and the moisture which may be pressed out of a grass stem or an apple are principally water taken from the soil by the roots. But there is more than water, for the juice of an apple is sweet or sour, while the sap and juice of other plants may be sweet or bitter. There are substances dissolved in the water. It is these dissolved substances that the plants need for their growth, and they find them ready for use in the soil. There is a plant-food which the roots seek and find, so that every plant which sends roots into the soil takes something from it to build up the plant tissue. The sharp edges of some sedges, which will cut the hand like a dull knife, and the wood ashes left when a wood fire is burned, represent in part this plant-food obtained from the soil. Let us take a handful of soil from the field, the schoolyard, or the street and examine it. We find it to be dirt that "soils" the hands; and when we try to brush off the dirt, we notice a gritty feeling that is quite disagreeable. This is due to the bits of mineral in the soil; and that these are hard, often harder than a pin, may often be proved by rubbing soil against a piece of glass, which the hard bits will often scratch, while a pin will not. [Illustration: _Fig. 21. A boulder-strewn soil of glacial origin with one of the large erratics on the right similar to those which early attracted attention to the drift. See page 105._] Study this soil with the eye and you may not see the tiny bits, though in sandy soils one may easily notice that there are bits of mineral. Even fine loamy and clay soils, when examined with a pocket lens or a microscope, will be found to be composed of tiny fragments of mineral. It is evident that in some way mineral has been powdered up to form the soil; and since the minerals come from rocks, it is the rocks that have been ground up. That powdered rock will make just such a substance as soil may be proved by pounding a pebble to bits, or by collecting some of the rock dust that is made when a hole is drilled in a rock. Much the same substance is ground from a grindstone when a knife is sharpened on it, making the water muddy like that in a mud hole. It will be an interesting experiment to reduce a pebble to powder and plant seeds in it to see whether they will grow as well as in soil; but in preparing it try to avoid using a sandstone pebble, because sandy soils are never very fertile. [Illustration: _Fig. 22. A glacial soil, containing numerous transported pebbles and boulders, resting on the bed rock._] Not only is soil made up of bits of powdered rock, but it everywhere rests upon rock (Fig. 25). Some consider soil to be only the surface layers in which plants grow; but really this is, in most places, essentially the same as the layers below, down even to the very rock, so that we might call it all soil; though, since a special name, _regolith_ (meaning stone blanket), has been proposed for all the soft, soil-like rock-cover, we may speak of it as regolith and reserve the word soil for the surface layers only. In some places there is no soil on the bare rocks; elsewhere the soil-cover is a foot or two in depth; but there are places where the regolith is several hundred feet deep. In such places, even the wells do not reach the bed rock; nor do the streams cut down to it; but even there, if one should dig deep enough, he would reach the solid rock beneath. How has the hard rock been changed to loose soil? One of the ways, of which there are several, may be easily studied whenever a rock has been exposed to the air. Let us go to a stone wall or among the pebbles in a field, for instance, and, chipping off the surface, notice how different the inside is from the outside. The outer crust is rusted and possibly quite soft, while the interior is harder and fresher. Many excellent examples of this may be found in any stony field or stone wall. [Illustration: _Fig. 23. The bed of a stream at low water, revealing the rounded pebbles that have been worn and smoothed by being rolled about, thus grinding off tiny bits which later are built into the flood-plains._] As hard iron rusts and crumbles to powder when exposed to the weather; so will the minerals and the rocks decay and fall to bits; but rocks require a very much greater time for this than does iron. It happens that the soil of New York has not been produced by the decay of rock; and, therefore, although the soils in many parts of the world have been formed in this way, we will not delay longer in studying this subject now, nor in considering the exact way in which rocks are enabled to crumble. Another way in which rocks may be powdered may be seen in most parts of New York. The rains wash soil from the hillsides causing the streams to become muddy. In the streams there are also many pebbles, possibly the larger fragments that have fallen into the stream after having been broken from the ledges. The current carries these all along down the stream, and, as they go, one piece striking against another, or being dragged over the rocks in the stream bed, the pebbles are ground down and smoothed (Fig. 23), which means, of course, that more mud is supplied to the stream, as mud is furnished from a grindstone when a knife or scythe is being sharpened on it. On the pebbly beaches of the sea or lakeshore much the same thing may be seen; and here also the constant grinding of the rocks wears off the edges until the pebbles become smooth and round. [Illustration: _Fig. 24. Near view of a cut in glacial soil, gullied by the rains, and with numerous transported pebbles embedded in the rock flour._] Supplied with bits of rock from the soil, or from the grinding up of pebbles and rocks along its course, the stream carries its load onward, perhaps to a lake, which it commences to fill, forming a broad delta of level and fertile land, near where the stream enters the lake. Or, possibly, the stream enters the sea and builds a delta there, as the Mississippi river has done. [Illustration: _Fig. 25. A scratched limestone pebble taken from a glacial soil._] But much of the mud does not reach the sea. The greatest supply comes when the streams are so flooded by heavy rains or melting snows that the river channel is no longer able to hold the water, which then rises above the banks, overflowing the surrounding country. Then, since its current is checked where it is so shallow, the water drops some of its load of rock bits on the flood-plain, much as the muddy water in a gutter drops sand or mud on the sidewalk when, in time of heavy rains, it overflows the walk. Many of the most fertile lands of the world are flood-plains of this kind, where sediment, gathered by the streams farther up their courses, is dropped upon the flood-plains, enriching them by new layers of fertile soil. One does not need to go to the Nile, the Yellow, or the Mississippi for illustrations of this; they abound on every hand, and many thousands of illustrations, great and small, may be found in the State of New York. Doubtless you can find one. [Illustration: _Fig. 26. The grooved bed rock scratched by the movement of the ice sheet over it._] There are other ways in which soils may be formed; but only one more will be considered, and that is the way in which most of the soils of New York have been made. To study this let us go to a cut in the earth, such as a well or a stream bank (Figs. 22 and 24). Scattered through the soil numerous pebbles and boulders will doubtless be found; and if these are compared with the bed rock of the country, which underlies the soil (Fig. 22), some of them will be found to be quite different from it. For instance, where the bed rock is shale or limestone, some of the pebbles will no doubt be granite, sandstone, etc. If you could explore far enough, you would find just such rocks to the north of you, perhaps one or two hundred miles away in Canada; or, if your home is south of the Adirondacks, you might trace the pebbles to those mountains. On some of these pebbles, especially the softer ones, such as limestone, you will find scratches, as if they had been ground forcibly together (Fig. 25). Looking now at the bed rock in some place from which the soil has been recently removed, you will find it also scratched and grooved (Fig. 26); and if you take the direction of these scratches with the compass, you will find that they extend in a general north and south direction, pointing, in fact, in the same direction from which the pebbles have come. All over northeastern North America and northwestern Europe the soil is of the same nature as that just described. In our own country this kind of soil reaches down as far as the edge of the shaded area in the map (Fig. 27), and it will be noticed that all of New York is within that area excepting the extreme southwestern part near the southern end of Chautauqua lake. Not only is the soil peculiar within this district, but there are many small hills of clay or sand, or sometimes of both together (Figs. 33 and 34). They rise in hummocky form and often have deep pits or kettle-shaped basins between, sometimes, when the soil is clayey enough to hold water, containing tiny pools. These hills extend in somewhat irregular ranges stretching across the country from the east toward the west. The position of some of these ranges is indicated on the map (Fig. 27). For a long time people wondered how this soil with its foreign pebbles and boulders, altogether called "drift," came to be placed where it is; they were especially puzzled to tell how the large boulders, called erratics (Fig. 21), should have been carried from one place to another. It was suggested that they came from the bursting of planets, from comets, from the explosion of mountains, from floods, and in other ways equally unlikely; but Louis Agassiz, studying the glaciers of the Alps and the country round about, was impressed by the resemblance between the "drift" and the materials carried by living glaciers. Agassiz, therefore, proposed the hypothesis that glaciers had carried the drift and left it where we now find it; but for many years his glacial hypothesis met with a great deal of opposition because it seemed impossible that the climate could have changed so greatly as to cover what is now a temperate land with a great sheet of ice. Indeed, even now, although all who have especially studied the subject are convinced, many people have not accepted Agassiz's explanation, just as years ago, long after it was proved that the earth rotated each day, many people still believed that it was the sun, not the earth, that was moving. [Illustration: _Fig. 27. Map showing the extent of the ice sheet in the United States. Position of some of the moraines indicated by the heavily shaded lines._ (_After Chamberlain._)] The glacial explanation is as certain as that the earth rotates. For some reason, which we do not know, the climate changed and allowed ice to cover temperate lands, as before that time the climate had changed so as to allow plants like those now growing as far south as Virginia to live in Greenland, now ice covered. When the ice of the glacier melted away it left many signs of its presence; and when the temperate latitude plants grew in Greenland they left seeds, leaves and tree trunks which have been imbedded in the rocks as fossils. One may now pick the leaves of temperate climate trees from the rocks beneath a great icecap. [Illustration: _Fig. 28. A view over the great ice plateau of Greenland, with a mountain peak projecting above it._] To one who studies them, the signs left by the glacier are as clear proof as the leaves and seeds. From these signs we know that the climate has changed slowly, but we have not yet learned why it changed. There are now two places on the earth where vast glaciers, or ice sheets, cover immense areas of land, one in the Antarctic, a region very little known, the other in Greenland, where there is an ice sheet covering land having an area more than ten times that of the State of New York. Let us study this region to see what is being done there, in order to compare it with what has been done in New York. [Illustration: _Fig. 29. The edge of a part of the great Greenland ice sheet (on the left) resting on the land, over which are strewn many boulders brought by the ice and left there when it melted._] In the interior is a vast plateau of ice, in places over 10,000 feet high, a great icy desert (Fig. 28), where absolutely no life of any kind, either animal or plant, can exist, and where it never rains, but where the storms bring snow even in the middle of summer. Such must have been the condition in northeastern America during the glacial period. [Illustration: _Fig. 30. A scratched pebble taken from the ice of the Greenland glacier._] This vast ice sheet is slowly moving outward in all directions from the elevated center, much as a pile of wax may be made to flow outward by placing a heavy weight upon the middle. Moving toward the north, east, south and west, this glacier must of course come to an end somewhere. In places, usually at the heads of bays, the end is in the sea, as the end of our glacier must have been off the shores of New England. From these sea-ends, icebergs constantly break off; these floating away toward the south, often reach, before they melt, as far as the path followed by the steamers from the United States to Europe. Between the bays where the glacier ends in the sea, the ice front rests on the land (Fig. 29), as it did over the greater part of New York and the states further west. There it melts in the summer, supplying streams with water and filling many small ponds and lakes. The front stands there year after year, sometimes moving a little ahead, again melting further back so as to reveal the rocks on which it formerly rested. [Illustration: _Fig. 31. A part of the edge of the Greenland glacier, with clean white ice above, and dark discolored bands below where laden with rock fragments. In the foreground is a boulder-strewn moraine._] The bed rock here is found to be polished, scratched and grooved just like the bed-rock in New York; and the scratches extend in the direction from which the ice moves. Resting on the rock are boulders and pebbles (Fig. 22), sometimes on the bare rock, sometimes imbedded in a clay as they are in the drift. As we found when studying the soil in our own region, so here the pebbles are often scratched, and many of them are quite different from the rock on which they rest. [Illustration: _Fig. 32. Hummocky surface of the boulder-strewn moraine of Greenland._] Going nearer to the ice we find the lower part loaded with pebbles, boulders and bits of clay very like those on the rocks near by. Fig. 30 shows one of these, scratched and grooved, which I once dug from the ice of this very glacier. The bottom of the ice is like a huge sandpaper, being dragged over the bed rock with tremendous force. It carries a load of rock fragments, and as it moves secures more by grinding or prying them from the rocks beneath. These all travel on toward the edge of the ice, being constantly ground finer and finer as wheat is ground when it goes through the mill. Indeed the resemblance is so close that the clay produced by this grinding action is often called _rock flour_. Dragged to the front of the ice, the rock bits, great and small, roll out as the ice melts, some, especially the finest, being carried away in the water, which is always muddy with the rock flour it carries; but much remains near the edge of the ice, forming a _moraine_ (Figs. 31 and 32). This moraine, dumped at the edge of the glacier, very closely resembles the hummocky hills of New York (Figs. 33 and 34), mentioned above, which are really moraines formed at the ice-edge during the glacial period. While their form is quite alike, the New York moraines are generally less pebbly than the Greenland moraines, because the Greenland glacier carries less rock flour than did the glacier which covered New York. [Illustration: _Fig. 33. A view over the hummocky surface of a part of the moraine of the great American ice sheet in Central New York._] In the Greenland glacier, as you can see in Fig. 31, there is much dirt and rock; in the glacier of the glacial period there was even more. When it melted away the ice disappeared as water, but the rock fragments of course fell down upon the rock beneath and formed soil. If over a certain region, as for instance over your home, the ice carried a great load of drift, when this gradually settled down, as the ice melted, it formed a deep layer of soil; but if the glacier had only a small load a shallow soil was left. Again, if the ice front remained for a long time near a certain place, as near your home, it kept bringing and dumping rock fragments to form moraines, which, of course, would continue to grow higher so long as the ice dumped the rock fragments, much as a sand pile will continue to grow higher so long as fresh loads are brought and dumped. There are other causes for differences in the glacial soils, but most of them cannot be considered here. One of them is so important, however, that it must be mentioned. With the melting of so much ice, vast floods of water were caused, and these came from the ice, perhaps in places where there are now no streams, or at best only small ones. These rapid currents carried off much of the rock flour and left the coarser and heavier sand, gravel, or pebbles, the latter often well rounded, with the scratches removed by the long-continued rolling about in the glacial stream bed. One often finds such beds of sand or gravel in different parts of the State, telling not only of ice where it is now absent, but of water currents where is now dry land. The rock flour was in some cases carried to the sea, elsewhere to lakes, or in still other places deposited in the flood-plains of the glacier-fed rivers. Now some of this rock flour is dug out to make into bricks. Enough has been said to show that the soils of New York were brought by a glacier, and to point out that there are many differences in thickness as well as in kind and condition of the soil. The agriculture of the State is greatly influenced by these differences. In some cases one part of a farm has a deep, rich soil, another part a barren, sandy, pebbly or boulder-covered soil (Fig. 21), while in still another part the bed rock may be so near the surface that it does not pay to clear the forest from it. Moreover, some farms are in hummocky moraines, while others, near by, are on level plains (Fig. 34), where a broad glacial stream built up a flood-plain in a place where now the stream is so small that it never rises high enough to overflow the plain. There are even other differences than these, and one who is familiar with a region is often puzzled to explain them; but they are all due to the glacier or to the water furnished by its melting, and a careful study by a student of the subject of Glacial Geology will serve to explain them. Each place has had peculiar conditions and it would be necessary to study each place much more carefully than has been done here in order to explain all the differences. Not only is agriculture influenced greatly by the differences in the soil from place to place, but also by the very fact that they are glacial soils. Being made up of partly ground-up rock fragments the soils are often stony and difficult to till. Unlike the soil of rock decay, the particles of which the glacial soil is made have been derived by mechanical grinding, not by chemical decay and disintegration. There has been less leaching out of the soluble compounds which make plant foods. These are stored up in the rock fragments ready for use when decay causes the proper changes to produce the soluble compounds which plants require. [Illustration: _Fig. 34. Hummocky moraine hills in the background and a level gravel plain--an ancient glacial-stream flood-plain--in foreground._] Slowly the glacial soils are decaying, and, as they do so, are furnishing plant-food to the water which the roots greedily draw in. So the glacial soil is not a mere store house of plant-food, but a manufactory of it as well, and glacial soils are therefore "strong" and last for a long time. That decay is going on, especially near the surface, may often be seen in a cut in the soil, where the natural blue color of the drift is seen below, while near the surface the soil is rusted yellow by the decay of certain minerals which contain iron. Few materials on the earth are more important than the soil; it acts as the intermediary between man and the earth. The rocks have some substances locked up in them which animals need; by decay, or by being ground up, the rocks crumble so that plants may send roots into them and extract the substances needed by animals. Gifted with this wonderful power the plants grow and furnish food to animals, some of which is plant-food obtained from the rocks; and so the animals of the land, and man himself, secure a large part of their food from the rocks. It is then worth the while to stop for a moment and think and study about this, one of the most marvelous of the many wonderful adjustments of Nature, but so common that most persons live and die without even giving it more than a passing thought. LEAFLET IX. A HANDFUL OF SOIL: WHAT IT DOES.[11] BY L. A. CLINTON. [11] Nature-Study Quarterly, No. 2: Leaflet 15, October, 1899. [Illustration] The more one studies the soil, the more certainly it will be found that the earth has locked up in her bosom many secrets, and that these secrets will not be given up for the mere asking. As mysterious as the soil may appear at different times, it always is governed by certain laws. These principles once understood, the soil becomes an open book from which one may read quickly and accurately. USES OF THE SOIL. The soil has certain offices to perform for which it is admirably fitted. The most important of these offices are: 1. To hold plants in place; 2. To serve as a source of plant-food; 3. To act as a reservoir for moisture; 4. To serve as a storehouse for applied plant-food or fertilizer. Some soils are capable of performing all these offices, while others are fitted for only a part of them. Thus a soil which is pure sand and almost entirely deficient in the essential elements of plant-food, may serve, if located near a large city, merely to hold the plants in position while the skillful gardener feeds the plants with specially prepared fertilizers, and supplies the moisture by irrigation. Early in the study of soils an excursion, if possible, should be made into the woods. Great trees will be seen and under the trees will be found various shrubs and possibly weeds and grass. It will be noticed that the soil is well occupied with growing plants. The surface will be found covered with a layer several inches thick of leaves and twigs. Beneath this covering the soil is dark, moist, full of organic matter, loose, easily spaded except as roots or stones may interfere, and has every appearance of being fertile. SOIL CONDITIONS AS FOUND IN MANY FIELDS. After examining the conditions in the forest, a study should be made of the soil in some cultivated field. It will be found that in the field the soil has lost many of the marked characteristics noticed in the woodland. In walking over the field, the soil will be found to be hard and compact. The surface may be covered with growing plants, for if the seeds which have been put into the soil by the farmer have not germinated and the plants made growth, nature has quickly come to the rescue and filled the soil with other plants which we commonly call weeds. It is nature's plan to keep the soil covered with growing plants, and from nature we should learn a lesson. The field soil, instead of being moist, is dry; instead of being loose and friable, it is hard and compact, and it appears in texture entirely different from the woodland soil. The cause of the difference is not hard to discover. In the woods, nature for years has been building up the soil. The leaves from the trees fall to the ground and form a covering which prevents washing or erosion, and these leaves decay and add to the humus, or vegetable mould, of the soil. Roots are constantly decaying and furnish channels through the soil and permit the circulation of air and water. In the field, nature's lesson has been disregarded and too often the whole aim seems to be to remove everything from the soil and to make no returns. Consequently the organic matter, or humus, has been used up; the tramping of the horses' feet has closed the natural drainage canals; after the crop is removed, the soil is left naked during the winter and the heavy rains wash and erode the surface, and remove some of the best plant-food. After a few years of such treatment, the farmer wonders why the soil will not produce as liberally as it did formerly. _Experiment No. 1._--The fact that there is humus, or vegetable mould, in certain soils can be shown by burning. Weigh a potful of hard soil and a potful of lowland soil, or muck, after each has been thoroughly dried. Then put the pots on the coals in a coal stove. After the soil is thoroughly burned, weigh again. Some of the difference in weight may be due to loss of moisture, but if the samples were well dried in the beginning, most of the loss will be due to the burning of the humus. CONDITIONS WHICH AFFECT FERTILITY. There are certain conditions which affect soil fertility and of these the most important are: Texture; Moisture-content; Plant-food; Temperature. TEXTURE AND ITS RELATION TO FERTILITY. By texture is meant the physical condition of the soil. Upon good texture, more than upon any other one thing, depends the productivity of the soil. When the texture is right the soil is fine, loose, and friable; the roots are able to push through it and the feeding area is enlarged. Each individual particle is free to give up a portion of its plant-food, or its film of moisture. The conditions which are found in the woods' soil are almost ideal. _Experiment No. 2._--The importance of good texture may be well shown in the class room. Pots should be filled with a soil which is lumpy and cloddy, and other pots with the same kind of material after it has been made fine and mellow. After seeds are planted in the different pots, a careful study should be made of the length of time required for germination and of the health and vigor of the plants. _Experiment No. 3._--The greater part of our farming lands do not present ideal conditions as regards texture. Clay soils are especially likely to be in bad condition. If samples of the various soils can be collected, as sand, loam, clay, etc., it may be clearly shown how different soils respond to the same kind of treatment. With a common garden trowel, the soils should be stirred and worked while wet, and then put away to dry. After drying, the conditions presented by the soils should be noted, also the length of time required for the soils to become dry. Whereas the sand and the loam will remain in fairly good condition when dry, the clay will have become "puddled," _i. e._, the particles will have run together and made a hard, compact mass. Thus it is found in practice that clay soils must be handled with far more care and intelligence than is required for the sand and loams, if the texture is to be kept perfect. _Experiment No. 4._--If, in the experiment above suggested, the clay soil is mixed with leaf-mould, or humus soil, from the woods, it will be found to act very differently. The vegetable matter thus mixed with the mineral matter prevents the running together of the particles of clay. Two principles, both important as relating to soil texture, now have been illustrated. Soils must not be worked when they are so wet that their particles will cohere, and organic matter, or humus, must be kept mixed with the mineral matter of the soil. In practical farm operations, if the soil can be made into a mud ball it is said to be too wet to work. The required amount of humus is retained in the soil by occasionally plowing under some green crop, as clover, or by applying barn manures. [Illustration: _Fig. 35. The glass of water at the right has received lime and the clay has been flocculated; the other was not treated._] Clay soils are also frequently treated with lime to cause them to remain in good condition and be more easily tilled. Lime causes the fine particles to flocculate, or to become granular, _i. e._, several particles unite to form a larger particle, and these combinations are more stable and do not so readily puddle, or run together. A mud-puddle in clay soil will remain murky until the water has evaporated entirely. Let a little water-slaked lime be mixed with the muddy water, and the particles of clay will be flocculated and will settle to the bottom; thus the water will become clear. _Experiment No. 5._--Into two glasses of water put some fine clay soil; thoroughly stir the mixture (Fig. 35). Into one glass thus prepared put a spoonful of water-slaked lime; stir thoroughly, then allow both glasses to remain quiet that the soil may settle. Notice in which glass the water first becomes clear, and note the appearance of the sediment in each. THE MOISTURE IN THE SOIL. In Leaflet VI has been given the history of a thunder shower. We are not told much about the history of the water after it reaches the earth. If we go out immediately after a heavy shower, we find little streams running alongside the road. These little streams unite to make larger ones, until finally the creeks and rivers are swollen, and, if the rain was heavy enough, the streams may overflow their banks. In all these streams, from the smallest to the largest, the water is muddy. Where did this mud come from? It was washed largely from the cultivated fields, and the finest and best soil is certain to be the first to start on its voyage to the valleys or to the sea. If the farmer had only learned better the lesson from nature and kept his fields covered with plants, a large part of the loss might have been prevented. A rain gauge should be kept in every school yard, so that every shower can be measured. It can then be easily determined by the pupils how many tons of rain fall upon the school grounds, or how much falls upon an acre of land. It will be a matter of surprise that the amount is so great. [Illustration: _Fig. 36. a. Soil too dry. b. Soil in good condition. c. Soil too wet._] Not all the water which falls during a summer shower is carried off by surface drainage, since a considerable part sinks into the soil. As it passes down, each soil grain takes up a portion and surrounds itself with a little film of water, much as does a marble when dipped into water. If the rain continues long enough, the soil will become saturated and the water which cannot be retained, will, under the influence of gravity, sink down to the lower layers of soil until it finally reaches the level of the free water. From this free water, at varying depths in the soil, wells and springs are supplied. If the soil were to remain long saturated, seeds would not germinate, and most cultivated plants would not grow because all the air passages of the soil would be filled with water (Fig. 36). The water which sinks down deep into the soil and helps to supply our wells is called free water. That part which is held as a film by the soil particles (as on a marble) is called capillary water. After the rain is over and the sun shines, a part of the moisture which is held by the particles near the surface is lost by evaporation. The moisture which is below tends to rise to restore the equilibrium; thus there is created a current toward the surface, and finally into the air; the moisture which thus escapes aids in forming the next thunder storm. _Experiment No. 6._--Humus enables the soil to take up and hold large quantities of water. To illustrate this, two samples of soil should be obtained, one a humus, or alluvial, soil, rich in organic matter, and the other a sandy soil. Put the two samples where they will become thoroughly air dry. Procure, say five pounds each of the dry soils, and put each into a glass tube over one end of which there is tied a piece of muslin, or fine wire gauze. From a graduated glass pour water slowly upon each sample until the water begins to drain from the bottom of the tube. In this way it can be shown which soil has the greater power of holding moisture. Both samples should then be set away to dry. By weighing the samples each day, it can be determined which soil has the greater power of retaining moisture. This experiment may be conducted not only with sand and humus, but with clay, loam, gravel, and all other kinds of soil. _Experiment No. 7._--A finely pulverized soil will hold more film-moisture than a cloddy soil. To illustrate the importance of texture as related to moisture, soil should be secured which is cloddy, or lumpy. One tube should be filled, as heretofore described (Exp. No. 6), with the lumpy soil, and the other tube with the fine soil which results from pulverizing the lumps, equal weights of soil being used in each case. From a graduated glass pour water upon each sample until the drainage begins from the bottom. Notice which soil possesses greater power of absorbing moisture. Put the samples away to dry, and by careful weighing, each day, it can be determined which soil dries out more readily. [Illustration: _Fig. 37. "Foot-prints on the sands of time."_] [Illustration: _Fig. 38. A cross section through one of the foot-prints._] The prudent farmer will take measures to prevent the escape of this moisture into the air. All the film-moisture (on the soil particles) needs to be carefully conserved or saved, for the plants will need very large amounts of moisture before they mature, and they can draw their supply only from this film-moisture. We can again apply the lesson learned in the woods. The soil there is always moist; the leaves form a cover, or blanket, which prevents the evaporation of moisture. Underneath an old plank or board, the soil will be found moist. If we can break the connection between the soil and the air, we can check the escape of moisture. A layer of straw over the soil will serve to prevent the loss of moisture; yet a whole field cannot be thus covered. It has been found that the surface soil, if kept loose, say about three inches of the top soil can be made to act as a blanket or covering for the soil underneath. Although this top layer may become as dry as dust, yet it prevents the escape, by evaporation, of moisture from below. It is a matter of common observation that if tracks are made across a freshly cultivated field, the soil where the tracks are will become darker (Fig. 37). This darker appearance of the soil in the foot-marks is due to the moisture which is there rising to the surface. The implement of tillage makes the soil loose, breaking the capillary connection between the lower layers of soil and the surface; thus the upward passage of the water is checked. Where the foot-print is, the soil has been again pressed down at the surface, the particles have been crowded closer together, and capillarity is restored to the surface so that the moisture is free to escape (Fig. 38). In caring for flower-beds, or even in growing plants in a pot in the school-room, it is important that the surface of the soil be kept loose and mellow. Far better in a flower garden is a garden rake than a watering pot. _Experiment No. 8._--To show the importance of the surface mulch, fill several pots with a sandy loam soil, putting the same weight of soil into each pot. In one pot, pack the soil firmly; in another pot, pack the soil firmly and then make the surface loose. These pots of soil may then be put away to dry; by daily weighing each it can be readily determined what effects the various methods of treatment have upon the moisture-holding power of soils. _Experiment No. 9._--The above experiment may be varied by covering the soil in some of the pots with leaves, or straw, or paper, care being taken that the added weight of the foreign matter is properly accounted for. SOIL TEMPERATURE. [Illustration: _Fig. 39. The moss-grown lawn or grass plot._] If a kernel of corn be placed in the ground in early spring before the soil has become warm, the seed will not germinate. Abundance of moisture and oxygen may be present, but the third requisite for germination, proper temperature, is lacking. The soil is very slow to become warm in the spring, and this is due to the large amount of water which must be evaporated. During the winter and spring, the rain and melting snow have saturated the soil. The under-drainage is deficient so there is no way for the escape of the surplus water except by evaporation, and evaporation is a cooling process. A well-drained soil is thus warmer than a poorly-drained one. The atmosphere is much quicker to respond to changes in temperature than is the soil. In the spring, the air becomes warm while the soil continues cold, and the rains which fall during this time are warmed by passing through the warm air. Then in sinking through the soil the rain-water parts with some of its heat which makes the soil warmer. During mid-summer the soil becomes very warm, and it is not affected by cool nights, as is the atmosphere. Consequently as a summer rain may be several degrees cooler than the soil, the water in passing through the soil takes up some of the heat; thus the soil conditions are made more favorable for plant growth. Therefore, soil temperature is regulated somewhat by the rainfall. _Experiment No. 10._--The color of a soil also affects its temperature, a dark soil being warmer than a light colored soil. By having thermometers as a part of the school room equipment, interesting experiments may be conducted in determining the effect of color and moisture upon the temperature of soils. AIR IN THE SOIL. Although that part of the plant which we can see is entirely surrounded by air, it is also necessary that the soil be in such a condition that it can be penetrated by the air. Indeed, growth cannot begin in a soil from which the air is excluded. [Illustration: _Fig. 40. The clover roots penetrate the soil deeply._] _Experiment No. 11._--To prove this, put clay soil in a pot and plant seeds; then wet the surface of the soil and puddle or pack the clay while wet and watch for the seeds to germinate and grow. At the same time put seeds in another pot filled with loose, mellow, moist soil. Frequently, after the farmer has sown his grain, there comes a heavy, beating rain, and the surface of the soil becomes so packed that the air is excluded and the seeds cannot germinate. If plants are grown in pots and the water is supplied at the top, the soil may become so hard and compact as to exclude the air and the plants will make a sickly growth. The surface soil must be kept loose so that the air can penetrate it. [Illustration: _Fig. 41. After the clover dies the soil is in better condition for its having lived._] On many lawns it may be noticed that the grass is not thriving. It has a sickly appearance, and even the application of fertilizer does not seem to remedy the conditions. Perhaps the ground has become so hard that the air cannot penetrate and the grass is being smothered. If the surface of the soil can be loosened with a garden rake, and clover seed sown, much good may be accomplished. The clover is a tap-rooted plant, sending its main root deep into the soil. After the death of the plant, the root decays, and the nitrogen which is stored in it can be used as food by the other plants. Most useful of all, however, in such cases, the decay of the tap-root of the clover makes a passage deep into the soil and thus allows the air to enter. Consult Figs. 39-41. LEAFLET X. THE BROOK.[12] BY J. O. MARTIN. INTRODUCTION BY L. H. BAILEY. [12] Nature-Study Quarterly, No. 5: Leaflet 18. June, 1900. [Illustration] A brook is the best of subjects for nature-study. It is near and dear to every child. It is a world in itself. It is an epitome of the nature in which we live. In miniature, it illustrates the forces which have shaped much of the earth's surface. Day by day and century by century, it carries its burden of earth-waste which it lays down in the quiet places. Always beginning and never ceasing, it does its work as slowly and as quietly as the drifting of the years. It is a scene of life and activity. It reflects the sky. It is kissed by the sun. It is caressed by the winds. The minnows play in the pools. The soft weeds grow in the shallows. The grass and the dandelions lie on its sunny banks. The moss and fern are sheltered in the nooks. It comes one knows not whence; it flows one knows not whither. It awakens the desire of exploration. It is a realm of mysteries. It typifies the flood of life. It goes "on forever." In many ways can the brook be made an adjunct of the school-room. One teacher or one grade may study its physiography; another its birds; another may plat it. Or one teacher and one grade may devote a month or a term to one phase of it. Thus the brook may be made the center of a life-theme. L. H. B. I. A BROOK AND ITS WORK. On a rainy day most of us are driven indoors and thus we miss some of nature's most instructive lessons, for in sunshine or rain the great mother toils on, doing some of her hardest labor when her face is overcast with clouds. Let us find our waterproofs, raise our umbrellas, bid defiance to the pattering rain, and go forth to learn some of the lessons of a rainy day. [Illustration: _Fig. 42. The brook may be made the center of a life-theme._] Along the roadside, the steady, down-pouring rain collects into pools and rills, or sinks out of sight in the ground. The tiny streams search out the easiest grade and run down the road, digging little gullies as they go. Soon these rills meet and, joining their muddy currents, flow on with greater speed down the hillside until they reach the bottom of the valley and go to swell the brook which flows on, through sunshine or rain. The water which sinks into the ground passes out of sight for a time, but its journey is also downward toward the brook, though the soil, acting as a great sponge, holds it back and makes it take a slower pace than the rushing surface water. This slower-moving underground water percolates through the soil until it comes to a layer of rock, clay, or other impervious substance, along the slope of which it flows until it is turned again to the surface in the form of a spring. Perhaps this spring is one of those clear, cold pools, with the water bubbling up through its sandy bottom, from which we love to drink on a hot summer's day; or, again, it is a swampy spot on the hillside where the cat-tails grow. In whatever form it issues from the ground, a tiny rill carries away its overflow, and this sooner or later joins the brook. The brook, we see, is simply the collected rainfall from the hillsides, flowing away to join the river. It grows larger as other brooks join it, and becomes a creek and finally a river. But where is the dividing line between brook, creek, and river? So gradually does the brook increase in volume that it would be difficult to draw any dividing line between it and the larger streams. And so with the rills that formed the brook: each is a part of the river, and the names rill, brook, creek, and river are merely relative terms. Brooks are but rivers on a small scale; and if we study the work that a brook is doing, we shall find it engaged in cutting down or building up, just as the river does, although, owing to the smaller size of the brook, we can see most of these operations in a short distance. Let us take our way through the wet grass and dripping trees to the brookside and see what work it is doing. The countless rain-born rills are pouring their muddy water into the brook and to-day its volume is much greater than when it is fed, as it is in fair weather, by the slower-moving underground water of the springs. It roars along with its waters no longer clear but full of clay and sand ("mud" as we call it). If we should dip up a glassful of this muddy water, we should find that when it had settled there remained on the bottom of the glass a thin deposit of sediment. The amount of this sediment is small, no doubt, for a single glassful, but when we think of the great quantity of water constantly flowing by, we can see that considerable sediment is going along with it. But this sediment in suspension is not all the load that the brook is moving. If you will roll up your sleeve, plunge your hand to the bottom of the brook and hold it there quietly, you will feel the coarser gravel and small stones rolling along the bottom. All this load of sand and gravel comes, as we have seen, from the valley sides, the banks of the brook, and from its bed. It is moving downward away from its original resting place; and what is the result? For thousands upon thousands of years, our brook may have been carrying off its yearly load of sediment; and though each day's labor is small, yet the added toil of centuries has been great. The result of this labor we can see in the great trough or valley through which the brook flows. Tennyson speaks of the ceaseless toil of the brook in the following words: "I chatter, chatter, as I flow To join the brimming river, For men may come and men may go, But I go on forever." [Illustration: _Fig. 43. A brook cutting under its bank and causing a landslide._] We have seen how the rills and torrents bring into the brook their loads of sand, clay, and gravel; now let us walk along the bank and see what the brook is doing to increase this load. Just here there is a sudden turn in the channel and so sharp is the curve that the rushing stream is not able to keep in mid-channel, but throws itself furiously against the outer bank of the curve, eating into the clay of which it is composed, until the bank is undermined, allowing a mass of clay to slide down into the stream bed, where it is eaten up and carried away by the rushing water (Fig. 43). Farther on, the brook dashes down a steep, rocky incline, and if we listen and watch we may hear the thud of boulders hurled along, or even see a pebble bound out of the muddy foaming water. These moving pebbles strike against each other and grind along the bottom, wearing out themselves as well as the large unmovable boulders of the rocky bed of the brook. Thus the larger stones are ground down, rounded at first but in time reduced to sand, adding in this way to the moving burden of the brook. By this slow process of cutting and grinding, the deep rock gorges of New York state, like those at Watkins, Ithaca, Au Sable Chasm, and even the mighty gorge of Niagara, have been made. The Grand Canyon of the Colorado, over a mile in depth, is one of the greatest examples of stream cutting to be found in the world. [Illustration: _Fig. 44. A pile of brook debris deposited by the checking of the current._] Now the brook leads us into a dripping woodland, and just ahead we can hear the roar of a little waterfall, for at this point the cutting stream flows upon the bed rock with its alternating bands of hard and soft rock through which the busy brook is cutting a miniature gorge. Here is a hard layer which the stream has undermined until it stands out as a shelf, over which the water leaps and falls in one mass with a drop of nearly ten feet. Watch how the water below boils and eddies; think with what force it is hammering its stone-cutting tools upon the rocky floor. Surely here is a place where the brook is cutting fast. Notice that swirling eddy where the water is whirling about with the speed of a spinning top; let us remember this eddy and when the water is lower we will try to see what is happening at its bottom. On the other side of the woods our brook emerges into a broad meadow; let us follow it and see what becomes of its load, whether it is carried onward, or whether the tired brook lays it down occasionally to rest. Out of the woods, the brook dashes down a steep incline until the foaming tide comes to rest in a deep pool. What becomes of the large pebbles which have been swept down? Do they go on or do they stop? If you go to the outlet of the pool you will see that the water is coming out with nothing in its grasp but the fine clay and sand, the gravel and pebbles having been dropped by the less rapid current of the pool. This is one of the most important of the brook's lessons, for anything that tends to check the current makes it drop some of the sediment that it carries (Fig. 44). Yonder is an old tree stump with its crooked roots caught fast on the bottom; the mid-stream current rushes against it only to be thrown back in a boiling eddy, and the waters split in twain and flow by on either side with their current somewhat checked. In the rear of the stump is a region of quiet water where the brook is building up a pile of gravel. Farther on, the banks of the brook are low and here the waters no longer remain in the channel, but overflow the low land, spreading out on either side in a broad sheet. The increased friction of this larger area reduces the current, and again we see the brook laying down some of its load. The sand and gravel deposited here is spread out in a flat plain called a _flood plain_, because it is built up when the stream is in flood. It is on the large flood plains of rivers that many of our richest farm lands occur. These receive, each spring when the stream is in flood, a fresh coating of soil mixed with fragments of vegetable matter, and thus grow deeper and richer year by year. The flood plains of the Mississippi and of the Nile are notable examples of this important form of stream deposit. [Illustration: _Fig. 45. A delta built by a tiny rill flowing from a steep clay bank._] And now let us make one more rainy-day observation before going back to our warm, dry homes. Just ahead on the other side of that clump of alders and willows lies the pond into which the brook flows and where its current is so checked that it gives up almost all its burden of sediment. Close to the shore it has dropped its heaviest fragments, while the sand and clay have been carried farther out, each to be dropped in its turn, carefully assorted as to size and weight. Here you can see that the stream has partly filled this end of the pond, and it is now sending its divided current out over the deposit which it has made in a series of branching rivulets. This deposit is called a _delta_ (Fig. 45), and deltas are another important form of stream deposits. In the lakes and ponds, deltas may grow outward until the lake is filled, when the stream will meander across the level plain without much current and hence without much cutting power (Fig. 46). In the sea, great deltas are being formed in some places, like those at the mouths of the Mississippi, the Nile, and the Ganges. Large areas of dry land have thus been built. Deltas, like flood plains, afford rich farming lands when they are built high enough to remain above the water. [Illustration: _Fig. 46. A brook flowing across a pond which has been filled._] Here let us end our study of the brook for to-day, and wait until the rain ceases and the water runs clear again; then we can see the bottom and can also learn by contrast how much more work the brook has been doing to-day than it does when the volume of water is less. On the road home, however, we can notice how the temporary streams, as well as the everflowing brook, have been cutting and depositing. See where this tiny rill has run down that steep clay bank until its current was checked at the foot. Notice how it has spread out its sediment in a fan-shaped deposit. This form of deposit is sometimes made by larger streams, especially in a mountainous country with plains at the foot of the slopes. They are called _alluvial fans_ or _cone deltas_ (Fig. 47), but they are not as important as flood plains and deltas. [Illustration: _Fig. 47. A brook building a delta into a lake. Formerly the brook flowed straight ahead, but its own delta has caused it to change its direction._] The first dry, sunny morning that comes we visit the brook again. It no longer roars, but its clear waters now sing a pleasant melody as they ripple along the stony bed. We can see at a glance that comparatively little work is going on to-day, and yet if we look closely, we shall see glittering particles of sand moving along the bottom. The clear water, however, allows us to study the bottom which before was hidden by the load of mud. First we see the rounded boulders and pebbles of all sizes which must have been rolled about for a long time to make them so smooth. Some of them are so very hard that we cannot even scratch them with our knives; others are soft and easily broken. What would be the effect of rolling together stones of such varying hardness? We must think of these stones as the tools with which the brook cuts and grinds, for water without sediment can do little more than slightly to dissolve the rock. Let us go at once to the little waterfall, for we shall be curious to see what lies at the bottom of the whirling eddy that drew our attention yesterday. As we look down into the sunlit pool we see that the eddy is gone, for the volume of water is not great enough to cause it to revolve, but there in the rock on the bottom is a deep basin-like hole. In the bottom of this hole we shall see a number of well-rounded stones, with perhaps some sand and gravel. These stones are the tools which, whirled about by the eddying water, have cut the basin-like holes. Holes of this sort are common in rocky stream beds, especially in the neighborhood of falls or in places where falls have once been; they are called _pot-holes_ and represent another form of stream cutting (Fig. 48). [Illustration: _Fig. 48. A pot-hole cut in the rock of a stream's bed._] Next let us visit the flood plains which we saw forming when the water was high. Now we shall find the brook flowing in its channel with the flood plain deposits left high and dry. If we dig down into the flood plain, we shall see that it is made up of successive layers varying in thickness and in the size of the fragments. Each of these layers represents a period of high water and the size of the fragments in the layer tells us something of the strength of the current, and therefore of the intensity of the flood. Some layers are thicker than others, showing a longer period of flood, or perhaps several floods in which there was little variation. This _stratification_, as it is called, is one of the peculiarities of water deposits and it is due to the assorting power of currents which vary in force. If we were to cut into the delta we should find the same thing to be true,--a regular succession of layers, though sometimes confused by changes in direction of flow. To-day we shall notice something which escaped our attention when it was held by the rushing torrent--the valley bottom is much wider than the bed of the stream; if we keep our eyes open we shall see the explanation of this in the abandoned channels, where, owing to some temporary obstructions, the stream has been turned from side to side of the valley, now cutting on one bank and now on the other. In this turning from side to side the cutting area of the stream is increased, and it goes on widening its valley as well as cutting it downward. And now we have learned some of the most important ways in which the busy brook is toiling; but there are other points which we might have seen, and in some brooks there are special features to be noted. However, we have learned that the brook is no idler, that its main work is to conduct to the ocean the rain that falls upon the earth's surface, and that in doing this it is wearing down the hills, carrying them away only to build up in other places. The cheerful song of the brook takes on a new meaning as we lie in the shade and watch it hurry by. It is not the song of idleness nor of pleasure, but like the song with which a cheerful and tireless worker seeks to make its task lighter. LEAFLET XI. INSECT LIFE OF A BROOK.[13] BY MARY ROGERS MILLER. [13] Nature-Study Quarterly, No. 5: Leaflet 18, June, 1900. [Illustration] What wader, be he boy or water-fowl, has not watched the water-insects? How they dart hither and thither, some skimming the surface, others sturdily rowing about in the clear shallows! The sunlight fastens, for an instant, their grotesque reflections on the smooth bottom, then away--the shadow is lost, except for the picture it left in the memory of the onlooker. The splashing, dashing wader, with his shout and his all-disturbing stick, stands but a poor chance of making intimate acquaintances among water-folk. Your true brook-lover is a quiet individual except when occasion demands action. The lad who, from the vantage ground of a fallen log or overhanging bank, looks down on the housekeeping affairs of his tiny neighbors has the right spirit. Indeed, I doubt whether these little folk are aware of his presence or curiosity. Time was when the enjoyment of brook-life was limited to boys. White aprons, dainty slippers and fear of being called "Tom-boy" restrained the natural impulses of the "little women." Happily that day is past, and it no longer looks queer for girls to live in the open air and sunshine, free to chase butterflies and hunt water-bugs with their brothers. My brooks abound in swift eddies, perfect whirlpools in miniature, and water-falls of assorted sizes. They have also their quiet reaches, where whirligig beetles perform their marvelous gyrations, and bright-eyed polliwogs twirl their tails in early May. On the banks are ferns and mosses; sometimes willows and alders form a fringing border. The heart-leaved willows along many brooksides are found to bear at the tips of many of their branches, knob-like bodies which look like pine cones. (Fig. 49.) Now everybody knows that willows bear their seeds in catkins. Why, then, should so many brookside willows thrust these cones in our faces? On cutting one of the cones open, we learn the secret. A tiny colorless grub rolls helplessly out of a cell in the very centre of the cone. It is the young of a small gnat, scarcely larger than a mosquito, and known as a "gall gnat." The cone-shaped body on the willow branch is called a "pine-cone willow-gall." The little gray gnat comes out in the spring. Any one can collect the galls from the willows and keep them in some kind of cage in the house until the gnats come forth. [Illustration: _Fig. 49. Knob-like bodies resembling pine cones._] The pine-cone gall is an enlarged and deformed bud. The twig might have developed into a branch but for the presence of the little larva. The scales of the cone are the parts which under more favorable conditions would have been leaves. The brook-lover cannot afford to miss the pine-cone willow-galls. Wandering along the brookside in spring or early summer, one is surprised to find so many insect visitors darting about in the air. There are dragon-flies of many shapes, sizes and colors; dainty damsel-flies perch airily on reeds, their gleaming wings a-flutter in the sunshine; sometimes a nervous mud-wasp alights for a moment, and then up and away. The dragon-flies seem intent on coming as near to the water as possible without wetting their wings. They pay no heed to other visitors, yet how easily they escape the net of the would be collector! Let them alone. Their business is important if we would have a new generation of dragon-flies to delight the eye next year. The eggs of these creatures are left in the water and the young ones are aquatic. If you would know more of them, dip down into the stream in some sluggish bay. Dip deep and trail the net among the water plants. Besides dragon-fly nymphs there will be caddice-worm cases like tiny cob-houses, water-boatmen, back-swimmers, and giant water-bugs.[14] These are insects characteristic of still or sluggish water, and are found in spring and summer. [14] These and other forms found in still or slow flowing water are described and pictured in Leaflet No. XII, Life in an Aquarium. [Illustration: _Fig. 50. Water-striders have long, thin legs._] The insects which skip lightly over the surface of the water where the current is not too strong, are water-striders. (Fig. 50.) Some are short and stout, others slender-bodied; but all have long thin legs. Their color is nearly black. As they scurry about in the sunshine the delighted watcher will sometimes catch a glimpse of their reflections on the bottom. Six oval bits of shadow, outlined by rims of light; there is nothing else like it! Be sure you see it. [Illustration: _Fig. 51. The dobson makes no pretensions to beauty. (Natural size)._] Let us leave the quiet, restful pools and the sluggish bays, and follow the hurrying water to the rapids. Every stone changes the course of the current and the babble makes glad the heart of the wayfarer. Let us "leave no stone unturned," until we have routed from his favorite haunt that genius of the rapids, the dobson. (Fig. 51.) These creatures bear other common names. They are prized by fishermen in the black bass season. Dirty brown in color and frankly ugly in appearance and disposition, these larvæ, for such they are, have little to fear from the casual visitor at the water's edge. When a stone is lifted, the dobsons beneath it allow themselves to be hurried along for some distance by the current. The danger over, they "catch hold" and await their prey farther down stream. In spite of their vicious looking jaws these insects are not venomous. At the very worst they could do no more than pinch the finger of the unwary explorer. [Illustration: _Fig. 52. May-fly nymph._ (_Three times natural size_).] When the dobson is full grown, it is called a hellgrammite fly or horned corydalis. It has lost none of its ugliness, though it has gained two pairs of thin, brownish-gray wings, and flies about in the evening. It has been known to create some consternation by flying in at an open window. It is harmless and short-lived in the adult stage. Upturned stones are likely to bring to view other strangers. Lying close against these wet stony surfaces one usually finds young May-flies. (Fig. 52.[15]) These, like the young dragon-flies, are called _nymphs_. [15] Figures 52, 53 and 54 are adapted from Dr. R. Leuckart's Zoological Charts. When they are ready to leave the water they make their way to the shore, and, clinging to some convenient tree trunk or building, they shed their nymph skins. I have seen trees and buildings on the banks of the St. Lawrence river literally covered with these cast skins. In the early morning in June and July one may watch the molting process, the unfolding of the gauzy wings, and the unsheathing of the long filaments. (Fig. 53.) Do not believe that May-flies are harmful. They are sometimes too numerous for comfort at summer resorts where myriads of them swarm about the lights; but stories of their stinging and biting are entirely without foundation. They are short-lived in the adult stage. The name of the family to which they belong, _Ephemeridæ_, suggests their ephemeral existence. It is of these that poets have sung. Stone-fly nymphs, also, cling closely to the flat stones. The cast skins of these are frequently found on the banks of streams. They resemble the May-fly nymphs but can be identified by a comparison with these illustrations. (Fig. 54.) Sometimes on the very brink of a cataract one will see what appear like patches of loose black moss. Strangely enough, these are the larvæ of black-flies, related to the terrible black-fly of the north woods. The black-fly larvæ can live only in the swiftest water. There they pass through their transformations and succeed in emerging into their aërial stage, in spite of the rushing current. [Illustration: _Fig. 53. The May-fly sheds its nymph skin._ (_Twice natural size._)] All these things and many more are seen by those who frequent the water brooks. Observers cannot tell all they see, for some things are too deep for words. They can and do say to one and all, "Come, let us visit the brook together. The water and all that dwell in it and round about, invite us and make us welcome." [Illustration: _Fig. 54. Stone-fly, showing one pair of wings. The lower figure is a nymph._ (_Twice natural size._)] LEAFLET XII. LIFE IN AN AQUARIUM.[16] BY MARY ROGERS MILLER. [16] Teachers' Leaflet No. 11. May, 1898. [Illustration] There is no more fascinating adjunct to nature-study than a well-kept aquarium. It is a never-ending source of enjoyment, interest and instruction to students of any age. Children in the kindergarten or at home will watch with delight the lively occupants, which cut all sorts of queer capers for their amusement, and older people may read some of nature's choicest secrets through the glassy sides of the little water world. To many, the word aquarium suggests a vision of an elaborately constructed glass box, ornamented with impossible rock-work and strange water plants, or a globe in which discouraged and sickly-looking gold-fish appear and disappear, and take strange, uncanny shapes as they dart hither and thither. Such forms of aquaria have their place in the world, but they are not suited to the needs of an ordinary school-room. Every school may have some sort of an aquarium if the teacher and pupils are willing to give it some daily thought and care. Without such attention a fine aquarium may become an unsightly and disagreeable object, its inhabitants unhealthy and its beauty and usefulness lost. The great fundamental principle underlying success in making and maintaining an aquarium is this: _imitate nature_. We all know how much easier it is to formulate a principle, and even to write a book about it, than to put it into practice. Most of us have not had the time and opportunity for the close observation of nature necessary to interpret her methods and to imitate her. It is to those teachers who are anxious to learn what nature has to teach and who wish to lead their pupils to a higher and wider conception of life, that these suggestions are offered. Four things are important in making and keeping an aquarium: 1. The equilibrium between plant and animal life must be secured and maintained. It is probable that an aquarium in an elementary school is mainly used for the study of animal life; but animals do not thrive in water where no plants are growing. Nature keeps plants and animals in the same pond and we must follow her lead. The plants have three valuable functions in the aquarium. First, they supply food for the herbivorous creatures. Second, they give off a quantity of oxygen which is necessary to the life of the animals. Third, they take up from the water the harmful carbonic acid gas which passes from the bodies of the animals. Just how the plants do this is another story. [Illustration: _Fig. 55. A museum-jar aquarium. (More animal life would make a better equilibrium._)] 2. The aquarium must be ventilated. Its top should be broad and open. Every little fish, snail and insect wants air, just as every boy and girl wants it. A certain quantity of air is mixed with the water, and the creatures must breathe that or come to the surface for their supply. How does Mother Nature manage the ventilation of her aquaria,--the ponds and streams? The plants furnish part of the air, as we have said. The open pond, whose surface is ruffled by every passing breeze, is constantly being provided with fresh air. A tadpole or a fish can no more live in a long-necked bottle than a boy can live in a chimney. 3. The temperature should be kept between 40° and 50° Fahr. Both nature and experience teach us this. A shady corner is a better place for the aquarium than a sunny window on a warm day. 4. It is well to choose such animals for the aquarium as are adapted to life in still water. Unless one has an arrangement of water pipes to supply a constant flow of water through the aquarium, it is better not to try to keep creatures that we find in swift streams. Practical experience shows that there are certain dangers to guard against,--dangers which may result in the unnecessary suffering of the innocent. Perhaps the most serious results come from overstocking. It is better to have too few plants or animals than too many of either. A great deal of light, especially bright sunlight, is not good for the aquarium. A pond that is not shaded soon becomes green with a thick growth of slime or algæ. This does not look well in an aquarium and is likely to take up so much of the plant-food that the other plants are "starved out." The plants in the school-room window may provide shade for the aquarium, just as the trees and shrubs on its banks shade the pond. If we find green slime forming on the light side of our miniature pond, we should put it in a darker place, shade it heavily so that the light comes in from the top only, and put in a few more snails. These will make quick work of the green slime, since they are fond of it, if we are not. [Illustration: _Fig. 56. A rectangular glass aquarium._] Some of the most innocent-looking "water nymphs" may be concealing habits that we can hardly approve. There are some which feed on their smaller and weaker neighbors, and even on the members of their own families. We know that such things go on in nature, but if we wish to have a happy family we must keep the cannibals by themselves. After an aquarium has been filled with water and the inhabitants well established, it is not necessary to change the water, except in case of accident. The water that is lost by evaporation has to be replaced. It should be poured in gently in order not to disturb the water and destroy its clearness. If a piece of rubber tubing is available, a practical use of the siphon can be shown and the aquarium replenished at the same time. It is a good plan to use rain water, or clear water from a pond, for this purpose. A piece of thin board or a pane of glass may be used as a cover to keep the dust out of the aquarium. This need not fit tightly or be left on all the time. A wire netting or a cover of thin cotton net would keep the flying insects from escaping, and it might be tied on permanently. Dust may be skimmed off the top of the water or may be removed by laying pieces of blotting paper on the surface for a moment. If any of the inhabitants do not take kindly to the life in the aquarium, they can be taken out and kept in a jar by themselves--a sort of fresh air and cold water cure. If any chance to die they ought to be removed before they make the water unfit for the others. Bits of charcoal in the water are helpful if a deodorizer or disinfectant is needed. [Illustration: _Fig. 57. A home-made aquarium._] Experience, the dear but thorough teacher, is of more value to every one of us than many rules and precepts. Nothing can rob us of the pleasure that comes of finding things out for ourselves. Much of the fun as well as much of the success in life comes from overcoming its difficulties. One must have a large store of patience and courage and hopefulness to undertake the care of an aquarium. After it is once made it is less trouble to take care of than a canary or a pet rabbit. But most things that are worth doing require patience, courage and hopefulness, and if we can add to our store of any of these by our study of life in an aquarium we are so much the better for it. Two kinds of aquaria will be found useful in any school. Permanent ones--those which are expected to continue through a season or through a whole year if the school-room is warm enough to prevent freezing; and temporary ones--those which are for lesson hours or for the study of special forms. If some one phase in the life of any aquatic animal is to be studied during a short period, it is well to have special temporary aquaria. Also, when a talk on some of the occupants of the larger aquarium is to be given, specimens may be placed in small vessels for the time being and returned later. For such purposes glass tumblers can be used, or small fruit jars, finger bowls, broken goblets set in blocks of wood, ordinary white bowls or dishes, tubs, pails or tanks for large fishes,--in fact any wide-mouthed vessel which is easy to get. Special suggestions will be made in connection with the study of some of the water insects and others. A permanent aquarium need not be an expensive affair. The rectangular ones are best if large fishes are to be kept, yet they are not essential. Here, again, it is easier to write directions for the construction of a perfect aquarium than it is for the most patient teacher, with the help of the boys who are handy with tools, to put together a box of wood and glass that will not spring a leak some day and spoil everything. But failures do not discourage us; they make us only more determined. If a rectangular water-tight box is out of the question, what is the next best thing? One of the busiest laboratories in New York State has plants and animals living in jars of all shapes and sizes,--fruit jars, glass butter jars, candy jars, battery jars, museum jars, and others of like nature. There are rectangular and round aquaria of various sizes kept by all firms who deal in laboratory supplies, and if some money is to be spent, one of these is a good investment. Fig. 56 shows one of these rectangular ones, and Fig. 57 shows a round one of small size which is useful and does not cost much. A GOOD SCHOOL AQUARIUM. A cheap, substantial aquarium for general use may be made of glass and "angle" or "valley" tin. Pieces of glass are always handy and the tin can be had at any tin-shop. The tinsmith will know just how to cut, "angle" and solder it. The following directions for making an aquarium of this kind are supplied us by Professor C. F. Hodge of Clark University. He has made and used them for years with great satisfaction in the university laboratory and in graded schools. The illustration (Fig. 58, 59) shows various sizes. A good all-round size has these dimensions: 12 inches high, 15 inches long and 8 inches wide. One may use spoiled photographic plates for small desk aquaria, in which to watch the development of "wigglers," dragon-fly nymphs or other water insects. Lids of wire screen are shown on some of the aquaria in the picture (1, 2 and 3). _To make the frame._--If the aquarium is to be 10 x 8 x 5 inches, we shall need two pieces of glass for sides 10 x 5 inches, two for ends 8 x 10, and one for bottom 8 x 5; and two strips of tin 3/4 inch wide, 28 inches long, and four strips 10-3/8 inches long. These should be angled by the tinner, and out of them we shall make the frame. The 28-inch strips should be cut with tinner's snips half way in two at 10-3/8, 5-3/8, 10-3/8 and 5-3/8 inches, cutting off the end at the last mark. This keeps the top and the bottom of the frame each in one piece. Next we bend them into shape. When the corners are well squared they should be soldered. The four 10-3/8 pieces make the vertical corners and we will solder them in place. An easy way to be sure that each angle is square is to hold it in a mechanic's square while soldering it. [Illustration: _Figs. 58, 59. Permanent aquarium made of tin and glass._] _To set the glass._--Lay the aquarium cement (see recipe) on evenly all around the bottom of the frame and press the bottom glass into place. Put in the sides and ends in the same way. Next carefully put a few very limber twigs into the aquarium to hold the glass against the frame till the cement takes hold. Cut off the extra cement with a knife and smooth it nicely. Cover the frame with asphaltum varnish or black lacquer. In a week it will be ready to use. Double thick glass must be used for large aquaria. _Cement._--Shun all resinous cements that require to be put on hot. The following is a recipe for cement used in successful angle tin aquaria, for both salt and fresh water: 10 parts, by measure, fine, dry, white sand, 10 parts plaster of Paris, 10 parts litharge, 1 part powdered resin. Stir well together and, as wanted, mix to consistency of _stiff_ putty with _pure_ boiled linseed oil. The formula given by the U. S. Fish Commission is recommended: 8 parts putty, 1 part red lead, 1 part litharge. Mix, when wanted, to consistency of _stiff_ putty, with raw linseed oil. After reading all these directions and getting the idea of an aquarium, one should think the whole matter out for himself and make it just as he wants it. Directions are useful as suggestions only. The shallow form is better for raising toads, frogs and insect larvæ; the deeper aquaria show water plants and fishes to better advantage. INHABITANTS OF THE AQUARIUM. [Illustration: _Fig. 60. Eel-grass._] It is now time to begin to think about what shall be kept in the aquarium. At the bottom a layer of sand, the cleaner the better, two or three inches deep will be needed. A few stones, not too large, may be dropped in on top of this first layer, to make it more natural. The water plants come next and will thrive best if planted securely in the sand. The most difficult thing is to get the water in without stirring things up. A good way is to pour the water in a slow stream against the inside of the aquarium. The best way is to use a rubber tube siphon, but even then the water ought not to flow from a very great height. If the aquarium is large, it had better be put in its permanent place before filling. The aquarium will soon be ready for snails, polliwogs, and what ever else we may wish to put into it. In the course of a few days the plants will be giving up oxygen and asking for carbon dioxid. [Illustration: _Fig. 61. Duck-weed._] _Plants that thrive and are useful in aquaria._--Many of the common marsh or pond plants are suitable. The accompanying illustrations show a few of these. Nothing can be prettier than some of these soft, delicate plants in the water. The eel-grass, or tape grass (Fig. 60), is an interesting study in itself, especially at blossoming time when the spiral stems, bearing flowers, appear. Any who are especially interested in the life-history of this plant may read in reference books a great deal about what other observers have learned from the plant concerning its methods of growth and development. The best that we learn will be what the plant itself tells us day by day. Some of the best reference books on both plant and animal life are found in the New York State Teachers' Library and can be obtained by teachers through the school commissioners. [Illustration: _Fig. 62. Water plants._] Every boy and girl who likes to taste the fresh, peppery plants which they find growing in cold springs, knows watercress. If the aquarium is not too deep, this plant will grow above the surface and furnish a resting place for some snail which, tired perhaps by its constant activity, enjoys a few minutes in the open air. Duck-weed or duck's-meat (Fig. 61) grows on the surface, dangling its long thread-like roots in the water. A little of it is enough. Too much would keep us from looking down upon our little friends in the water. The parrot's feather (Fig. 62, A) is an ornamental water plant that can be obtained from a florist; a plant that looks very like it grows in our ponds. It is called water-milfoil. The water purslane, B, or the common stoneworts, _Nitella_ and _Chara_, D, E, the waterweed, F, and the horn-wort, C, appear graceful and pretty in the water. If you do not find any of these, you are sure to find others growing in the ponds in your neighborhood which will answer the purpose just as well. [Illustration: _Fig. 63. Snail._] _Animals that may be kept in aquaria._--_The snail._ The common pond snail with the spiral shell, either flat or conical, can be found clinging to the stems of the cat-tails or flags and to floating rubbish in ponds or swamps. If these are picked off carefully and taken home in a pail of water they will be valuable inhabitants for the aquarium. They are vegetable feeders and unless there is some green slime in the water, cabbage or lettuce leaves may be put where the snails can get them. The eggs of the snail are excellent food for fishes, and if a few could be secured for special study, their form, habits and development may be made delightful observation and drawing lessons. Snails can be kept out of the water for some time on moist earth. Land snails and slugs should be kept on wet sand and fed with lettuce and cabbage leaves. The common slug of the garden is often injurious to vegetation. It may always be tracked by the trail of slime it leaves behind it. Gardeners often protect plants from those creatures by sprinkling wood-ashes about them. _Minnows._ Every boy knows where to find these spry little fellows. They can be collected with a dipper or net and will thrive in an aquarium if fed with earth worms or flies or other insects. If kept in small quarters where food is scarce, they will soon dispatch the other occupants of the jar. They will, however, eat bits of fresh meat. If the aquarium is large enough, it would hardly be complete without minnows. [Illustration: _Fig. 64. Snail with conical shell._] _Cat fish._--It will not be practicable to keep a cat fish in the permanent aquarium. If one is to be studied it can be obtained at any fish market or by angling, the latter a slow method, but one which will appeal to every boy in the class. The cat fish should be kept in a tub, tank, or large pan of water, and if not wanted for laboratory work, they might be fried for lunch, as cat fish are very good eating. _Gold fish_ are a special delight if kept in large aquaria. These may often be obtained from dealers in the larger cities. Those who wish other fish for study should be able to get information from the New York State Fish Culturist, concerning the species that are suited to life in still water, and how to get and take care of them. [Illustration: _Fig. 65. "Frog spawn."_] _The clam._--If empty clam shells are plenty on the bank of some stream after a freshet, a supply of clams may be obtained by raking the mud or sand at the bottom of the stream. They can be kept in a shallow pan, and if the water is warmish and they are left undisturbed for a time, they will move about. If kept in a jar of damp sand they will probably bury themselves. They feed on microscopic plants and might not thrive in the permanent aquarium. _Crawfish or crayfish._--These can be collected with nets from under stones in creeks or ponds. They can live very comfortably out of the water part of the time. There is small chance for the unsuspecting snail or water insect which comes within reach of the hungry jaws of the crawfish, and the temporary aquarium is the safest place for him. Many who live near the ocean can obtain and keep in sea water the lobster, a cousin of the crawfish, and will find that the habits of either will afford much amusement as well as instruction. The school boy generally knows the crawfish as a "crab." [Illustration: _Fig. 66. A useful net for general collecting._] _The frog._--The study of the development of the common frog is accompanied with little or no difficulty. To be sure there are some species which require two or three years to complete their growth and changes, from the egg to the adult, yet most of the changes can be seen in one year. Frogs are not at all shy in the spring, proclaiming their whereabouts in no uncertain tones from every pond in the neighborhood. The "frog spawn" can be found clinging to plants or rubbish in masses varying in size from a cluster of two or three eggs to great lumps as large as the two fists. The "spawn" is a transparent jelly in which the eggs are imbedded. Each egg is dark colored, spherical in shape, and about as large as a small pea. The eggs of the small spotted salamander are found in similar masses of jelly and look very much like the frog's eggs. If a small quantity of this jelly-like mass be secured by means of a collecting net or by wading in for it, it may be kept in a flat white dish with just enough clean, cool water to cover it, until the young tadpoles have hatched. As they grow larger a few may be transferred to a permanent aquarium prepared especially for them in a dish with sloping sides, and their changes watched from week to week through the season. The growing polliwog feeds on vegetable diet; what does the full grown frog eat? [Illustration: _Fig. 67. The predaceous diving-beetle._] _Insects that can be kept in aquaria._--Insects are to many the most satisfactory creatures that can be keep in aquaria. They are plentiful, easy to get, each one of the many kinds seems to have habits peculiar to itself, and each more curious and interesting than the last. Some insects spend their entire life in the water; others are aquatic during one stage of their existence only. Those described here are a few of the common ones in ponds and sluggish streams, of the central part of the state of New York. If these cannot be found, others just as interesting may be kept instead. One can hardly make a single dip with a net without bringing out of their hiding places many of these "little people." The predaceous diving-beetle (Fig. 67) is well named. He is a diver by profession and is a skilled one. The young of this beetle are known as "water-tigers" (Fig. 68), and their habits justify the name. Their food consists of the young of other insects; in fact it is better to keep them by themselves unless we wish to have the aquarium depopulated. When the tiger has reached his full size, his form changes and he rests for a time as a pupa; then comes forth as a hard, shiny beetle like Fig. 67. [Illustration: _Fig. 68. A water-tiger._] The water-scavenger beetle (Fig. 69), so called because of its appetite for decayed matter, is common in many ponds. It has, like the diving beetle, a hard, shiny back, with a straight line down the middle, but the two can be distinguished when seen together. The young of this beetle look and act something like the water-tigers, but have not such great ugly jaws. [Illustration: _Fig. 69. A water-scavenger beetle._] There are three other swimmers even more delightful to watch than those already mentioned. The water-boatmen (Fig. 70), with their sturdy oar-like legs and business-like way of using them, are droll little fellows. They are not so large as the back-swimmers. Fig. 71 shows a back-swimmer just in the act of pulling a stroke. These creatures swim with their boat-shaped backs down and their six legs up. We must be careful how we handle the back-swimmers, for each one of them carries a sharp bill and may give us a thrust with it which would be painful, perhaps poisonous. [Illustration: _Fig. 70. Water-boatman._] The water-scorpion (Fig. 72) is a queer creature living in a neighborly way with the boatmen and back-swimmers, though not so easy to find. Do not throw away any dirty little twig which you find in the net after a dip among water plants near the bottom of a stream or pond. It may begin to squirm and reveal the fact that it is no twig but a slender-legged insect with a spindle-shaped body. We may handle it without danger, as it is harmless. This is a water-scorpion, and his way of catching his prey and getting his air supply will be interesting to watch. He is not shy and will answer questions about himself promptly and cheerfully. Fig. 72 will give an idea of the size and appearance of this insect. [Illustration: _Fig. 71. A back-swimmer._] No water insect except the big scavenger beetle can begin to compare in size with the giant water-bug (Fig. 73). We may think at first that he is a beetle, yet the way he crosses his wings on his back proves him a true bug. In quiet ponds these giants are common enough, but the boy or girl who "bags" a full-grown one at the first dip of the net may be considered lucky. The boatmen, back-swimmers and giants all have oars, yet are not entirely dependent on them. They have strong wings, too, and if their old home gets too thickly settled, and the other insects on which they feed are scarce, they fly away to other places. The giant water-bug often migrates at night, and is attracted to any bright light he sees in his journey. This habit has given him the popular name of "electric-light bug." [Illustration: _Fig. 72. Water-scorpion._] [Illustration: _Fig. 73. Giant water-bug._] Among the insects which spend but part of their life in the water, we shall find many surprises. It made us feel queer when we learned that the restless but innocent-looking wiggler of the rain-water barrel was really the young of the too familiar mosquito. The adult mosquito leaves its eggs in tiny boat-shaped masses on the surface of stagnant water, where food will be abundant for the young which soon appear. Some time is spent by the wigglers in eating and growing before they curl up into pupæ. Insects are rarely active in the pupa stage. The mosquito is one of the very few exceptions. From these lively pupæ the full-grown mosquitoes emerge. Fig. 74 shows a small glass tumbler in which are seen the three aquatic stages of the mosquito's life and an adult just leaving the pupa skin. Nothing is easier than to watch the entire development of the mosquito, and the changes must be seen to be fully enjoyed and appreciated. It would be interesting to note the differences between the mosquitoes that come out of the small aquaria. A supply of wigglers may be kept in the permanent aquarium where they serve as food for the other insects. [Illustration: _Fig. 74. Temporary aquarium, containing eggs, larvæ and pupæ of mosquito._] Every child knows the dragon-fly or darning-needle, and none but the bravest of them dare venture near one without covering ears or eyes or mouth, for fear of being sewed. Many and wide-spread are the superstitions concerning this insect, and it is often difficult to bring children to believe that this creature, besides being a thing of beauty, is not only harmless but actually beneficial. If they knew how many mosquitos the darning-needle eats in a day they would welcome instead of fearing the gay creature. The young of the dragon-fly live a groveling existence, as different as can be from that of their sun-loving parents. Their food consists of mosquito larvæ, water-fleas and the like, and their method of catching their prey is as novel as it is effective. Pupils and teacher can get plenty of good healthy entertainment out of the behavior of these awkward and voracious little mask-wearers. The first dip of the net usually brings up a supply of dragon-fly nymphs and of their more slender cousins, the damsel-fly nymphs. The latter have expanded plate-like appendages at the hind end of the body which distinguish them from the dragon-fly nymphs. [Illustration: _Fig. 75. The life history of a dragon-fly as seen in an aquarium._] The transformation of one of these young insects into an adult is one of the most interesting observation lessons that can be imagined for a warm spring morning. If a dragon-fly nymph should signify its intention of changing its form in my school-room, I should certainly suspend all ordinary work and attend to him alone. Each child should see if possible this wonderful transfiguration. Floating in the water of a pond or stream one may find a little bundle of grass or weed stems, with perhaps a tiny pebble clinging to the mass. Close examination will prove this to be the "house-boat" of one of our insect neighbors, the caddice-worm. Contrasting strangely with the untidy exterior is the neat interior, with its lining of delicate silk, so smooth that the soft-bodied creature which lives inside is safe from injury. The commonest of the many forms of houses found here are those illustrated in Figs. 76 and 77. These will find all they wish to eat in a well-stocked aquarium. When full grown they will leave the water as winged creatures, like Fig. 78, and return to its depths no more. [Illustration: _Fig. 76. Case of caddice-worm._] [Illustration: _Fig. 77. Another caddice-worm case._] [Illustration: _Fig. 78. Caddice-fly._] There is surely no lack of material furnished by Mother Nature for the study of aquatic life. Every one who really believes in its usefulness can have an aquarium, and will feel well repaid for the time and effort required when the renewed interest in nature is witnessed which this close contact with living beings brings to every student. Let us take hold with a will, overcome the difficulties in the way, and teacher and pupils become students together. LEAFLET XIII. A STUDY OF FISHES.[17] BY H. D. REED. [17] Nature-Study Quarterly, No. 8: Leaflet 21. January, 1901. [Illustration] The first forms of animal life which attract the young naturalist's attention are doubtless the birds. These are most interesting to him because of their beautiful colors, their sweet songs, and the grace with which they fly. But who has watched the fishes in a brook or an aquarium and is not able to grant them a place, in beauty, grace and delicate coloration, equal to the birds? To be sure, fishes cannot sing, yet there are so many other interesting facts in connection with their habits and life-histories that it fully makes up for their lack of voice. THE PARTS OF A FISH. While observing a living fish and admiring its beauty, it will probably occur to some of us that a fish consists only of a head and tail. Yet this is not all. Between the head and tail is a part that we may call the trunk. It contains the digestive and other organs. There is no indication of a neck in a fish. Any such constriction would destroy the regular outline of the animal's body and thus retard the speed with which it moves through the water. But head, trunk and tail are not all. There are attached to the outer side of the fish's body certain appendages that are called fins. Before discussing some of the different kinds of fishes and their habits, it will be necessary to learn something about fins, for the fins of all fishes are not alike. When a fish moves through the water, it bends its tail first to one side and then to the other. This undulatory movement, as it is called, pushes the fish's body ahead. One can observe the movements easily upon a specimen kept alive in an aquarium jar. At the extreme end of the tail there is a broad, notched fin which aids the tail in propelling and steering the body. We will call this the _tail_ or _caudal_ fin (Fig. 79 B). In most of our common fishes there are seven fins--six without the caudal. The first of these six is a large fin situated near the middle of the back. This is the _back_ or _dorsal_ fin (Fig. 79 A). Sometimes we may find a fish that has two dorsal fins. In this case the one nearest the head is called first dorsal and the next one behind it the second dorsal. Near the head, in a position corresponding to our arms, is a pair of fins which are called the _arm_ or _pectoral_ fins (Fig. 79 E). Farther back towards the tail, on the under side of the fish, is another pair, corresponding in position to the hind legs of a quadruped. This pair is called the _leg_ or _pelvic_ fins (Fig. 79 D). Just behind the pelvic fins is a single fin, situated on the middle line of the body. This is the _anal_ fin (Fig. 79 C). The pectoral and pelvic fins are called paired fins because they are in pairs. The others which are not in pairs are called median fins, because they are situated on the middle line of the body. The paired fins serve as delicate balancers to keep the body right side up and to regulate speed. They are also used to propel the body backwards. After naming the different fins of the fish in the schoolroom aquarium, it will be interesting to observe the uses of each. [Illustration: _Fig. 79. Diagram of a fish to show: A, dorsal fin; B, caudal fin; C, anal fin; D, pelvic fins; E, pectoral fins; L, lateral line._] On the side of the body, extending from the head to the caudal fin, is, in most fishes, a line made up of a series of small tubes which open upon the surface. This is called the _lateral line_, and acts in the capacity of a sense organ (Fig. 79 L). Is the lateral line straight or curved? Does it curve upwards or downwards? Does the curvature differ in different kinds of fishes? Do all the fishes you find possess a lateral line? Is the lateral line complete in all fishes, _i. e._, does it extend from the head to the caudal fin without a single break? WHERE FISHES SPEND THE WINTER. [Illustration: _Fig. 80. 1, Shiner; 2, Barred Killifish; 3, Black-nosed Dace; 4, Creek Chub; 5, Young of Large-mouthed Black Bass; 6, Varying-toothed Minnow._] As winter approaches and the leaves fall and the ground becomes frozen, the birds leave us and go farther south into warmer climates where food is more abundant. We are all familiar with this habit of the birds, but how many of us know or have even wondered what the fishes have been doing through the cold winter months while the streams and ponds have been covered with ice? Before the warmth of spring comes to raise the temperature of the streams, let us go to some familiar place in a brook where, during the summer, are to be found scores of minnows. None are to be found now. The brook shows no signs of ever having contained any living creatures. Suppose we go farther up or down the stream until we find a protected pool the bottom of which is covered with sediment and water-soaked leaves. With our net we will dip up some of the leaves and sediment, being sure that we dip from the very bottom. On looking over this mass of muddy material we may find a fish two or three inches long, with very fine scales, a black back, a silvery belly and a blackish or brown band on the side of the body extending from the tip of the nose to the tail. This is the _Black-nosed Dace_ (Fig. 80). If specimens of this fish are caught very early in the spring, one will be able to watch some interesting color changes. As the spawning time approaches, the dark band on the sides and the fins change to a bright crimson. Sometimes the whole body may be of this gaudy color. During the summer the lateral band becomes orange. As the season goes, the bright colors gradually fade until finally, in the fall and winter, the little black-nose is again clothed in his more modest attire. A great many of the fishes, and especially the larger ones, seek some deep pond or pool in the stream at the approach of winter, and remain near the bottom. If the pond or stream is so deep that they do not become chilled they will remain active, swimming about and taking food all winter. But when the stream is very shallow and the fishes feel the cold, they settle down to the bottom, moving about very little and taking little or no food. The carp collect in small numbers and pass the winter in excavations that they make in the muddy bottom. If the débris thrown up by the water across the marshy end of a lake be raked over during the winter, one will probably find some of the smaller catfishes spending the season in a semi-dormant state. [Illustration: _Fig. 81. The Common Catfish or Bullhead._] Some interesting experiments may be tried with the fishes in the aquarium jar. Keep them for a few days where it is cold and then bring them into a warmer room and note the difference in their activity. THE COMMON CATFISH OR BULLHEAD. This sleepy old fellow differs in many respects from most of our common fishes. He has no scales. About the mouth are eight long whisker-like appendages, called barbels (Fig. 81). Perhaps he is called catfish because he has whiskers about his mouth like a cat. Any one who has ever taken a catfish from the hook probably knows that care is needed in order not to receive a painful prick from the sharp spines in his pectoral and dorsal fins. There is nothing aristocratic about the catfish. In warm pools and streams where the water is sluggish and the muddy bottom is covered with weeds, he may be found moving lazily about in search of food. His taste is not delicate. Animal substance, whether living or dead, satisfies him. When in search of food he makes good use of his barbels, especially those at the corners of his mouth, which he uses as feelers. The catfish will live longer out of water than most of our other food fishes. They will live and thrive in water which is far too impure for "pumpkin seeds" or bass. They spawn late in the spring. The mother fish cares for her young much as a hen cares for her chickens. When they are old enough to take care of themselves, she weans them. THE COMMON SUNFISH OR PUMPKIN SEED. [Illustration: _Fig. 82. The common Sunfish or Pumpkin Seed._] Some evening just at sunset visit a quiet pool in a nearby stream. Drop in your hook baited with an "angle worm" and presently the dancing cork shows that you have a "bite." On "pulling up" you find that you really have a fish. It is a beautiful creature, too--thin flat body shaped something like the seed of a pumpkin. His back is an olive green delicately shaded with blue. His sides are spotted with orange, while his belly is a bright yellow. His cheeks are orange-color streaked with wavy lines of blue. Just behind his eye on his "ear-flap" is a bright scarlet spot. This is the common _Sunfish_ or _Pumpkin Seed_ (Fig. 82). He is a very beautiful, aristocratic little fellow, "looking like a brilliant coin fresh from the mint." Keep him alive in an aquarium jar with a shiner. Compare the two fishes, as to the size and shape of their bodies and fins. Feed them different kinds of food, such as worms, insects and crackers, and try to discover which they like best and how they eat. The sunfishes prefer quiet waters. They lay their eggs in the spring of the year. The male selects a spot near the banks of the stream or pond where the water is very shallow. Here he clears a circular area about a foot in diameter. After making a slight excavation in the gravel or sand, the nest is completed. The eggs are then deposited by the female in the basin-like excavation. He watches his nest and eggs with great diligence, driving away other fishes that chance to come near. THE BLACK BASSES. [Illustration: _Fig. 83. Adult Small-mouthed Black Bass._] The black basses are not usually found in small streams where it is most pleasant for teachers and pupils to fish. They are fishes that seek the rivers and lakes. There are two kinds of black bass, the _Large-mouthed_ and the _Small-mouthed_. As the name indicates, the two may be distinguished by the size of the mouth. In the large-mouthed black bass the upper jaw extends to a point behind the eye, while in the small-mouthed species it extends to a point just below the middle of the eye (Fig. 83). Both kinds of black bass may be found in the same body of water. The character of the bottoms over which they are found, however, differs. The small-mouthed prefers the stony bars or shoals. The large-mouthed, on the contrary, selects a muddy bottom grown over with reeds. They feed upon crayfish ("crabs"), minnows, frogs, worms, tadpoles and insects. Our black basses are very queer parents. They prepare a nest in which the eggs are deposited. Both male and female are very courageous in the defense of their eggs and young. As soon as the young fishes are able to take care of themselves the parent fishes leave them, and after that time may even feed upon their own children. THE STICKLEBACK. [Illustration: _Fig. 84. A Stickleback._] The sticklebacks are queer little fellows indeed (Fig. 84). The slender body, extremely narrow tail, and the sharp, free spines in front of the dorsal fin, give them at once the appearance of being both active and pugnacious little creatures. The sticklebacks are detrimental to the increase of other fishes since they greedily destroy the spawn and young of all fishes that come within their reach. They build nests about two inches in diameter, with a hole in the top. After the eggs are laid the male defends the nest with great bravery. The little five-spined brook stickleback in the Cayuga Lake basin, N. Y., is most commonly found in stagnant pools, shaded by trees, where the water is filled with decaying vegetable matter,--the so-called "green frog-spawn" (spirogyra), and duck weed. If you supply the sticklebacks with plenty of fine vegetable material, you may induce them to built a nest in the aquarium jar, but they must be caught and placed in the jar early in the season before they spawn. THE JOHNNY DARTERS. In New York State, every swift stream which has a bed of gravel and flat stones ought to contain some one of the Johnny darters, for there are a great many different kinds (Fig. 85). They are little creatures, delighting in clear water and swift currents where they dart about, hiding under stones and leaves, or resting on the bottom with their heads up-stream. The body of a darter is compact and spindle-shaped, gradually tapering from the short head to a narrow tail. The eyes are situated nearly on top of the head. The color of the darters varies greatly with the different kinds. Some are very plain, the light ground color being broken only by a few brown markings. Others are gorgeous in their colorings, it seeming as if they had attempted to reproduce the rainbow on their sides. Such kinds are indeed very attractive and are ranked with the most beautifully colored of all our common fishes. When a darter swims, he appears bird-like, for he flies through the water much as a bird flies through the air. He does not use his tail alone in swimming, as the catfish, the sunfish, the stickleback, and most of the other fishes do, but flies with his pectoral fins. [Illustration: _Fig. 85. A Johnny Darter._] You surely must have a Johnny darter in your aquarium jar. The Johnnies are true American fishes. Though small, they face the strong currents and eke out a living where their larger cousin, the yellow perch, would perish. There are many interesting facts which may be learned from the Johnny darters when kept alive in an aquarium. When not actually moving in the water, do the Johnnies rest on the bottom of the jar or remain suspended in the middle apparently resting on nothing, as the other aquarium fishes do? When a fish remains still in the middle of the jar he does so because he has a well-developed air-bladder to help buoy him up, and when a fish dies it is the air-bladder which causes him to turn over and rise to the top. Now if the Johnnies always rest on the bottom of the jar when not swimming and if one happens to die and does not rise to the top we may know that, if he has an air-bladder at all, it is only a vestigial one. It would be interesting also to find out for ourselves whether a Johnny darter can really "climb trees" (I mean by trees, of course, the water plants in the aquarium jar), or if he can perch upon the branches like a bird. THE MINNOWS. [Illustration: _Fig. 86. A convenient form of aquarium jar supplied with water plants. The bottom is covered with clean sand and flat stones._] All the small fishes of the brooks are called minnows, or more often "minnies," by the boy fisherman. The boy believes that they grow into larger fishes. This is not true. The minnows are a distinct group of fishes and, for the most part, small ones. They do not grow to be bass or pike or sunfishes or anything else but minnows. Some of the minnows, however, are comparatively large. Two of these are the _Creek Chub_ (Fig. 80), and the _Shiner_ (Fig. 80). The chub is the king of the small brooks, being often the largest and most voracious fish found in such streams. His common diet probably consists of insects and worms, but if very hungry he does not object to eating a smaller fish. During the spawning season, which is springtime, the male chub has sharp, horny tubercles or spines developed upon the snout. We are able to recognize the creek chub by means of a black spot at the front of the base of the dorsal fin. The shiner or red-fin has much larger scales than the chub. The back is elevated in front of the dorsal fin, giving him the appearance of a hump-back. His sides are a steel-blue with silvery reflections. While the shiner is not the largest, it is almost everywhere one of the most abundant brook fishes. In spring the lower fins of the male become reddish. Like the chub, he has small horny tubercles developed on the snout. RANDOM NOTES. Did you ever see a fish yawn? Watch a shiner in your aquarium. Sometimes you may see him open his mouth widely as though he was very sleepy. Again you may find him resting on the bottom of the jar taking a nap. Fishes cannot close their eyes when they sleep for they have no eyelids. A convenient way to collect fishes for the schoolroom aquarium is to use a dip net. The ordinary insect net will do, but it is better to replace the cheese-cloth bag by a double thickness of mosquito-bar, thus enabling one to move the net through the water more rapidly. By dipping in the deep pools, among grasses and under the banks with such a net one can soon obtain fishes enough to stock an aquarium (Fig. 86). The aquarium jar should never be placed in the sun. It is better to have only three or four fishes in an aquarium at one time. Some flat stones on the bottom of the jar will afford them convenient hiding places. For further notes on aquaria, consult Leaflet No. XII. [Illustration] LEAFLET XIV. THE OPENING OF A COCOON.[18] BY MARY ROGERS MILLER. [18] Nature-Study Quarterly, No. 4: Leaflet 17. March, 1900. [Illustration] Among the commonest treasures brought into the schools by children in the fall or winter are the cocoons of our giant silk-worms. If one has a place to put them where the air is not too warm or dry, no special care will be necessary to keep them through the winter. Out-door conditions must be imitated as nearly as possible. If early in the fall one is fortunate enough to meet one of these giants out for a walk, it is the simplest thing in the world to capture him and watch him spin his marvelous winter blanket. Two members of this family of giant insects are quite common in this state, the largest the Cecropia, called sometimes the Emperor, and the Promethea. [Illustration: _Fig. 87. Cocoon of the Cecropia moth. It sometimes hangs from a twig of a fruit tree._] The Cecropia moth often measures five or six inches across--a veritable giant. Its main color is dusty brown, with spots and bands of cinnamon brown and white. On each wing is a white crescent bordered with red and outlined with a black line. The body is heavy and covered with thick, reddish-brown hairs, crossed near the end with black and white lines. On its small head are two large feathery feelers or antennæ. The Cecropia moth emerges from the cocoon, full grown, in early summer, when out of doors. Those kept in the house often come out as early as March. The eggs are deposited by the adults upon apple, pear, cherry, maple and other shade and fruit trees. Professor Comstock says that the spiny caterpillars which hatch from the eggs in about two weeks, are known to feed upon the leaves of some fifty species of plants. One could therefore hardly make a mistake in offering refreshment to these creatures, since they are anything but epicures. The full-grown caterpillar, having spent the summer eating and growing, with now and then a change of clothes, is often three inches long and an inch in diameter. It is a dull bluish green in color. On its back are two rows of wart-like protuberances (tubercles), some yellow, some red, some blue. As there is nothing else in nature which is just like it, one need have no difficulty in recognizing the Cecropia in its different phases. [Illustration: _Fig. 88. End of cocoon of Cecropia, inside view, showing where the moth gets out._] The cocoon which this giant silk-worm weaves is shown in Fig. 87. It may be found on a twig of some tree in the dooryard, but sometimes on a fence-post or equally unexpected place. Inside the cocoon the brown pupa, alive but helpless, waits for spring. After the moth comes out it is interesting to examine the structure of the cocoon, and to discover how the moth managed to free itself without destroying the silken blanket (Fig. 88). Swinging loosely from last summer's twigs in lilac bushes, and on such trees as wild cherry and ash, one often finds the slender cocoons of the Promethea moth (Fig. 89). We cannot help admiring the skill and care displayed by the spinner of this tidy winter overcoat. The giant silk-worm which spun it chose a leaf as a foundation. He took care to secure himself against the danger of falling by fastening the leaf to the twig which bore it by means of shining strands of silk. It is easy to test the strength of this fastening by attempting to pull it loose from the twig. [Illustration: _Fig. 89. Cocoon of Promethea moth fastened to a twig with silk._] The moths which come from these cocoons do not always look alike, yet they are all brothers and sisters. The brothers are almost black, while the wings of the sisters are light reddish brown, with a light gray wavy line crossing the middle of both wings. The margins of the wings are clay-colored. On each wing is a dark velvety spot. The adults emerge in spring and are most often seen in the late afternoon. Their flight is more spirited than that of the Cecropia, which moves very sedately, as becomes a giant. [Illustration: _Fig. 90. Cocoon of Promethea, cut open lengthwise to show the valve-like device at upper end through which the adult moth pushes its way out._] The caterpillars of this species, the young Prometheas, feed during the summer on leaves of wild cherry, ash and other trees. They grow to be about two inches long, and are distinguished from others by their pale bluish green color and yellow legs. They also have rows of wart-like elevations on their backs, some black and shining, four of a bright red and one large and yellow near the hindmost end. * * * * * The life of these giant insects is divided into four distinct stages: the egg, deposited by the adult moth usually on or near the food plant; the larva, or caterpillar stage, when most of the eating and all the growing is done; the pupa, passed inside the cocoon woven by the larva; and the adult, a winged moth. The life-cycle or generation is one year, the winter being passed in the pupa stage. The insect lives but a short time in the adult stage and the egg stage is but two or three weeks. Most of the summer is devoted to the caterpillar phase of its life. These creatures are entirely harmless. They seldom appear in numbers sufficient to make them of economic importance. LEAFLET XV. A TALK ABOUT SPIDERS.[19] BY J. H. COMSTOCK. [19] Nature-Study Quarterly, No. 9: Leaflet 22. May, 1901. [Illustration] Of all our little neighbors of the fields there are none that are more universally shunned and feared than spiders, and few that deserve it less. There is a wide-spread belief that spiders are dangerous, that they are liable to bite, and that their bites are very venomous. Now this may be true of certain large species that live in hot countries; but the spiders of the Northern United States are practically harmless. It is true, spiders bite and inject venom sufficient to kill a fly into the wound made by their jaws. But they are exceedingly shy creatures, fearing man more than they are to be feared. If an observer will refrain from picking up a spider there is not the slightest danger of being bitten by one; and excepting a single uncommon species no spider is known in this part of the country whose bite would seriously affect a human being. On the other hand, spiders do much to keep in check various insect pests, and hence must be regarded as our friends. It is, however, from a different point of view that we wish to look upon them at this time. It is as illustrations of remarkable development of instinctive powers, and of wonderful correlation of structure and habit, that we would have the reader study these creatures. The teacher of nature-study can find no more available or more fertile field from which to take subjects for interesting children in the world about us. Let us then put aside our fears and go into the fields and see whether we can learn something of the ways of these spinners. THE FUNNEL-WEB WEAVERS. Often on summer mornings the grass of the roadsides and fields is seen to be carpeted with little sheets of glistening silk, the webs of the grass-spider. None were observed the day before; and we wonder at the sudden appearance of this host of weavers. Later in the day the webs have vanished! Have the weavers rolled them up and carried them off? We remember that there was an especially fine one near the end of the veranda steps; we examine the place carefully and find that it is still there, but not so conspicuous as it was. The warm sun has dissipated the dew which rendered visible to our dull eyes the tapestry of the fields. Now that our eyes are opened we can find the webs everywhere and are impressed with a suspicion that perhaps ordinarily we see very little of what is around us. We examine one of the webs carefully and find that it is a closely woven sheet made of threads running in all directions; that it is attached to spears of grass, and supported by numerous guy lines, and that from one side a funnel-like tube extends downwards. If, while we are watching, an insect alights on the sheet, there darts from the tunnel, where she was concealed, the owner of the web, a dark-colored spider; and the insect must be agile if it escapes. If you attempt to catch the spider it retreats to its tunnel; and when you examine the tunnel the spider is not there. You find that the tube is open below, that there is a back door by which the spider can escape when hard pressed. We call those spiders that makes webs of this kind _The Funnel-web Weavers_. They are long-legged, brown spiders, which run on the upper surface of their webs; these are usually made on grass, but sometimes they are found in the angles of buildings, and in quite high places. THE COBWEB WEAVERS. The webs that we most often find in the corners of rooms are of a different kind and are made by the members of a family known as _The Cobweb Weavers_. In these webs there is not such a definite sheet of silk as in those of the funnel-web weavers, but instead a shapeless maze of threads extending in all directions. Many of the cobweb weavers, however, make their webs in the fields on bushes, and weave in them a flat or curved sheet, under which the spider hangs back downward. The funnel-web weavers run right side up; the cobweb weavers hang inverted. Some of the cobweb weavers do not remain in their webs, but have a nest in a neighboring crack or corner, from which they rush to seize their prey, and sometimes there is a funnel-shaped tube leading to their nest. But these spiders differ from the true funnel-web weavers in running back downwards on the lower side of their webs. THE ORB WEAVERS. The spider webs that most often excite admiration are those in which the supporting threads radiate from a center like the spokes of a wheel, and bear a spiral thread. Such webs are known as orb-webs; and the family of spiders that make them, _The Orb Weavers_. [Illustration: _Fig. 91. Nearly completed orb-web._] Few if any of the structures built by lower animals are more wonderful than these webs; but they are so common that they are often considered hardly worthy of notice. If they occurred only in some remote corner of the earth, every one would read of them with interest. The webs or nets of the different species of orb weavers differ in the details of their structure; but the general plan is quite similar. There is first a framework of supporting lines. The outer part of this framework is irregular, depending upon the position of the objects to which the net is attached; but the central part is very regular, and consists of a number of lines radiating from the center of the net (Fig. 91). All of these supporting lines are dry and inelastic. Touch them with your pencil and you find that they neither stretch nor adhere to it. Upon these radiating lines there is fastened in a very regular manner a thread which is sticky and elastic. This will adhere to your pencil, and will stretch several times its normal length before breaking. Usually this sticky thread is fastened to the radiating lines so as to form a spiral; but a few species make nets in which it is looped back and forth. And even in the nets where the greater part of the thread is in a spiral there are in most cases a few loops near the lower margin (Fig. 91). Examine the next orb-web you find and see whether it is true in that case. Many of the orb weavers strengthen their nets by spinning a zigzag ribbon across the center. This ribbon is made by spreading apart the spinnerets, the organs from which the silk is spun, and which will be described later. Ordinarily the tips of the spinnerets are held close together so that they form a single thread, but by spreading them apart many threads can be spun at once, thus forming a ribbon. Some orb weavers are not content with making a simple zigzag band across the center of the net, but weave an elaborate bit of lace in this position. Fig. 92 is from a photograph of the center of the net of one of these spiders, which was found near Ithaca. [Illustration: _Fig. 92. Lace-like hub of an orb-web._] In studying the various kinds of orb-webs one should pay particular attention to the center of the web; for this part differs greatly in the webs of the different species. There is usually a _hub_ composed entirely of dry and inelastic silk woven in an irregular manner; outside of this there are several turns of a spiral thread which is also dry; this constitutes the _notched zone_, a name suggested by the fact that the spiral line is attached for a short space to each radius it crosses, thus giving the line a notched course. In many cases it is here, on the hub and the notched zone, that the spider waits for its prey; and it is obvious that sticky silk in this place would be objectionable. Between the notched zone and the _spiral zone_, the part furnished with the sticky spiral thread, there is a clear space, the _free zone_, crossed only by the radii. This gives the spider an opportunity to pass from one side of the web to the other without going around the entire web. Some orb weavers do not wait upon the hub but have a retreat near one edge of the net, in which they hang back downwards. While resting in these retreats they keep hold of some of the lines leading from the net, so that they can instantly detect any jar caused by an entrapped insect. When an insect in its flight touches one of the turns of the sticky line the line adheres to it, but it stretches so as to allow the insect to become entangled in other turns of the line. If it were not for this elasticity of the sticky line, most insects could readily tear themselves away before the spider had time to reach them. In running over its net the spider steps upon the radii, carefully avoiding the sticky line; otherwise it would destroy its own net. The rapidity with which a spider can cross its net without touching the sticky line is remarkable. In making its web an orb weaver first spins a number of lines extending irregularly in various directions about the place where its orb is to be; this is the outer supporting framework. Often the first line spun is a bridge between two quite distant points, as the branches of two separate bushes. How did the spider cross the gulf? It has no wings. [Illustration: _Fig. 93. Nearly completed orb-web._] The bridge building can be easily seen on a warm summer evening, the time at which the spiders are most active repairing their old nets and building new ones. The spider lifts the hind end of its body and spins forth a thread; this is carried off by the wind, until, finally striking some object, it becomes fast to it. The spider then pulls in the slack line, like a sailor, and when the line is taut fastens it to the object on which it is standing, and the bridge is formed. After making the outward framework, the radiating lines are formed. A line is stretched across the space so as to pass through the point which is to be the center of the orb. In doing this the spider may start on one side, and be forced to walk in a very roundabout way on the outer framework to the opposite side. It carefully holds the new line up behind it as it goes along, so that it shall not become entangled with the lines on which it walks; one or both hind feet serve as hands in these spinning operations; for, as the spider has eight feet, it can spare one or two for other purposes than locomotion. When the desired point is reached the slack is pulled in and the line fastened. The spider then goes to the point where the center of the orb is to be, and, fastening another line, it walks back to the outer framework, and attaches this line an inch or two from the first. In this way all of the radiating lines are drawn. The next step is to stay these radii by a spiral line, which is begun near the center, and attached to each radius as it crosses it. The turns of this spiral are as far apart as the spider can conveniently reach. All of the threads spun up to this stage in the construction of the web are dry and inelastic. The spider now proceeds to stretch upon this framework a sticky and elastic line, which is the most important part of the web, the other lines being merely a framework to support it. In spinning the sticky line, the spider begins at the outer edge of the orb, and passing around it, fastens this line to each radius as it goes. Thus a second spiral is made. The turns of this spiral are placed quite close together, and the first spiral, which is merely a temporary support, is destroyed as the second spiral progresses. Fig. 93 represents a web in which the second spiral is made over the outer half of the radii. In this figure, _aa_ represents the temporary stayline; _bb_, the sticky spiral; and _cc_, the fragments of the first spiral hanging from the radii. [Illustration: _Fig. 94. Wasp, with head, thorax and abdomen separated._] [Illustration: _Fig. 95. Spider, showing division of the body into cephalothorax and abdomen._] [Illustration: _Fig. 96. Lower side of cephalothorax of a spider;_ md_, mandible;_ mx_, maxilla;_ p_, palpus;_ l_, lower lip;_ s_, sternum._] THE PARTS OF A SPIDER. Spiders differ much in appearance from the true insects. In the insects the body is composed of three regions: the head; the thorax, to which the legs are attached; and the abdomen or hind part of the body (Fig. 94). In the spiders the head and thorax are grown together, forming a region which is known as the _cephalothorax_; to this the _abdomen_ is joined by a short, narrow stalk (Fig. 95). Spiders differ also from insects in the number of their legs, spiders having eight legs and insects only six. Spiders have two pairs of jaws, which, except in the Tarantula family, move sidewise like the jaws of insects. The first pair of jaws are called the _mandibles_. Each mandible consists of two segments, a strong basal one and a claw-shaped terminal one, at the tip of which the poison gland opens (Fig. 96). The second pair of jaws is known as the _maxillæ_. These jaws are situated just behind the mandibles, one on each side of the mouth. Each maxilla bears a large feeler or _palpus_. These palpi vary greatly in form; frequently, especially in females, they resemble legs; hence many spiders appear to have five pairs of legs. In the male spiders the last segment of the palpus is more or less enlarged, ending in a complicated, knob-like structure (Fig. 97). It is thus easy to determine the sex of a spider by merely examining the palpi. [Illustration: _Fig. 97. Maxilla and palpus of male house-spider._] [Illustration: _Fig. 98. Head of spider, showing eyes and mandibles._] The greater number of spiders have four pairs of eyes (Fig. 98), but there may be only one, two, or three pairs; and certain cave spiders are blind. The eyes appear like little gems set in the front of the cephalothorax. They are most prominent in the jumping spiders, which stalk their prey on plants, logs, fences, and the sides of buildings. [Illustration: _Fig. 99. Spinnerets of a spider._] [Illustration: _Fig. 100. A group of spinning tubes._] [Illustration: _Fig. 101. Viscid silk from an orb-web._] [Illustration: _Fig. 102. Spinnerets and cribellum of a curled-thread weaver._] The most characteristic feature of spiders is their spinning organs. The silk is secreted in glands within the abdomen, and while in the body it is a fluid. It passes out through the _spinnerets_, which are situated near the hind end of the abdomen. There are two or three pairs of spinnerets. These are more or less finger-like in form, and sometimes jointed (Fig. 99). Upon the end of each spinneret there are many small tubes, the _spinning tubes_ (Fig. 100), from which the silk is spun. Some spiders have as many as one hundred and fifty or two hundred of these spinning tubes on each spinneret. Ordinarily the tips of the spinnerets are brought close together, so that all of the minute threads that emerge from the numerous spinning tubes unite to form a single thread. Hence this tiny thread, which is so delicate that we can see it only when the light falls on it in a favorable way, is composed of hundreds of threads. It is not like a rope, composed of separate strands; for all the minute threads fuse together into a single thread. The change in the silk from a fluid to a solid cord, strong enough to support the weight of the spider, must take place quickly after the silk comes in contact with the air on leaving the spinning tubes; the minute size of the threads coming from the spinning tubes doubtless facilitates this change. Sometimes a spider will spread its spinnerets apart, and thus spin a broad ribbon-like band. We have seen a spider seize a large grasshopper which was entangled in its web, and rolling it over two or three times, completely envelop it in a sheet of silk spun from its spread-apart spinnerets. We have already described bands spun by orb weavers across the hub of the net in this way. It is supposed that the two kinds of silk spun by the orb weavers are spun from different spinnerets, and that the viscid silk comes from the front pair. When this silk is first spun, the viscid matter forms a continuous layer of liquid on the outside of it. But very soon this layer breaks up into bead-like masses--in a way similar to that in which the moisture on a clothes line on a foggy day collects into drops (Fig. 101). There are two families of spiders that have spinning organs differing from those of all other spiders. They have in front of the usual spinnerets an additional organ, which is named the _cribellum_ (Fig. 102, c). This bears spinning tubes like the other spinnerets, but these tubes are much finer. These spiders have also on the next-to-the-last segment of the hind legs one or two rows of curved spines; this organ is the _calamistrum_ (Fig. 103). By means of the calamistrum these spiders comb from the cribellum a band of loose threads which form a part of their webs. [Illustration: _Fig. 103. Last two segments of hind leg of spider, showing calamistrum._] THE CURLED-THREAD WEAVERS. The spiders possessing a cribellum and a calamistrum represent two families, one of which makes irregular webs; the other, those which are of definite form. [Illustration: _Fig. 104. Web of a curled-thread weaver._] An irregular web of a curled-thread weaver is shown in Fig. 104, from a photograph. In this web the framework is of ordinary silk; and upon this framework is placed a band of curled or tangled threads (Fig. 105). An insect alighting on a net of this kind is likely to get its feet caught in the tangled silk, and to be held fast till the spider can pounce upon it. Nets of this kind are found on bushes and on the sides of buildings. [Illustration: _Fig. 105. Fragment of a curled-thread weaver's web, enlarged._] There are two quite distinct types of regular webs made by spiders possessing a cribellum and a calamistrum. One is a round web which resembles at first sight those of the orb weavers; but it differs from the ordinary orb-web in that the spiral thread is made of curled or hackled silk. These webs are nearly horizontal, and are usually made between stones or in low bushes; they are not common. [Illustration: _Fig. 106. Web of the triangle spider._] The other type is represented by the web of the triangle spider. This web is most often found stretched between the twigs of a dead branch of pine or hemlock. At first sight it appears like a fragment of an orb-web (Fig. 106); but a little study will show that it is complete. The accompanying figure, by Dr. B. G. Wilder, who first described the habits of this spider ("Popular Science Monthly," 1875) illustrates the form of the web. It consists of four plain lines corresponding to the radiating lines of an orb-web, and a series of cross lines, which are spun by the cribellum and calamistrum. Each cross line is composed of two lines, about 1/500 of an inch apart. These double lines take the place of the curled threads woven by other members of the family to which the triangle spider belongs. From the point where the radiating lines meet, a strong line extends to one of the supporting twigs. Near this twig the spider rests, pulling the web tight so that there is some loose line between its legs, as shown in the enlarged figure. When an insect becomes entangled in one of the cross lines, the spider suddenly lets go the loose line so that the whole web springs forward, and the insect is entangled in other cross lines. The spider then draws the web tight and snaps it again. This may be repeated several times before the spider goes out upon the web after its prey. The triangle spider is a tiny fellow, and so closely resembles the color of the dead branch near which it rests that it is very difficult to find; its web is more easily seen, though it usually requires careful searching to discover it. THE MOTHERHOOD OF SPIDERS. [Illustration: _Fig. 107. Egg-sac of a spider._] As a rule young spiders are forced to shift for themselves, and a very hard time they have; but of this we have not space to write. With spiders, the mother's care is devoted chiefly to furnishing protection to her helpless eggs. These are placed in silken sacs, which are often very elaborate in construction and protected with great care. The most common egg-sacs are those found in the fields attached to stones and pieces of wood (Fig. 107). They are disk-shaped objects, silvery in color, and about the size of an old-fashioned three-cent piece. The egg-sacs of the cobweb weavers can be found suspended in their webs; and those of the orb weavers, in various situations. Fig. 108 represents the large egg-sac of one of the orb weavers. This is made in the autumn, and contains at that season a large number of eggs--five hundred or more. These eggs hatch early in the winter; but no spiders emerge from the egg-sac until the following spring. If egg-sacs of this kind be opened at different times during the winter, the spiders will be found to increase in size but diminish in numbers as the season advances. In fact, a strange tragedy goes on within these egg-sacs: the stronger spiders calmly devour their weaker brothers, and in the spring those that survive emerge sufficiently nourished to fight their battles in the outside world. [Illustration: _Fig. 108. Egg-sac of an orb weaver._] The females of the _Running Spiders_ not only make a carefully constructed egg-sac, but also care for the young spiders for a time. The running spiders are the large dark-colored, hairy spiders, often found under stones and rubbish; they are so-called because they capture their prey by running. The females of most of the species (those of the genus _Lycosa_) drag after them their egg-sac, which is attached to the spinnerets (Fig. 109); and when the young hatch, they climb on their mother's back, and are carried about for a time. [Illustration: _Fig. 109. Lycosa and egg-sac._] One of the running spiders (_Dolomedes_) carries her egg-sac with her mandibles until the young are ready to emerge. At this time the mother fastens the egg-sac in a bush, and spins irregular threads about it, among which the young spiders remain for a time (Fig. 110). In the specimen figured, the egg-sac was concealed in the upper part of the web. THE BALLOONING SPIDERS. In warm autumn days, innumerable threads can be seen streaming from fences, bushes, and the tips of stalks of grass, or floating through the air. These are made by the _Ballooning Spiders_, which are able to travel long distances, hundreds of miles, through the air by means of these silken threads. The ballooning spider climbs to some elevated point, and then, standing on the tips of its feet, lifts its body as high as it can, and spins out a thread of silk. This thread is carried up and away by a current of air. When the thread is long enough the force of the air current on it is sufficient to bear the spider up. It then lets go its hold with its feet and sails away. That these spiders travel long distances in this manner has been shown by the fact that they have been seen floating through the air at sea far from land. [Illustration: _Fig. 110. Nursery of Dolomedes. _] LEAFLET XVI. LIFE HISTORY OF THE TOAD.[20] BY S. H. GAGE.[21] [20] Teachers' Leaflet, No. 9, May, 1897. [21] It was the desire of the author to tell the story of this leaflet in pictures as well as in words, and he wishes to express his appreciation of the enthusiasm and ability with which the illustrations were executed by Mr. C. W. Furlong. In this edition are added half-tone reproductions of photographs to bring out more completely the life story. On account of its economic importance, and because the marvelous changes passed through in growing from an egg to a toad are so rapid that they may all be seen during a single spring term of school, the common or warty toad has been selected as the subject of a leaflet in nature-study. Toads are found everywhere in New York, and nearly everywhere in the world; it is easy, therefore, to get abundant material for study. This animal is such a good friend to the farmer, the gardener, the fruit-grower, the florist and the stock-raiser that every man and woman, every boy and girl, ought to know something about it. Furthermore, it is hoped and sincerely believed that the feeling of repugnance and dislike, and the consequent cruelty to toads, will disappear when teachers and children learn something about their wonderful changes in form, structure and habits, and how harmless and helpful they are. Then, who that knows of the chances, the dangers and struggles in the life of the toad, can help a feeling of sympathy; for after all, how like our human life it is. Where sympathy is, cruelty is impossible, and one comes to feel the spirit of these beautiful lines from Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner:" "_He prayeth best who loveth best All things both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us He made and loveth all._" It was William Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, who first clearly stated the fact that every animal comes from an egg. This is as true of a toad as of a chicken. The toad lives on the land and often a long way from any pond or stream, but the first part of its life is spent in the water; and so it is in the water that the eggs must be looked for. To find the eggs one should visit the natural or artificial ponds so common along streams. Ponds from springs or even artificial reservoirs or the basins around fountains, also may contain the eggs. The time for finding the eggs depends on the season. The toad observes the season, not the almanac. In ordinary years, the best time is from the middle of April to the first of May. One is often guided to the right place by noticing the direction from which the song or call of the toad comes. The call of the toad is more or less like that of the tree toads. In general it sounds like whistling, and at the same time pronouncing deep in the throat, bu-rr-r-r-r-. If one watches a toad while it makes its call, one can soon learn to distinguish the sound from others somewhat similar. It will be found that different toads have slightly different voices, and the same one can vary the tone considerably, so that it is not so easy after all to distinguish the many batrachian solos and choruses on a spring or summer evening. It will be noticed that the toad does not open its mouth when it sings, but, instead, the resonator or vocal sac under its mouth and throat is greatly expanded. One must be careful to distinguish the expansion of the mouth in breathing from the expansion of the vocal sac. See the left hand toad in the drawing (Fig. 111) for the vocal sac, and the toad in hibernation (Fig. 121) for the expansion of the mouth in breathing. It is only the males that possess the vocal sac, so that the toad chorus is composed solely of male voices. The eggs are laid in long strings or ropes which are nearly always tangled and wound round the water plants or sticks on the bottom of the pond. If the pond is large and deep, the eggs are laid near the shore where the water is shallow. If the eggs have been freshly laid in clear water the egg ropes will look like glass tubes containing a string of jet black beads. After a rain the eggs are obscured by the fine mud that settles on the transparent jelly surrounding them, but the jelly is much more evident than in the freshly laid egg strings. Secure enough of the egg string to include 50 or 100 eggs and place it in a glass fruit dish or a basin with clean water from the pond where the eggs were found. Let the children look at the eggs very carefully and note the color and the exact shape. Let them see whether the color is the same on all sides. If the eggs are newly laid they will be nearly perfect spheres. [Illustration: _Fig. 111. The toad in various stages of development from the egg to the adult_] Frogs, salamanders and tree toads lay their eggs in the same places and at about the same time as the toad we are to study. Only the toad lays its eggs in strings, so one can be sure he has the right kind. The others lay their eggs in bunches or singly on the plants, so they never need be mistaken for the ones sought. [Illustration: _Fig. 112. Just hatched toad tadpoles climbing up where the water is better aerated._] The eggs which are taken to the school house for study should be kept in a light place; an east, south or west window is best. It requires only a short time for the eggs to hatch. In warm weather two to four days are usually sufficient, but in the cool days of April it may require ten days. As the changes are so very rapid, the eggs ought to be carefully looked at two or three times a day to make sure that all the principal changes are seen. If a pocket lens or a reading glass is to be had it will add to the interest, as more of the details can be observed. But good sharp eyes are sufficient if no lens is available. _Hatching._--Watch and see how long it is before the developing embryos commence to move. Note their change in form. As they elongate they move more vigorously till on the second or third day they wriggle out of the jelly surrounding them. This is hatching, and they are now free in the water and can swim about. It is curious to see them hang themselves up on the old egg string or on the edge of the dish (Fig. 112). They do this by means of a peculiar v-shaped organ on their heads. [Illustration: _Fig. 113. Older toad tadpoles with their heads up._] How different the little creatures are, which have just hatched, from the grown up toad which laid the eggs! The difference is about as great as that between a caterpillar and a butterfly. _Tadpoles, polliwogs._--We call the young of the frog, the toad and the tree toad, tadpoles or polliwogs. The toad tadpoles are black. As they increase in size they may become greyish. Those raised in the house are usually darker than those growing in nature. The tadpoles will live for some time in clear water with apparently nothing to eat. This is because in each egg is some food, just as there is a large supply of food within the egg shell to give the chicken a good start in life. But when the food that the mother supplied in the egg is used up, the little tadpoles would die if they could not find some food for themselves. They must grow a great deal before they can turn into toads; and just like children and other young animals, to grow they must have plenty of food. _Feeding the tadpoles._--To feed the tadpoles it is necessary to imitate nature as closely as possible. To do this, a visit to the pond where the eggs were found will give the clue. Many plants are present, and the bottom will be seen to slope gradually from the shore. The food of the tadpole is the minute plant life on the stones, the surface of the mud, or on the outside of the larger plants. One must not attempt to raise too many tadpoles in the artificial pond in the laboratory or school-room or there will not be enough food, and all will be half starved, or some will get the food and the rest will starve to death. While there may be thousands of tadpoles in the natural pond, it will be readily seen that, compared with the amount of water present, there are really rather few. Probably many more were hatched in the school-house than can be raised in the artificial pond. Return the ones not put in the artificial pond to the natural pond. It would be too bad to throw them out on the ground to die. _Comparing the growth of the tadpoles._--Even when one does his best it is hard to make an artificial pond so good as the natural one for the tadpoles, and the teacher will find it very interesting and stimulating to compare the growth and change in the tadpoles at the school-house with those in the natural pond. As growth depends on the supply of food and the suitability of the environment, it is easy to judge how nearly the artificial pond equals the natural pond for raising tadpoles. It will be worth while to take a tadpole from the natural pond occasionally and put it in with those at the school-house, so that the differences may be more strikingly shown. There is some danger in making a mistake here, however, for there may be three or four kinds of tadpoles in the natural pond. Those of the toad are almost jet black when young, while the others are more or less brownish. If one selects only the very black ones they will probably be toad tadpoles. Every week or oftener, some water plants, and perhaps a small stone covered with the growth of microscopic plants, and some water, should be taken from the pond to the artificial pond. The water will supply the place of that which has evaporated, and the water plants will carry a new supply of food. If the water in the artificial pond in the school-room does not remain clear, it should be carefully dipped out and fresh clear water added. It is better to get the water from the pond where the eggs were laid, although any clear water will answer; but do not use distilled water. The growth and changes in form should be looked for every day. Then it is very interesting to see what the tadpoles do, how they eat, and any signs of breathing. All the changes from an egg to a little toad (Fig. 111), are passed through in one or two months, so that by the first of June the tadpoles will be found to have made great progress. The progress will be not only in size, but in form and action. One of these actions should be watched with especial care, for it means a great deal. At first the little tadpoles remain under water all the time, and do not seem to know or care that there is a great world above the water. But as they grow larger and larger, they rush up to the surface once in awhile and then dive down again, as if their lives depended on it. The older they grow the oftener do they come to the surface. This is even more marked in the large tadpole of the bullfrog. What is the meaning of this? Probably most of the pupils can guess correctly; but it took scientific men a long time to find out just why this was done. The real reason is that the tadpole is getting ready to breathe the free air above the water when it turns into a toad and lives on the land. At first the little tadpoles breathe the air dissolved in the water, just as a fish does. This makes it plain why an artificial pond should have a broad surface exposed to the air. If one should use a narrow and deep vessel, like a fruit jar, only a small amount of air could be taken up by the water and the tadpoles would be half suffocated. As the tadpoles grow older they go oftener to the surface to get the air directly from the limitless supply above the water, as they will have to do when they live wholly in the air. _Disappearance of the tail._--From the first to the middle of June the tadpoles should be watched with especial care, for wonderful things are happening. Both the fore and hind legs will appear, if they have not already. The head will change in form and so will the body; the color will become much lighter, and, but for the tail, the tadpole will begin to look something like its mother. If you keep an especially sharp lookout, do you think you will see the tail drop off? No, toad nature is too economical for that. The tail will not drop off, but it will be seen to get shorter and shorter every day; it is not dropping off, but is being carried into the tadpole. The tail is perfect at every stage; it simply disappears. How does this happen? This is another thing that it took scientific men a long time to find out. It is now known that there are two great methods for removing parts of the body no longer needed. In the first method the living particles in the body which are able to wander all around, as if they were inspectors to see that everything is in order, may go to the part to be removed and take it up piece by piece. These living particles are known as white blood corpuscles, wandering cells, phagocytes, leucocytes and several other names. In the other method, the blood and the lymph going to the part to be removed dissolve it particle by particle. Apparently the toad tadpole's tail is dissolved by the blood and lymph rather than being eaten up by the phagocytes, although the phagocytes do a part of the work. [Illustration: _Fig. 114. Transforming tadpole of the green tree toad to show the rapidity of tail absorption._ (_Change in 24 hours. Natural size._) _HVLA--Natural size. Change in 24 hours; 28 mm. of tail absorbed in 24 hours; 1-1/6 mm. per hour. Common toad shortens the tail about 1/5 mm. per hour._] Now, when the tadpole is ready to dispense with its tail, the blood and lymph and the phagocytes take it up particle by particle and carry it back into the body where it can be used just as any other good food would be. This taking in of the tail is done so carefully that the skin epithelium or epidermis is never broken, but covers up the outside perfectly all the time. Is not this a better way to get rid of a tail than to cut it off? If you look at the picture of the disappearance of the tail in the toad tadpole (Fig. 115) and in the tree-toad tadpole (Fig. 114), you will get an idea how rapidly this takes place. It is easier to see the actual shortening if the tadpoles are put in a white dish of clear water without any water plants. The tadpoles do not eat anything while they are changing to toads, so they will not need to be fed. _Beginning of the life on the land._--Now, when the legs are grown out, and the tail is getting shorter, the little tadpole likes to put its nose out of the water into the air; and sometimes it crawls half way out. When the tail gets quite short, often a mere stub, it will crawl out entirely and stay for some time in the air. It now looks really like a toad except that it is nearly smooth instead of being warty, and is only about as large as the end of a child's little finger (Fig. 115). Finally, the time comes when the tadpole, now transformed into a toad, must leave the water for the land. What queer feelings the little toad must have when the soft, smooth bottom of the pond and the pretty plants, and the water that supported it so nicely are all to be left behind for the hard, rough, dry land! But the little toad must take the step. It is no longer a tadpole, or half tadpole and half toad. It cannot again dive into the cool, soft water when the air and the sunshine dry and scorch it. As countless generations of little toads have done before, it pushes boldly out over the land and away from the water. If one visits the natural pond at about this season (last half of June, first of July), he is likely to see many of the little fellows hopping away from the water. And so vigorously do they hop along that in a few days they may be as far as a mile from the pond where they were hatched. After a warm shower they are particularly active, and are then most commonly seen. Many think they rained down. "They were not seen before the rain, so they must have rained down." Is that good reasoning? The little toad is careful and during the hot and sunny part of the day stays in the shade of the grass or leaves or in some other moist and shady place. If it staid out in the sun too long it would be liable to dry up. [Illustration: _Fig. 115. Toad development in a single season_ (_1903_). _1-18. Changes and growth, April to November. 1-13. Development in 25 to 60 days._ _15-18. Different sizes, October 21, 1903. 9, 14. Different sizes, July 30, 1903._ _10, 11. The same tadpole,--11, 47 hours older than 10._ _12, 13. The same tadpole,--13, 47 hours older than 12._] FOOD ON THE LAND. [Illustration: _Fig. 116. Toad catching a winged insect, and illustrating how the tongue is extended and brought in contact with the insect. Several other creatures that the toad might eat are shown in various parts of the picture._] In the water the tadpole eats vegetable matter; but when it becomes a toad and gets on the land it will touch nothing but animal food, and that must be so fresh that it is alive and moving. This food consists of every creeping, crawling or flying thing that is small enough to be swallowed. While it will not touch a piece of fresh meat lying on the ground, woe to moving snail, insect or worm that comes within its reach! It is by the destruction of insects and worms that the toad helps men so greatly. The insects and worms eat the grain, the fruits and the flowers. They bite and sting the animals and give men no end of trouble. The toad is not partial, but takes any live thing that gets near it, whether it is caterpillar, fly, spider, centipede or thousand-legged worm; and it does not stop even there, but will gobble up a hornet or a yellow jacket without the least hesitation. It is astonishing to see the certainty with which a toad can catch these flying or crawling things. The way the toad does this may be observed by watching one out of doors some summer evening or after a shower; but it is more satisfactory to have a nearer view. Put a large toad into a box, or better, into a glass dish with some moist sand on the bottom. In a little while, if one is gentle, the toad will become tame, and then if flies and other insects are caught with a sweep net and put into the dish and the top covered with mosquito netting one can watch the process of capture. It is very quickly accomplished, and one must look sharply. As shown in the little picture (Fig. 116), the toad's tongue is fastened at the front part of its mouth, not back in the throat as with men, dogs, cats and most animals. It is so nicely arranged that it can be extended for quite a distance. On it is a sticky secretion, and when, quick as a flash, the tongue is thrown out or extended, if it touches the insect, the insect is caught as if by sticky fly paper, and is taken into the mouth. [Illustration: _Fig. 117. Toad making a meal of an angle worm._] Think how many insects and worms a toad could destroy in a single summer. Practically every insect and worm destroyed adds to the produce of the garden and the farm, or takes away one cause of discomfort to men and animals. One observer reports that a single toad disposed of twenty-four caterpillars in ten minutes, and another ate thirty-five celery worms within three hours. He estimates that a good-sized toad will destroy nearly 10,000 insects and worms in a single summer. [Illustration: _Fig. 118. Two newts feasting on tadpoles._] ENEMIES--THE SHADOW SIDE OF LIFE. [Illustration: _Fig. 119. In danger from a crow._] So far nothing has been said about the troubles and dangers of the toad's life. Fig. 111 is meant to show the main phases in the life-history. If one looks at it perhaps he may wonder what becomes of all the tadpoles that first hatch, as only two toads are shown at the top. Is not this something like the other life-histories? How many little robins or chickens die and never become full-grown birds! Well, the dangers to the toad begin at once. Suppose the eggs are laid in a pond that dries up before the little toads can get ready to live on the land; in that case they all die. The mother toads sometimes do make the mistake of laying the eggs in ponds that dry up in a little while. You will not let the artificial pond at the school-house dry up, will you? Then sometimes there is an especially dry summer, and only those that transform very early from tadpoles to toads are saved. In the little picture (Fig. 118) is shown another source of danger and cause for the diminution in numbers. The newts and salamanders find young tadpoles very good eating and they make way with hundreds of them. Some die from what are called natural causes, that is, diseases, or possibly they eat something that does not agree with them. So that while there were multitudes of eggs (1,000 or more from each toad), and of just hatched tadpoles, the number has become sadly lessened by the time the brood is ready to leave the water. Then when they set foot on land, their dangers are not passed. They may be parched by summer's heat or crushed under the feet of men or cattle. Birds and snakes like them for food. Figs. 119 and 120 show some of these dangers. Is it a wonder, then, that of all the multitudes of tadpoles so few grow up to be large toads? We have so few helpers to keep the noxious insects in check, it is not believed that any boy or girl who knows this wonderful story of a toad's life will join the crows, the snakes and the salamanders in worrying or destroying their good friends. MOULTING AND HIBERNATION. There are two very interesting things that happen in the life of many of the lower animals; they happen to the toad also. These are moulting, or change of skin, and hibernation, or winter sleep. Every boy and girl ought to know about these, and then, if on the lookout, some or all of the things will be seen. _Moulting._--Probably everybody who lives in the country has seen a snake's skin without any snake in it. It is often very perfect. When the outside skin or cuticle of a snake or a toad gets old and dry or too tight for it, a new covering grows underneath, and the old one is shed. This is a very interesting performance, but the toad usually sheds it in a retired place, so the process is not often seen. Those who have seen it say that a long crack or tear appears along the back and in front. The toad keeps moving and wriggling to loosen the old cuticle. This peels the cuticle off the sides. Now, to get it off the legs and feet, the toad puts its leg under its arm, or front leg, and in that way pulls off the old skin as if it were a stocking. But when the front legs are to be stripped the mouth is used as is sometimes done by people in pulling off their gloves. Do you think it uses its teeth for this purpose? You might look in a toad's mouth sometime, and then you would know. [Illustration: _Fig. 120. Snakes frequently swallow toads hind legs foremost, as shown in the picture. This is especially true of the garter snake, which is a great enemy of the toad._] It is said that when the skin is finally pulled off the toad swallows it. This is true in some cases; at least it is worth while keeping watch for. It is certain that the toad sometimes swallows the cast skin; it is also certain that in some cases the cast skin is not swallowed. After a toad has shed his old skin, he looks a great deal brighter and cleaner than before, as if he had just got a new suit of clothes. If you see one with a particularly bright skin, you will now know what it means. _Hibernation._--The toad is a cold-blooded animal. This means that the temperature of its blood is nearly like that of the surrounding air. Men, horses, cows, dogs, are said to be warm-blooded, for their blood is warm and of about the some temperature whether the surrounding air is cold or hot. When the air is too cool, the toad becomes stupid and inactive. In September or October a few toads may be seen on warm days or evenings, but the number seen becomes smaller and smaller; and finally, as the cold November weather comes on, none are seen. Where are they? The toad seems to know that winter is coming, that the insects and worms will disappear, so that no food can be found. It must go into a kind of death-like sleep, in which it hardly moves or breathes. This winter sleep or hibernation must be passed in some safe and protected place. If the toad were to freeze and thaw with every change in the weather it would not wake up in the spring. [Illustration: _Fig. 121. Toad in the winter sleep._ (_Natural size_).] The wonderful foresight which instinct gives it, makes the toad select some comparatively soft earth in a protected place where it can bury itself. The earth chosen is moist, but not wet. If it were dry the toad would dry up before spring. It is not uncommon for farmers and gardeners to plough them up late in the fall or early in the spring. Also in digging cellars at about these times they are found occasionally. In burying itself the toad digs with its hind legs and body, and pushes itself backward into the hole with the front legs. The earth caves in as the animal backs into the ground, so that no sign is left on the outside. Once in far enough to escape the freezing and thawing of winter, the toad moves around till there is a little chamber slightly larger than its body; then it draws its legs up close, shuts its eyes, puts its head down between or on its hands, and goes to sleep and sleeps for five months or more. When the warm days of spring come it wakes up, crawls out of bed and begins to take interest in life again. It looks around for insects and worms, and acts as if it had had only a comfortable nap. [Illustration: _Fig. 122. The same toad awake in the spring._ (_Natural size_).] The little toad that you saw hatch from an egg into a tadpole and then turn to a toad, would hibernate for two or three winters, and by that time it would be quite a large toad. After it had grown up and had awakened from its winter sleep some spring, it would have a strong impulse to get back to the pond where it began life as an egg years before. Once there it would lay a great number of eggs, perhaps as many as a thousand or two, for a new generation of toads. And this would complete its life cycle. While the toad completes its life cycle when it returns to the water and lays eggs for a new generation, it may live many years afterward and lay eggs many times, perhaps every year. Many insects, some fish and other animals, die after laying their eggs. For such animals the completion of the life cycle ends the life-history also. But unless the toad meets with some accident it goes back to its land home after laying the eggs, and may live in the same garden or dooryard for many years, as many as eight years, and perhaps longer. (See Bulletin No. 46, Hatch Experiment Station of the Massachusetts Agricultural College, Amherst, Mass.) ERRONEOUS NOTIONS ABOUT THE TOAD. If one reads in old books and listens to the fairy tales and other stories common everywhere, he will hear many wonderful things about the toad, but most of the things are wholly untrue. One of the erroneous notions is that the toad is deadly poison. Another is that it is possessed of marvelous healing virtues, and still another, that hidden away in the heads of some of the oldest ones are the priceless toad-stones, jewels of inestimable value. _Giving warts._--Probably every boy and girl living in the country has heard that if one takes a toad in his hands, or if a toad touches him anywhere he will "catch the warts." This is not so at all, as has been proved over and over again. If a toad is handled gently and petted a little it soon learns not to be afraid, and seems to enjoy the kindness and attention. If a toad is hurt or roughly handled a whitish, acrid substance is poured out of the largest warts. This might smart a little if it got into the mouth, as dogs find out when they try biting a toad. It cannot be very bad, however, or the hawks, owls, crows and snakes that eat the toad would give up the practice. The toad is really one of the most harmless creatures in the world, and has never been known to hurt a man or a child. A boy might possibly have some warts on his hands after handling a toad; so might he after handling a jack-knife or looking at a steam engine; but the toad does not give the warts any more than the knife or the engine. _Cows giving bloody milk._--It is a common belief in the country that if one kills a toad his cows will give bloody milk. Cows will give bloody milk if the udder is injured in any way, whether a toad is killed or not. There is no connection whatever between the bloody milk and a killed toad. _Living without air and food._--Occasionally one reads or hears a story about a toad found in a cavity in a solid rock. When the rock is broken open it is said that the toad wakes up and hops around as if it had been asleep only half an hour. Just think for a moment what it would mean to find a live toad within a cavity in a solid rock. It must have been there for thousands, if not for millions of years, without food or air. The toad does not like a long fast, but can stand it for a year or so without food if it is in a moist place and supplied with air. It regularly sleeps four or five months every winter, but never in a place devoid of air. If the air were cut off the toad would soon die. Some careful experiments were made by French scientific men, and the stories told about toads living indefinitely without air or food were utterly disproved. It is not difficult to see that one working in a quarry might honestly think that he had found a toad in a rock. Toads are not very uncommon in quarries. If a stone were broken open and a cavity found in it, and then a toad were seen hopping away, one might jump at the conclusion that the toad came out of the cavity in the rock. Is not this something like the belief that the little toads rain down from the clouds because they are most commonly seen after a shower? SURVEYS AND MAPS. In considering the suggestions made in this leaflet, we thought of the hundreds of schools throughout the state and wondered whether there might not be some difficulty in finding the ponds where the toads lay their eggs, and in finding some of the things described in the other leaflets. The teachers and students in Cornell University found this difficulty in 1868 when the University opened. The great Louis Agassiz came to the University at the beginning to give a course of lectures on natural history. The inspiration of his presence and advice, and of those lectures, lasts to this day. Agassiz, and the University teachers, who had many of them been his pupils, saw at once that the region around Ithaca must be full of interesting things; but they did not know exactly where to find them. Agassiz himself made some explorations, and the professors and students took hold of the work with the greatest enthusiasm. They explored the beautiful lake, the streams, hills, valleys, gorges, ponds and marshes. Careful notes were kept of the exact locality where every interesting thing was found and simple maps were made to aid in finding the places again. Finally, after several years, knowledge enough was gained to construct an accurate map for the use of all. A part of this map, showing only the most important features, is put into this leaflet to serve as a guide (Fig. 123). It will be seen that the University is made the starting point. With a few hints it is believed that every school can make a good beginning this year on a natural history survey of the region near its school-house, and in the preparation of a map to go with the survey. [Illustration: _Fig. 123. Simple map showing the position of Cornell University, the city of Ithaca, Cayuga Lake, and the roads and streams and ponds near the University. From W. R. Dudley's map in "The Cayuga Flora." Scale, 1 centimeter to the kilometer._ _U. Cornell University._ _U. L. University Lake in Fall Creek._ _R. Reservoir supplied from University Lake, and supplying the campus._ _E. P. East Pond where the eggs of the toad, tree toad, frogs and salamanders are found._ _F. P. Forest Home Pond. A very favorable place for eggs, tadpoles, etc._ _Inlet. The inlet of the lake. The lampreys are abundant near Fleming's meadow._] _Preparation of the map._--It is well to have the map of good size. A half sheet of bristol board will answer, but a whole sheet is better. About the first thing to decide is the scale to which the map is to be drawn. It is better to have the scale large. Twelve inches to the mile would be convenient. Divide the map into squares, making the lines quite heavy. If so large a scale were used it would be advantageous for locating places to have the large squares divided into square inches, but much lighter lines should be used so that there will be no confusion with the lines representing the miles. _Locating objects on the map._--The corner of the school-house containing the corner stone should be taken as the starting point. If there is no corner stone, select the most convenient corner. Put the school-house on the map anywhere you wish; probably the center of the map would be the best place. In the sample map the University is not in the center, as it was desired to show more of the country to the south and west than to the north and east. The map should of course be made like other maps, so it will be necessary to know the four cardinal points of the compass before locating anything on it. Perhaps the school-house has been placed facing exactly north and south or east and west, that is, arranged with the cardinal points of the compass; if so, it will be the best guide. If you are not sure, determine with a compass. With it the points can be determined very accurately. Having determined the points of compass, commence to locate objects in the landscape on the map as follows: Get their direction from the starting point at the corner of the school-house, then measure the distance accurately by running a bicycle on which is a cyclometer, straight between the starting point and the object. The cyclometer will record the distance accurately and it can be read off easily. If no bicycle with a cyclometer is available, one can use a long measuring stick, a tape measure or even a measured string; but the bicycle and cyclometer are more convenient and accurate, especially when the distances are considerable. Suppose the distance is found to be one-sixth of a mile due west. It should be located two inches west of the corner taken as the starting point. If the direction were south-west, then the two inches would be measured on the map in that direction and located accordingly. Proceed in this way for locating any pond or marsh, forest or glen. Now, when the places are located on the map, you can see how easy it would be for any one to find the places themselves. While the exact position should be determined if possible and located, one does not often take a bee-line in visiting them, but goes in roads, often a long distance around. In locating the objects on the map, every effort should be made to get them accurately placed, and this can be done most easily by knowing the distances in a straight line. It is hoped that every school in the state will begin this year making a natural history survey and a map of the region around its school-house. The map will show but few locations, perhaps, but it can be added to from year to year, just as the University map has been added to; and finally each school will have a map and notes showing exactly where the toads lay their eggs, where fish and birds are; and where the newts and salamanders, the different trees and flowers, rocks and fossils may be found. If the dates are kept accurately for the different years, one can also see how much variation there is. Indeed, such nature-study will give a sure foundation for appreciating and comprehending the larger questions in natural science, and it will make an almost perfect preparation for taking part in or for appreciating the great surveys of a state or a country. It is believed that if accurate information were collected and careful maps made by the different schools, the Empire State could soon have a natural history survey and map better than any now in existence in any state or country. _To the Teacher:_ _It is the firm belief of those who advocate nature-study that it is not only valuable in itself, but that it will help to give enjoyment in other studies and meaning to them. Every pupil who follows out the work of this leaflet will see the need of a map of the region around the school-house. This will help in the appreciation of map work generally._ _So many of the beautiful and inspiring things in literature are concerning some phase of nature, that nature-study must increase the appreciation of the literature; and the noble thoughts in the literature will help the pupils to look for and appreciate the finer things in nature._ _It is suggested that as many of the following selections as possible be read in connection with the leaflet:_ _"The Fiftieth Birthday of Agassiz," by Longfellow._ _The "Prayer of Agassiz," by Whittier. Professor Wilder, who was present, assures the author that this describes an actual occurrence._ _This "Silent Prayer" is also mentioned in an inspiring paragraph by Henry Ward Beecher in the Christian Union, 1873._ _The first part of Bryant's "Thanatopsis," Coleridge's "Ancient_ _Mariner," Burns' "On Scaring Some Water Fowl in Loch-Turit," and "To a Mouse."_ _Cowpers "The Task," a selection from book vi., beginning with line 560. This gives a very just view of the rights of the lower animals._ _In connection with the disappearance of the tail, read Lowell's "Festina Lente," in the Biglow Papers. For older pupils, Shakespeare's picture of the seven ages in the human life cycle might be read. "As You Like It," Act II, Scene II, near the end, commencing, "All the world's a stage," etc._ _Kipling's Jungle Books, and the works of Ernest Thompson-Seton and William J. Long will help one to see how the world might look from the standpoint of the animals._ _One of the most satisfactory books to use in connection with nature-study is Animal Life, by President David Starr Jordan and Professor Kellogg. This gives the facts that every teacher ought to know in connection with the processes of reproduction._ _Attention is also called to A. H. Kirkland's Bulletin No. 46 of the Hatch Experiment Station of the Massachusetts Agricultural College, and to the Nature-Study Leaflet on the Toad, by Dr. C. F. Hodge, of Clark University, Worcester, Mass._ [Illustration: _Fig. 124. From egg back to toad._] LEAFLET XVII. LIFE IN A TERRARIUM.[22] BY ALICE I. KENT. And Nature, the old nurse, took The child upon her knee, Saying: "Here is a story-book Thy Father has written for thee." --_Longfellow to Agassiz._ [22] Nature-Study Quarterly No. 8: Leaflet 21, January, 1901. [Illustration] [Illustration: _Fig. 125. Life in the terrarium._] Fortunate are the children and the teachers who are so placed that Nature's story book is close at hand. But city children and their teachers need not despair, for Nature, the old nurse, is loving and bountiful and will rewrite, in living characters, many a page from the wondrous book, for those who care to read. One such a page may be a terrarium--a confined plot of earth on which things may live and grow (from _terra_, "earth," as aquarium is from _aqua_, "water"). Within its narrow confines, the whole drama of the beautiful life of many a tiny creature may be rewritten. Here is a fragment of the drama, as written in one terrarium. This terrarium was made from an old berry crate (Figs. 125, 126). When the children saw it first, last fall, this is what it looked like: a large rectangular box, grass-green in color, thirty-nine inches long, eighteen inches wide, and fifteen inches high. The long sides were of glass, the short sides and top of green wire netting. The top could be removed like the lid of a box. It stood upon a pedestal-table provided with castors. In the bottom of the terrarium were three inches of rich soil, covered with the delicate green of sprouting grass-seed. In one corner was a mossy nook, and in another a mass of thistles and clover. At one end, a small cabbage was planted and at the other lay several sprays of glossy pin-oak. Suspended from the top, was a large spray of purple thistles. [Illustration: _Fig. 126. Butterfly-time in the terrarium world._] Among the thistles in the corner, ten pendants of vivid green, bright with golden points, could be seen. They were the chrysalids of the monarch, or milkweed, butterfly. Among the cabbage leaves, were many of the pale green eggs and several of the caterpillars of the cabbage butterfly. Among the sprays of oak in the corner, several oak caterpillars were feeding. Before many days had passed, the drama of life began. One by one, the chrysalids of the milkweed butterfly paled in color and, becoming transparent, showed through their whitened walls the orange-colored wings of the developing butterflies within. They then burst, freeing their gorgeous tenants. This happened until there were seven butterflies in the terrarium. As two of these proved discontented with their new home, they were set free. The five others spent the little round of their aërial life seemingly happy and satisfied. They lived from three to six weeks and showed some individuality in their tastes and habits. Sometimes they chose the mossy corner for their resting place. On other occasions they preferred the netting at the ends and top of the terrarium. In fact, the netting at the ends of the terrarium was a source of pleasure to these butterflies, as it served as a secure resting place and an agreeable and convenient pathway to the top. One of them spent nearly all its life on the thistles suspended from the top. These thistles were kept fresh a long time by placing their stems in a large sponge which was frequently drenched with water. The butterflies showed some individuality in their eating also. Thistle, clover, golden-rod, nasturtiums, and honey-suckle were offered to them. The thistle and the golden-rod were most frequently visited, and next to these the nasturtiums were most favored. Another fact noted was that most of the butterflies continued to visit the flower first chosen. When, however, a thick syrup of sugar and water was offered to them, the flowers were much neglected, only one butterfly persisting in flower-visiting. Golden-rod was its choice. If the syrup was fresh-made every morning and was placed in a convenient spot, the butterflies never failed to sip it. They generally slept clinging to the wire-netting at the ends or top of the terrarium. In the meantime, the cabbage began to attract the watchful eyes of the wondering children. As it had industriously sent out many tiny roots, it proved a safe and satisfactory home for its hidden occupants. Soon, one by one, the caterpillars began to appear at the edges of the uppermost leaves. They began small tours in the vicinage of the cabbage, and, finally, as with the butterflies, the end wire nettings proved to be an easy pathway to the top of the terrarium. Here several found good resting places, and slowly changed to chrysalids. One day a cabbage butterfly obligingly flew in at the open window. It was caught and placed in the terrarium. It, too, proved to be very fond of sugar syrup. One morning the syrup was accidentally spilled on the wooden ridge at the bottom of the terrarium outside of the netting. The butterfly was so hungry that it could not wait for food more conveniently placed; so it stretched its tongue out, full length, through the netting, and in that way obtained it. The children were surprised to find its tongue somewhat longer than its body. At this time, the cabbage was removed so that the eggs and the remaining young caterpillars could be observed. The protecting coloring of the eggs and caterpillars was first noticed. One little boy at first announced that the caterpillars were green because they were not ripe, a good example surely of the danger of reasoning from analogy! Very soon the inhabitants of this terrarium world began to increase. A father and two mother grasshoppers and a young one, with his "armor on," came to live there; also a "woolly bear," several other species of caterpillars, several species of beetles, a big horse-fly, some lady-bugs, and a cicada. About this time too, some very unwelcome immigrants appeared. These were the ichneumon flies. So numerous did they become in a very short time, that they threatened desolation to this prosperous community. Nature's methods were then scrutinized and the services of two tree-toads were sought. Their response was immediate and cordial. Soon not an ichneumon fly could be found. [Illustration: _Fig. 127. Hand over hand._] The grasshoppers were partial to celery, over-ripe bananas, and moisture. Three days after they became inhabitants of this miniature world, the mother grasshopper dug a hole in the ground and laid eggs. The observing children then had before them living illustrations of the three stages of grasshopper life. The tree-toads were both amusing and accommodating. They, too, liked the wire netting at the ends of the terrarium, and delighted the children by climbing up foot over foot, or hand over hand, like odd four-handed sailor boys (Fig. 127.) This brought into plain view the tiny suckers on their feet. After the ichneumon flies had disappeared, a new difficulty arose. The ground became mouldy, and the grass died down. The terrarium was then placed by an open window and left there several hours for a number of days until it was thoroughly dried out. Then bird-seed was planted and the ground was watered thereafter with a small plant syringe. This gave sufficient, but not excessive moisture, and it was one of the pleasures of the children to imitate a rainy day in the terrarium world. And it was a pleasing experience, for there were splashes of water on the glass sides and many shining drops on the netting and verdure, which soon grew several inches tall; there was the same delightful odor of rich fresh earth that one enjoys during summer rains, and the sunshine touched with brilliancy the gay fall flowers and the gorgeous outspread wings of the butterflies. At this time the terrarium had an annex in the shape of a wooden box, a foot square, with a gauze top. Here lived two mother spiders with their egg-balls carefully hung on the cobweb beams of their homes. One day a beautiful yellow silk egg-ball was found out of doors, and when it was carefully opened to show the eggs with which it was filled, the gratifying discovery was made that these eggs were hatching. They were very tiny and very numerous. They were inclosed in a silken pouch and were the exact color of its lining. When resting the little spiders seemed to hold their legs under the body, and they were so small and so like the egg in general appearance that if they had not run about when disturbed they would never have been discovered. As soon as the egg ball was opened they exploited their one talent, for they ran out on the fingers of the person who held the ball and then suspended themselves by almost invisible threads from all parts of the fingers. When they were to be returned to the egg-ball they were gently pushed up. They then obligingly ran back into their silken home, which was carefully closed as before. These little ones were kept a week or ten days and were then allowed to escape and establish homes for themselves. The life history of the spider was thus seen, although, unfortunately, our adult spiders did not belong to the same species as the young ones. To return to the terrarium: It was now early in November and each day found one or more of the terrarium inhabitants missing. One of the caterpillars disappeared and a cocoon made of its own hair was found in its place; several chrysalids were found on the top of the terrarium; the butterflies and the grasshoppers, one by one, went into that sleep from which there is no awakening; and a number of the other creatures disappeared. The children finally concluded that the latter had gone to sleep in the ground. The grasshoppers and the tree-toads were the last to take their rest, but just before they answered Mother Nature's call to slumber, a large garden toad came to bear them company. He was a very interesting toad for he bore signs of having lived through what must have been almost a tragedy. He had lost the lower half of one front leg and had the scar of a long gash on his throat. These disfigurements seemed not to cause him the least unhappiness, for he had a very bright wide-awake expression and was as plump and complacent as a toad should be. The loss of his leg caused him a little inconvenience, for he sometimes lost his balance when hopping and fell on his back. He occasionally found it difficult to right himself at once, but a few vigorous kicks and jumps generally placed him right side up. Three days after he became a member of the terrarium community, he, too, heard Mother Nature's call to bed, and partially buried himself. Each day he covered himself more completely, until finally only the top of his head and two sleepy eyes were to be seen. One day, about a week afterward, he disappeared entirely. He proved to be a very restless sleeper, and frequently showed himself during the sunniest parts of nearly every day all winter, occasionally coming entirely out of his earthy covering. He served as a sort of barometer all winter, appearing in bright and disappearing in gloomy weather. He never, however, left the spot he had chosen for his bed. "Winter is the night of the year," and the little terrarium world indoors exemplifies it as truly as the great fields of Nature's domain out of doors. The soil is dry and hard in this miniature world and the verdure has dried down to palest green and brown. In its earthy bed, the caterpillars, beetles, and other creatures lie cosily asleep, and with the masses of tiny eggs, await the vivifying touch of spring. LEAFLET XVIII. DIRECTIONS FOR COLLECTING AND PRESERVING INSECTS.[23] BY ANNA BOTSFORD COMSTOCK. [23] Teachers' Leaflet No. 7, June, 1897. [Illustration] It is the purpose of this leaflet to give a few suggestions to aid those pupils of the secondary schools who desire to make collections of insects. There are several good reasons why children should be encouraged to make collections of flowers, birds and insects; and the least of these reasons is the possession of such a collection on the part of the child. Making a collection of natural history specimens should only be the means to an end, _i. e._, training the child to observe. When eyes are opened to the wonders of nature, every roadside, brook and woodland is fraught with interest which is undreamed of by those who are nature-blind. It is sad to think of the hosts of people who go through this beautiful world having eyes but seeing not, having ears but hearing not. The eyes must be unsealed in youth, when the mind is alert and receptive if the man or woman is to find in later life that Nature is not only a resource and recreation but an ever faithful friend holding out comforting arms to those who are weary in soul and body. Not only does the study of nature open the child's eyes, but it also teaches him the value of accuracy. The young naturalist soon understands that an observation is worth nothing unless it is truthful. On the other hand, nature-study cultivates the imagination. The wonders in the lives of insects, plants, and birds are so illimitable that almost anything _seems_ possible. Few indeed are the studies wherein the fire kindled by imaginative _seeming_ is guarded and checked by the facts of actual _seeing_. There are a few points in favor of beginning with insects when the child first attempts making a collection of natural objects. Insects are to be found everywhere and are easily caught; it requires no technical skill to preserve them, as is the case with birds; they retain their natural forms and colors better than do flowers. To secure the desired results for the pupil when he is making his collection of insects, the teacher should take care that he makes his observations incidentally, thus subserving the true methods of nature-study, which is to teach the child while he remains unconscious of the fact that he is being taught. The teacher, therefore, should ask the young collector, "Where did you catch this butterfly?" "Where did you find this beetle?" "Upon what plant or flower did you find this bug?" "Did you hear this cricket chirp? If so, how did he do it?" etc., etc.; thus making him tell orally or in a written language lesson the things he has seen while collecting. The differences in the appearance and structure of the insects caught should also be brought out by questions. These questions may be adapted to pupils of any age, and the success of this part of the work must ever depend upon the interest and genius of the teacher. The objection is sometimes raised that collecting and killing insects and birds incite the child to cruelty and wanton destruction of life. This seems good _a priori_ reasoning, but experience does not confirm it. We have always found that those who collect and take an interest in insect life are much more careful about killing or hurting insects than are other people; the entomologist of all men takes the greatest pains to avoid stepping upon the caterpillar or cricket in his path; also the young ornithologists who have come under our observation show the greatest devotion to the rights and interests of birds. Our experience is that as soon as the child begins to take an interest in insects he begins to see matters from their point of view, and this insures a proper regard for their right to life. It will be well, however, for the teacher to impress upon the pupil that he should kill no insect that is not desired for his collection. The articles necessary for collecting insects are few and inexpensive. One net and one killing bottle may do service for a grade or an entire country school, thus reducing the expense to a minimum. INSECT NET. FIG. 128. _Materials required._ 1. A handle about three feet long; an old broom handle will do. 2. A piece of tin three inches wide, long enough to reach around the handle. 3. A piece of No. 3 galvanized wire 3 feet 6 inches long. 4. One-sixth of a yard of heavy sheeting. 5. Three-quarters of a yard of cheese cloth. [Illustration: _Fig. 128. Insect net._] Bend the wire into a ring about a foot in diameter and bend back about 3 inches of each end of the wire so they may be inserted into a hole drilled into the end of the handle. The piece of tin should be fastened around the end of the handle where the wire is inserted to hold it securely in place. If practicable, a tinsmith should be called upon to help in bending the wire and fastening it to the handle. After this is done, take the sheeting and fold it over the wire double, using only enough to fit around the wire without gathering; the object of this heavy cloth is to prevent the net from wearing out quickly. Make the cheese cloth into a bag with rounded bottom and just wide enough to fit the facing of sheeting, to which it should be sewed securely, and the net is finished. HOW TO USE THE NET. To be successful, the net must be swung swiftly. Insects have many eyes and are very wide awake and have no desire to be caught; therefore, the collector must be very active if he gets anything. One method of using the net is called "sweeping;" to do this take the handle about a foot and a half above the ring and pass the net quickly back and forth striking it against the grass in front of you as you walk through open fields; the net must be turned at each stroke and kept in rapid motion or the insects will escape. After a time the net should be examined and the insects put in the killing bottle. Another method of using the net is called "beating." This method is used in collecting insects from bushes, and consists of lifting the net, mouth upward, and striking it sharply against the branches or leaves, thus jarring the insects into it. To use the net in water, sweep the water plants as quickly as possible. In running streams, overturn stones, holding the net just below them with the mouth up stream. An old dipper made into a sieve by perforating the bottom with an awl is a good utensil for collecting water insects. THE KILLING BOTTLE. FIG. 129. It is desirable to kill the insects in a humane way, so that they will not suffer by the process; it is also desirable that they should not revive after they are pinned, both for their own sakes as well as for the sake of the feelings of the collector. The best way to secure painless and sure death for the insects is by the means of a "cyanide bottle." [Illustration: _Fig. 129. Killing bottle._] _Materials needed for a killing bottle._ 1. A bottle with a wide mouth; a morphine bottle or a small olive or pickle bottle will do. Even a glass fruit-can holding a pint will answer very well, although taking off and putting on the cover consumes more time than is desirable. 2. A cork that will fit the bottle tightly and is long enough to handle easily. 3. Two cents' worth of cyanide of potassium. 4. One cent's worth of plaster of Paris. These latter materials may be procured from any drug store. Place the lump of cyanide of potassium in the bottle and pour in enough water to cover it. Add immediately enough plaster of Paris to soak up all the water; leave the bottle open in a shady place for an hour and then wipe the dry plaster of Paris from its sides, put in the cork, and it is ready for use. The plaster of Paris forms a porous cement, which, while it holds the cyanide fast in the bottom, also allows the fumes of the poison to escape and fill the bottle. It should be labelled "poison," for cyanide of potassium is very poisonous. If kept corked when not in use, a killing bottle made like this will last a whole season. The first rule in using the killing bottle is this: do not kill any more insects than you need for your collection. The second rule is: do not breathe the fumes of the bottle, for they smell badly and are not good for you. When you uncork the bottle to put an insect in it, hold it away from your face and cork it up again as quickly as possible. Some insects may be caught from flowers, etc., directly into the bottle by holding it uncorked beneath them for a moment; the fumes of the poison soon overcome them and they drop into the bottle. In taking insects from the net, hold the bottle in the right hand and the cork in the left; insert the bottle into the net and place the mouth of it over an insect crawling on the inside of the net, then put the cork on the outside of the net into the mouth of the bottle, net and all, for a moment until the insect falls into the bottom of the bottle; then remove the cork and take the rest of the imprisoned insects in the same way. Insects should be left in the bottle at least an hour, and may be left in there over night without injury to the specimens. INSECT PINS. FIG. 130. [Illustration: _Fig. 130. Insect pins, 1, 3, 5, are German insect pins. 2 is a steel mourning pin._] After the insects are caught they should be pinned so that they may be arranged in the collection in an orderly manner. Common pins are not good for pinning insects; they are too thick and they corrode very soon, covering the specimens with verdigris. Regular insect pins are desirable as they are very slender and do not corrode so quickly. These may be obtained of any dealer in entomological supplies at a cost of fifteen cents per hundred. Ask for the German insect pins Nos. 1, 3 and 5. If these pins are too expensive you can use the black steel mourning pins. These come in shallow boxes one by two inches square and have round glass heads and the boxes are labelled "Germany;" these may be procured from any dry goods store. However, insects pinned with any beside regular insect pins cannot be sold or exchanged. All insects except beetles should be pinned through that part of the body just back of the head, as shown in Figs. 137, 139, 140, 141. Beetles should be pinned through the right wing-cover, as shown in Fig. 138. About one-fourth of the pin should project above the back of the insect. Very small insects may be gummed to a narrow strip of card board and the pin put through the card board. LABELLING SPECIMENS. Specimens should be labelled with the date of capture and the locality. Thus the butterfly, Fig. 141, would be labelled thus: Ithaca, N. Y. Aug. 12, 1896. The paper on which this label is written should be slipped upon the pin with which the butterfly is pinned and placed just below the insect. Labels should be as small as possible and be neatly cut. INSECT BOXES. For the beginner nothing is more convenient than an empty cigar box, which may be obtained at any store where cigars are sold. (Fig. 131.) The bottom of the box should be covered with some soft, firm material into which pins may be pushed without bending them. There are many such materials. Sheet cork or pressed peat may be obtained of dealers in entomological supplies. Some ingenious boys use regular bottle corks, cut into cross sections about 1/4 inch thick. Others take the pith of dried corn-stalks divided in half lengthwise. The cheapest and most easily procurable of the purchasable materials is cork linoleum. This is for sale in most carpet stores. Get the quality that is about 1/4 inch thick, which costs about $1 per yard; put it into the box cork-side up. Any of these materials can be fastened to the bottom of the box with glue or with tacks. In all cases they should be covered neatly with white paper, for the insects appear better against a white background. [Illustration: _Fig. 131. A convenient box for the use of the young collector._] For permanent collections, wooden boxes with glass tops are much safer; and as the insects may be seen through the glass these boxes are more practical for school collections. This kind of a box is shown in Fig. 132. Its sides are 18 by 16 inches and its height is three inches outside measure. The upper edge of the sides of the bottom part of the box is made with a tongue which fits into a groove made in the lower edge of the sides of the cover. This is done so that the top and bottom parts of the box shall fit very closely together in order that museum pests cannot get in and destroy the specimens. [Illustration: _Fig. 132. Insect box made of wood, with glass top._] [Illustration: _Fig. 133. A cross-section of the side of insect box Fig. 132, showing method of construction and giving measurements._] In Fig. 133 is a cross section through one side of the box, showing how it should be made and giving measurements. In the drawing the glass is fitted into a groove in the inner side of the cover. This glass might be puttied in like a window pane if it is found difficult to make the groove. The corners of the box may be mitred and dove-tailed, or mitred and nailed; the latter is more easily done. Any carpenter or cabinet maker can make this box. Great care must be taken to use only thoroughly seasoned wood in its construction; otherwise the bottom will be sure to warp and shrink and leave cracks through which the museum pests will enter. The cost of such a box will vary from $0.75 to $1. Basswood should be used for its construction; pine is not at all suitable on account of the resin in it. Screw eyes may be put into these boxes and they may be hung on the walls of the schoolroom like pictures. MUSEUM PESTS. These are small beetles which find their way through the narrowest crevice into the insect boxes and lay their eggs on the pinned insects. The larvæ when they hatch work within the specimens at first but after a time destroy the bodies entirely. The presence of these little rascals may be detected by dust on the bottom of the box just below the infested insect. As soon as this dust is observed, pour into one corner of the box a tablespoonful of carbon bisulfide, or benzine, and close the box quickly. The teacher or parent should put the substances into the boxes, as the first is a poison and both are very inflammable. As a method of preventing the beetles from attacking the collection it is well to fasten a "moth ball" into one corner of the box. These may be obtained at a drug store. SPREADING-BOARD. FIG. 134. Butterflies and moths look much better in a collection when their wings are extended at right angles to the length of the body. To arrange them thus we have to use what is termed a spreading-board. [Illustration: _Fig. 134. A spreading-board._] _Materials needed for a medium sized spreading-board._ 1. Two strips of pine or other soft wood 18 inches long, 1-1/2 inches wide and 1/2 inch thick. 2. One strip of wood 18 inches long, 3-1/4 inches wide and 1/2 inch thick. 3. Two cleats 3-1/4 inches wide, 3/4 inch high and 1/2 inch thick; and two cleats 1 inch wide and as high and thick as the others. 4. A strip of cork or linoleum 17 inches long and a little less than an inch wide. To construct the spreading-board, take the two narrow strips of wood, place them one-fourth inch apart and on the under side fasten them across the ends of the longer cleats. Then on the same side as the cleats tack the piece of cork or linoleum over the space between the strips of board, and as the cleats are one-half inch wide the linoleum should cover all the space left. Then midway the boards fasten the two smaller cleats. Fig. 135 shows a cross-section of the spreading-board just in front of these two middle cleats. Now it is ready for the bottom board which will fit exactly if directions are followed, and this completes it. The space between the two upper boards is wide enough to take in the body of the moth or butterfly. The cork or linoleum below the space will hold firmly the pin on which the butterfly is impaled. The cleats hold the top and bottom boards apart and so protect the points of the pins. Spreading-boards may be made much smaller or much larger to suit moths of different sizes; the space between the top boards must always be large enough to admit the body of the insect. [Illustration: _Fig. 135. A cross-section of spreading-board in front of the cleat "d" in Fig. 134._] To use the spreading-board: Insert the pin with the butterfly on it into the linoleum just far enough so that the body of the insect will be in the space between the boards up to the wings, Fig. 135. Place the wings out flat on the board and fasten them there with narrow strips of paper pinned across them, Fig. 134, _a_. While held down by these strips of paper arrange them so that the hind margins of the front wings shall cover the front margins of the hind wings and shall be in a line at right angles to the body; then pin larger pieces of paper over the rest of the wings, Fig. 134, _b_. Sometimes isinglass is used instead of paper to hold the wings down, Fig. 134, _c_. The insects should be left on the spreading-board at least three days; and when the board has insects on it, it should be kept in a box where the museum pests and mice cannot get at it. Sometimes when the moths are not spread soon after being killed, they become so stiff that the wings cannot be moved without breaking them. In such cases the insects should be put on paper in a jar which has some wet sand in the bottom and which can be covered tightly. The air in such a can is so moist that in two or three days the insect will become limber and may be spread with ease. WHERE TO COLLECT INSECTS. The border of a piece of woods where many shrubs and weeds are growing is an especially good place for collecting many kinds of insects. Any place where there is a great variety of plants and flowers will give a variety of insects. Banks of streams and underneath stones in the fields are good places for collecting. WHEN TO COLLECT INSECTS. The best time of the year is during the summer months. The best time of day is in the forenoon after eight o'clock, and in the twilight at evening. At night many moths may be caught by making a paste of sugar and water (unrefined sugar is best) and painting it upon tree trunks with a brush after sunset. The paste should cover a space two inches wide and several inches long. After dark seek these places cautiously with a lantern and moths will be found sucking the paste; these may be caught with the killing bottle if you move carefully so as not to frighten them; they do not seem to mind the light of the lantern. Electric street-lights attract many insects which may be caught in the net. A lamp set in an open window is also a very good lure on warm nights in the spring and summer. ARRANGING THE INSECTS IN BOXES. [Illustration: _Fig. 136. a, Cricket. b, Grasshopper._] After collecting insects comes the desire to arrange them properly, putting together in neat rows those that resemble each other. To classify insects correctly requires much study. The scope of this leaflet admits of only a few suggestions about the most common insects. _Dragon Flies._--There are many kinds of these, but they all have four wings, finely netted and transparent, the hind wings being as large or larger than the front wings. These are perfectly harmless insects. _Grasshoppers, Crickets and Katydids._--These are known to all, Fig. 136. There are two families of grasshoppers: those with long horns or antennæ and those with short antennæ. Katydids, crickets, cockroaches and walking-sticks are near relatives to the grasshoppers. _Bugs._--These insects have the front pair of wings thick and heavy at the base and thin and transparent at the tips, Fig. 137, _b_. The squash-bug, the chinch-bug, and the electric-light bug are examples of these. Some bugs have the front wings entirely thin and transparent and sloping like a steep roof over the back of the insect, like the cicada, Fig. 137, _a_; and the Brownie bug, Fig. 137, _c_, _d_. [Illustration: _Fig. 137. a, Cicada. b, Stink-bug. c, Leaf-hopper. d, Leaf-hopper--front view._] [Illustration: _Fig. 138. Beetles--showing the pin through the right wing cover. a, Snapping beetle. b, Wood-boring beetle. c, Water beetle._] [Illustration: _Fig. 139. Flies--showing the knobs just below the wings. Note that flies have only two wings. a, Crane fly. b, Pomace fly--enlarged._] _Beetles._--These have hard wing-covers which meet in a straight line down the back and have a pair of thin wings folded under them, Fig. 138. The "June bug" or "May beetle" and the potato beetle are good examples of beetles. [Illustration: _Fig. 140. a, Wasp. b, Bee. Note these have four wings._] [Illustration: _Fig. 141. The Red Admiral butterfly. Note the knobbed antennæ._] _Flies._--These have only two wings, usually transparent. Behind each of these wings a short thread with a knob on it extends out on each side of the body instead of hind wings, Fig. 139. House-flies, horse-flies and mosquitoes are examples of flies. _Bees, Wasps and Ants._--Bees, wasps and the winged form of ants have four transparent wings, Fig. 140. Some flies resemble bees and wasps, but if examined it will be found that they have only two wings instead of four. [Illustration: _Fig. 142. The Cabbage butterfly._] [Illustration: _Fig. 143. The Bass-wood leaf-roller moth._] _Butterflies and Moths._--Butterflies and moths may be told apart by the following character: The antennæ or horns of the butterflies are always threadlike and knobbed at the tip, Figs. 141, 142, while the antennæ of moths are in various shapes, but never bear knobs at the tips, Figs. 143, 144, 145, 146. [Illustration: _Fig. 144. The Imperial moth. A common night-flying moth._] [Illustration: _Fig. 145. An under-wing moth._] [Illustration: _Fig. 146. The Luna moth. A common night-flying species._] DEALERS IN ENTOMOLOGICAL SUPPLIES. The following is a list of the dealers in entomological supplies that have advertisements in the current American entomological journals: A. Smith & Sons, 269 Pearl Street, New York, N. Y. John Akhurst, 78 Ashland Place, Brooklyn, N. Y. M. Abbott Frazar, 93 Sudbury Street, Boston, Mass. Entomological Society of Ontario, Victoria Hall, London, Ont. Queen & Co., 1010 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, Pa. The Bausch & Lomb Optical Company, 515-543 N. St. Paul Street, Rochester, N. Y. LEAFLET XIX. SOME TENT-MAKERS.[24] BY ANNA BOTSFORD COMSTOCK. [24] Teachers' Leaflet No. 5, June, 1897. It is unfortunate that there is, throughout the country, a prevailing dislike for the small creatures called "worms." This dislike is, in most instances, the result of wrong training, and is by no means a natural instinct. As evidence of this, witness the joy with which the small boy or even the small girl, handles "bait" when preparing to go fishing; although of all common "worms" surely the angle-worm is least attractive from any point of view. A still more striking example is the hardihood with which young fishermen catch the dobson to use as a lure for bass--for the dobson is not only very ugly in appearance but is also vicious, often pinching severely the careless fingers of its captors. Thus the dislike for insects being the result of the point of view, it should be the first duty of the teacher to remove this repulsion. In the lesson which follows there is no occasion for teacher or pupils to touch the insects unless they choose to do so; but an attempt is made to arouse an interest in the habits and ways of insect life. If we can succeed in arousing the child's interest in the actions of a caterpillar, he will soon forget his dislike for the "little brothers" which live upon foliage and which experience miraculous changes of form during their short lives. In selecting the Apple-tree Tent Caterpillar for this lesson we have been guided by the following facts: First, it is to be found in early spring; second, its life-history from egg to cocoon is accomplished within the limits of the spring term of our schools; third, it is common everywhere; fourth, it is an important insect from an economic point of view, and the children may be taught how to keep it out of the orchards, thus making the lesson of practical use. In this lesson the teacher is encouraged to use her own methods and originate new ones to make the work interesting. The Leaflet is meant for the exclusive use of the teacher and the text should not be shown to the pupils. The pictures on page 235 are to be shown to the pupils at the teacher's discretion. When answers are herein given to the questions asked, they are meant to aid the teacher in drawing out the correct replies from the children. MATERIALS NEEDED. 1. A pocket lens or a tripod lens is desirable, but not a necessity. These lenses may be bought from or ordered through any jeweler or bookseller. They cost from twenty-five cents to one dollar each. It is worth while for any teacher to possess one of these magnifiers as a means of interesting her pupils in many things. 2. A bottle, a broad-bottomed one being preferable so that it will not tip over easily. This bottle is to be filled with water in which a small branch of the apple tree may be placed to keep it fresh. A common ink bottle will do to begin with. Fig. 147. 3. A wooden or pasteboard box, twelve or fourteen inches square,--a soap box or hat box will do. In place of a cover, nail or paste mosquito netting or cheese cloth over the top; remove the bottom so that the box may be placed over the bottle and the branch of apple in it. This is called a "breeding-cage," and its use is to keep the insects from straying about the schoolroom. 4. A twig bearing the egg-mass of the tent caterpillar. These are easily found before the leaves appear on the apple tree or the wild cherry tree. [Illustration: _Fig. 147. The bottle with the twigs bearing the egg-masses. The tent is being woven below._] METHODS OF USING THE LEAFLET. The teacher should give the pupils a preliminary talk on tents. Speak of the tents used by Indians, by armies, by circuses, by campers, and describe them each in turn. The teacher should use all the facts at her disposal, and all her ingenuity to get the children interested in this subject. Spend a little time for two or three days in discussing tents, and get the pupils to tell orally or in essays all they know about tents. When sufficient interest is thus aroused, tell them this: "The reason we have talked about tents is that we are going to study some little folks who make tents and live in them. Their tents are not made of bark like the Indian's or of canvas like the soldier's, but are made of the finest silk, which is spun and woven by the tenters themselves. These silken tents are not pitched upon the ground and fastened down by ropes and pegs, for these folk, like the Swiss Family Robinson, live in trees. Many people live in one of these tree tents, and they are all brothers and sisters. Now, just where these tents are made, and how they are made, and what sort of little people make them are things which we shall find out if we watch carefully and patiently." LESSON I.--THE EGGS. FIG. 149, _a_. The teacher, having found the egg-mass, should show it to the pupils and let them, during play hours, collect some for themselves. Say that they are eggs, but explain no further. Get the children to examine the egg-masses; ask the following questions: On what part of the trees are these egg-masses found? What is the shape of the egg-mass? (Bring out the fact that they look like a portion of the twig swollen or budded.) What is the color of the egg-mass? Is there much difference in color between the egg-mass and the branch? Has this similarity in color any use? (Develop the idea that the shape and the color of the egg-mass make it resemble the twig so closely as to hide it from birds or any animal that would be likely to eat the eggs.) Does the egg-mass shine? Why does it shine? _Answer._ Because there is a coat of varnish around the eggs. Why was varnish put around the eggs? (Get the answer by asking why varnish is put on wood. Varnish is put around the eggs to preserve them and to keep them dry during the rains and snows of autumn and winter.) If the eggs are near the hatching period the varnish will have scaled off, revealing the tiny white eggs; if not, let the teacher remove the varnish with a knife or pin, thus exposing the eggs. If the teacher has a lens the children should view the eggs through it. Exhibit the picture Fig. 149, b, which represents the eggs greatly enlarged showing the net-work of cement which holds them in place. Ask the children to compare the shape of these eggs with that of bird's eggs, and bring out the fact that these are thimble-shaped. Then ask the pupils to guess what sort of mother laid these eggs, cemented them fast with a network, and then covered them with a coat of waterproof varnish. After sufficient interest is aroused on this point, explain to them: "One day last July a little moth or miller was flitting about the tree from which these twigs were taken. If we could have been there and caught her we should have found her a pretty little creature with four wings covered with down and a soft fuzzy body. In color she was a pale rosy-brown, and had two bands of pale yellow across each front wing." (Call attention to the picture of the moth, Fig. 149, e.[25]) [25] If a specimen of the moth could be obtained, it would be much more interesting to the children than the picture. The teacher can collect or breed the moths in July to use the next spring to illustrate the lesson. "This is the little mother which laid her eggs in a ring around the twig and covered them with a waterproof coat to keep them safe and sound until this spring, when they will hatch." What will come out of these eggs when they hatch? The teacher should not answer this question, but let the pupils watch the eggs and discover the answer for themselves. Place the twig with the egg-mass upon it in the bottle of water (Fig. 147). It will be best if this twig is a part of a forked branch, so that the caterpillars may make their web upon it (Fig. 148). As soon as the eggs hatch ask the following questions: What sort of young ones hatch out of the eggs? Are they like their mother? What color are they? Why are their heads so large? _Answer._ So that they can gnaw the lid off the egg and thus get out. Why should the young ones of a pretty moth be little black caterpillars? (Leave this answer for future investigation.) After the caterpillars hatch it will be necessary to bring in each day fresh apple twigs with buds and leaves on them so as to feed the little prisoners. It is very desirable that they be kept alive until they have begun their web and have molted at least twice. If they show a disposition to wander off, put the breeding cage over the bottle and branch and so keep them confined with their food. To supplement the study of the imprisoned caterpillars, study should be made at the same time of the insects out of doors and under natural conditions. If none appear upon an apple or wild cherry tree near the school-house, the teacher should transfer a colony to such a tree (Fig. 148). This may be done by fastening a twig with an egg-mass upon it to a branch of the tree. If too late to get the unhatched eggs, get a nest with the small worms in it and tie that to the convenient branch instead. This study of the insects out of doors is very necessary in discovering their normal habits. LESSON II. THE CATERPILLARS. FIG. 149, _c_. If the eggs hatch before the leaves appear, upon what do the caterpillars feed? How long is it after hatching before the caterpillars commence to make their tent? Where is the tent always formed? _Answer._ In the fork of the branches. Why is this so? _Answer._ The forking branches offer a convenient support upon which to stretch the tent: and when, as in the case out of doors, the tent is spread in a fork of the larger limbs, these limbs afford two branching roads for the caterpillars to follow in searching for food. Let the pupils make drawings of the tent as soon as it is large enough to be seen well. What is the color of the caterpillars when they are a week old? Upon what do they feed? At what time of day do they feed? When on a tree, how far from their tent do they go for food? Are the paths over which the caterpillars travel when searching for food marked in any way? [Illustration: _Fig. 148. A young colony of tent-makers on a cherry tree._] _Answer._ This caterpillar spins a silken thread wherever it goes and therefore leaves a trail of silk behind it. Of what is the tent made? Compare the tent with a spider's web and note the differences. Where does the silk come from, of which the tent is made? _Answer._ The silk glands of the caterpillar are situated near the mouth, while those of the spider are on the rear end of the body. LESSON III. HOW THE INSECTS GROW. The caterpillars shed their skins about five times. The first molt occurs about three days after they hatch; the second molt about four days later; and the third molt about six days after the second. After each molt, the color and markings of the caterpillars are somewhat changed. During some of the molts the pupils should watch a caterpillar change his skin. After the class has seen this operation the teacher may give the following lesson: Where is your skeleton? What is it made of? What is it for? Bring out the fact that the skeleton is a support for the muscles and organs of the body. Where is an insect's skeleton? Get as many answers to this question as possible, then explain: The insect's skeleton is on the outside of its body instead of a skin, and the flesh and muscles are supported by it on the inside instead of on the outside like our own. As this skeleton is hard it cannot stretch; as the insect grows and gets too large the shell bursts open and the insect walks out of it. Now underneath this old hard skeleton a new one is formed, which is soft and flexible at first, and so stretches to accommodate the growing insect. After a little time this new skeleton also hardens and has to be shed when it is too small to suit its owner. Notes should be made by the pupil upon the change of color and markings after the different molts, and the process of molting should be described. LESSON IV. THE PUPA. FIG. 149, _d_. In ordinary seasons, about the middle of May, the caterpillars get their growth. If those in the breeding cage have died or have not thrived, bring in a few full-grown caterpillars from the orchard and put them on some branches in the breeding cage. Give them fresh food each day as long as they will eat; also place some sticks and chips on the bottom of the breeding cage for the worms to "spin up" on. Then have the children observe the following things: How do the caterpillars begin their cocoons? Where are the cocoons made? How are they made? Draw a picture of a cocoon. About a week after a cocoon is made, open it carefully with a pair of scissors so as not to hurt the inmate, and let the pupil see the change that has come over the caterpillar. Have the pupils describe the pupa. Let the pupils make drawings of the pupa. The moths will hardly emerge from the cocoons until after the close of the school term. The children should be encouraged to gather the cocoons from the fences around the orchards and from the sticks and the branches on the ground and to carry them home. The cocoons may be placed in pasteboard boxes and kept until the moths emerge, about the middle of July. LESSON V. DESTROYING THE CATERPILLARS. After the caterpillars are fully grown and all the processes of growth have been observed by the pupils, the teacher should give a lesson upon the injury which they do to trees and the necessity of keeping the orchards free from these pests. This lesson should be given guardedly so as not to encourage the children to cruelty in killing insects. The teacher should always try to inculcate in the child reverence for life, that wonderful force, which we can so easily take from a creature but which we can never give back. It is better to appeal to the child's sense of justice in giving this lesson. The teacher may vary it to suit her own ideas, but in substance it might be given somewhat as follows: "All life is sacred; the smallest worm has as good a right to live in the sight of God as you or any child has. Life should never be taken except when necessary. However, no one has the right to interfere with the rights of another. Neither the child nor the worm has any right to trespass upon the property of any one else." "Let us see whether these caterpillars are trespassers or not. The farmer works hard to earn the money to buy the land upon which the orchard is planted; he works hard to earn the money with which to buy the young trees; he works hard to set out the trees and cultivate the orchard; therefore the orchard and the fruit of it are his property, and he has a right to drive away all thieves. If men or children steal the fruit, he has a right to appeal to the law and have them fined or imprisoned. If worms come and injure the tree by eating up the foliage, he has a right to keep them out if he can. The leaves are necessary to the tree, for if they are destroyed the tree cannot get the air it needs to keep it vigorous and enable it to mature its fruit. We have seen that these caterpillars destroy the leaves, and thus do great injury to the apple crop. We therefore have a right to destroy these little robbers, as that is the only way we can keep them out of our orchards." How can the caterpillars be destroyed? The egg-masses can be collected in winter and early spring from young orchards, and burned. Tie bits of suet or fresh fat pork to the branches of the trees and thus induce chickadees, nuthatches, and woodpeckers to visit the orchard in winter. These birds will destroy eggs and cocoons of the tent caterpillar, and of other insect pests also. In large, old trees, we must wait until later. Ask the pupils the following questions: At what times did we find the worms in their tents? _Answer._ Early morning; late afternoons; and during cold, dark days. If we should destroy the tents in the middle of a warm, sunny day, what would happen? _Answer._ The caterpillars, being out feeding on the leaves, would not be hurt, and as soon as they came back would make another tent. If the tent is destroyed in the early morning or late afternoon or on a cold, dark day, what would happen? _Answer._ The caterpillars, all being in the tent, would be destroyed. How may the tents be destroyed? _Answer._ By wiping them out with a long pole on one end of which is wound a rag saturated with kerosene. Or by burning them out with a torch. Is it best to destroy the caterpillars early in the season, while they are still small, or to wait until they are large and are about ready to pupate. If the trees were sprayed with Paris green in the early spring, what would happen? _Answer._ The caterpillars would be killed as soon as they began to eat, when they were first hatched. When these caterpillars feed on the leaves of wild cherry they are doing no damage to an orchard. Therefore, when the tents appear on wild cherry trees have we any right to destroy them? _Answer._ The wise and careful farmer does not allow wild cherry trees to grow along his fences if they will become breeding places for insect enemies which will next year attack his orchards. [Illustration: _Fig. 149. The Curious History of a Tent Caterpillar. a, The masses of eggs on the twigs of an apple tree. b, The eggs enlarged. c, A full grown caterpillar. d, Cocoons. e, The moth, or adult insect._] LEAFLET XX. MOSQUITOES.[26] BY MARY ROGERS MILLER. "Nature-Study is learning those things in nature that are best worth knowing, to the end of doing those things that make life most worth living." --PROFESSOR HODGE in _Nature-Study and Life_. [26] Home Nature-Study Course, Vol. IV, No. 23, May, 1902. [Illustration] Spite of all the efforts of scientists and nature-students to popularize the mosquito, its reputation as a public nuisance is as well sustained as ever, and it seems destined to remain as unpopular as were its ancestors. There is no doubt that these creatures "abound" and that "they are great annoyances to both man and animals," as Dr. Howard tells us in "The Insect Book;" but he has laid a new and even more deadly sin at their door in stating, as he does in no uncertain terms, that "they are active agents in the transfer of disease." There seems to be no escape from the attention of these persistent "imps o' evil." Though we travel to far Alaska or to icy Greenland we cannot be free. Since we are doomed to existence in the same world with the mosquito it behooves us to discover, if possible, some way to turn the creature to account for our entertainment or instruction. Forget for the moment that you despise mosquitoes, and let us study their ways. By making its life history the subject of some of our lessons we may at least learn how the mosquito lives and develops; and later we can turn this knowledge to practical account. Since for many generations these creatures have made the human race the subject of insistent study, it is no more than fair that the tables should be turned! You are not good nature-students until you have recognized and overcome your prejudices. You read the life history of the rabbit and you think you hate its enemies. You watch a family of foxes with their cunning ways, and the mother's care for her young and you cannot help sympathizing with them in their struggle for existence. Every creature in its turn becomes interesting to you when you find yourself wondering about how it makes its home, rears its young, and gets its food. As you get nearer to nature you will cease to feel any pride in the fact that you "hate" snakes, mosquitoes, and all such "varmints." Indeed that hatred, born of ignorance, will have given place to sympathy and interest. You have a new point of view. One of the first questions asked of the returning animals in early spring is, "How have you spent the winter?" The bluebird and the robin show no signs of weariness after their long flight from the South. The "woolly bear" caterpillars look just as they did in October. The early butterflies are a trifle worn and shabby after their hibernation. But who has thought to inquire where and how the mosquito has spent the cold season? "Who cares," one may say, "so long as they don't stay around where we are as they did last summer?" [Illustration: _Fig. 150. Mosquito's wing._] Suppose we make it our business from now on to care about such things, and to inquire into the ways our plant and animal neighbors have of living and of getting a living. Are you quite sure that the mosquitoes have not spent their winter under your protection? If in April you had had occasion to frequent either garret or cellar there you might have found them. By dozens and scores they were waiting for the return of warm weather to free them. Many of them winter not as eggs, larvæ, or pupæ, but as winged adults, as _mosquitoes_. This rather interferes with the prevalent notion that mosquitoes live but for a day. Would that this were true, and might that day be short! [Illustration: _Fig. 151. Raft of eggs, greatly enlarged._] THE LIFE HISTORY OF THE MOSQUITO. The life history of a mosquito is in four chapters, some of which are exceedingly short, others long. The length of each may be varied by the weather and the season. Moisture and warmth are particularly advantageous to the rapid development of these creatures. Ten days in hot weather may be sufficient time for the growth of a generation of them, from egg to adult. There are many generations in a year. [Illustration: _Fig. 152. The larva or wiggler._] The larvæ of mosquitoes are aquatic. They live in stagnant water everywhere, in ponds, swamps, ditches, puddles, rain-water barrels, and horse-troughs. In early spring the female mosquito that has wintered in your garret will probably go to the nearest rain-water barrel or water-tank. She finds her way by instinct, before the sun is up. When you go to replenish your pitcher you will find a little flat cluster of eggs like a tiny raft floating on the surface (Fig. 151). It is dark-colored and the chances are you will not see it unless it gets into your pitcher. By two o'clock in the afternoon there may be from two to four hundred lively little wigglers in the water. Possibly they will wait until the following day. They all hatched from the eggs of one mosquito. They hitch and twitch about in the water, coming often to the surface and hanging there for a moment (Fig. 152). You call them "wigglers." But did you ever wonder why they wiggle, why they come so often to the surface, and why they thrust up the little tube which projects from near the end of the body? Did you ever ask what they find to eat in the water, and how they eat it? [Illustration: _Fig. 153. The active pupa._] The larval stage lasts about ten days in hot summer weather, but longer when the days are cool. Then comes a change in form into the pupa (Fig. 153). The creature is still active and aquatic, though no food is taken. It does not stay long away from the surface while in this stage. Finally, after two or more days as a pupa, the full-grown mosquito emerges and takes wing, leaving its pupa case floating on the top of the water like a forlorn little derelict. ENEMIES OF THE MOSQUITO. Besides man, the mosquito has many natural enemies. In the water especially they fall easy victims to the thousand-and-one insect ogres. The nymphs of dragon-flies are especially fond of wigglers, and there has been much said and written about raising dragon-flies as a safeguard against mosquitoes. Most of the predaceous insects which live in still water feed on young mosquitoes, while the adults often fall prey to their more swiftly flying insect neighbors. HOW TO STUDY THE MOSQUITO. Over and around the tumbler place a piece of close-woven mosquito netting to confine the adult insects. A glass tumbler two-thirds full of rain-water, a little cluster of eggs, or a half dozen wigglers, a keen observer, and you have a nature-study opportunity not to be surpassed in the finest laboratory. If you have already seen a part of the life history, do not be satisfied until you have completed your chain of observations. Get the eggs; watch the hatching, the molting, the transformations. See every stage. Learn something new every time you look at the wiggler or the mature mosquito. It is not at all necessary that you let these insects escape into the school-room and cause trouble. Those who wish more minute description, with many illustrations of mosquitoes of different kinds, should obtain from the Division of Publications, Department of Agriculture, the published results of Dr. L. O. Howard's studies of mosquitoes. In this pamphlet, from which the drawings in this lesson are copied, the subject of the transfer of disease germs by mosquitoes is very thoroughly discussed, with pictures which distinguish between the common mosquito and those which transfer malaria and other diseases. Those scientists who had to do with the naming of the many species of mosquitoes had certainly a sense of humor. One would think they named the creatures according to the mildness or malignity of their bite. A few of the names are as follows: Culex excitans Culex pungens Culex irritans Culex stimulans Culex perturbans Culex excrucians THE CRUSADE AGAINST MOSQUITOES. BY M. V. SLINGERLAND. There is now a world-wide crusade against mosquitoes, extending from the wilds of Africa through the noted malarial districts of Italy to America. In America a National Mosquito Extermination Society has been formed. This extensive crusade is due to the practical demonstration that some kinds of mosquitoes may transmit malaria, yellow fever and probably other diseases of human beings. All mosquitoes must have water in which to develop, and the warfare against them consists largely in destroying their watery breeding grounds. This is being done on a large scale, either by draining or by filling in marshes, pools, and similar places which often swarm with the "wigglers." Large areas of such mosquito-breeding waste lands in New Jersey and on Long Island are thus being reclaimed and the mosquito nuisance largely abated. Aquaria, rain barrels, tanks, small ponds and similar places can be kept free from the "wigglers" by introducing small fish, as gold fish or silver fish, sunfish, "killies," roaches or minnows. An interesting and instructive object lesson could be given by putting a few minnows from a near-by brook into the school aquarium or into a specially prepared glass dish well stocked with the "wigglers." One can easily prevent mosquitoes from breeding in rain barrels or tanks by covering them with mosquito netting. Another practicable and successful method is to pour or sprinkle kerosene oil every two or three weeks in a thin film over the surface of cesspools, rain barrels, tanks, ponds or any other body of sluggish water where the "wigglers" are found. This oil film kills the "wigglers" (both larvæ and pupæ) by preventing them from getting to the surface to breathe, and it also prevents the mother mosquito from laying her eggs on the water. There are patent preparations or oils which penetrate all through the water, killing the "wigglers" but spoiling the water for general use, so that such oils are usually applied only to infested cesspools, sewer basins, or manure pits. By a little concerted effort of local officials, individuals, or by the school children in applying whichever of the above methods is most practicable, much interesting and valuable work could be accomplished and the pestiferous mosquito largely eliminated in many localities. LEAFLET XXI. THE WAYS OF THE ANT.[27] BY ANNA BOTSFORD COMSTOCK. [27] Home Nature-Study Course, Vol. V, No. 1. October, 1903. [Illustration] For many years ants have been recognized as among the most interesting of the little animals that people our fields. However, not until recently have we begun to understand, even in a small measure, their economic importance and the part they play in maintaining the balance in insect life. Therefore, we shall give a few studies of ants and their ways, and as a knowledge of their habits is necessary to begin with, we will take up the ant-nest first. AN ANT-NEST. Two panes of glass laid flat one on the other with a space between of one-eighth of an inch or less, these panes covered with a piece of dark paper or wood to keep out the light and then placed on something that will allow them to be surrounded by water; a bit of blotting paper two inches square, dampened and placed at one end of the glass chamber--these are all the materials and the art necessary for the construction of a perfectly equipped ant-nest. Once we wished to make an ant-nest hurriedly, and this is the way we did it: we chose an agate wash basin (Fig. 154), as this would not rust, and filled it half-full of water; in this we made an island, by placing in it a three-pint agate basin turned bottom side up. We took two discarded negatives, size 4x5 inches, and cleaned off the films; then we placed one of the pieces of glass on the basin-island, took the stumps of four burnt matches and placed one on each side of this glass near its edge; then we placed the other piece of glass on top, letting it rest on the matches to make a chamber just high enough for the ants to live in comfortably. This done, we took the cover of a cigar-box and cut it down to the size of the negatives, put a screw-eye in the center to lift it by and placed it on top of the upper glass to make the chamber below quite dark. Then we took a trowel and fruit-can and went after some inhabitants for our island. We went to an open pasture and turned over stones until we found beneath one a heap of yellowish grain-like pupæ and little translucent whitish bodies, which we knew were larvæ, all being cared for by swarms of worker-ants. One of us pushed the trowel beneath, taking up dirt and all, while the other held the can open, into which the trowel was emptied. We hastened back and as gently as possible, taking care to hurt none of our little captives, placed the contents of the can on the top of the nest. [Illustration: _Fig. 154. An improvised ant-nest._] As the first thought of an ant is never for its own safety, but for the safety of its infant sisters, the little workers began to hunt for a safe and dark place in which to stow away their charges. In running about they soon discovered the space between the two pieces of glass and in a few hours the young ones were moved into the new quarters. Then we cleaned away the earth on top of the nest, and by lifting the cover we were able to see all that was going on within. The water in the wash-basin prevented any of our uneasy captives from escaping, as these little people, so clever in most things, have never yet mastered the art of swimming. I have an ant-nest on my table as I write, shown in Fig. 156. Instead of matches to keep the two pieces of glass apart I have a narrow strip of canton flannel glued around the edge of the glass floor except for two little doors at the opposite corners; there is also a narrow strip of cloth partitioning the chamber into two rooms with a door at one end. One room I left empty and in the other I placed a bit of blotting paper which I keep damp by occasionally adding a few drops of water. The nest is placed upon a piece of plank 18 inches square. Around the plank near the edge is a groove about an inch deep made with a chisel and kept full of water, so that my ants have a castle with a moat. It was necessary to paint this bit of plank thoroughly, above and below, to keep it from warping. [Illustration: _Fig. 155. Ant-nest, on a piece of plank, which has a moat near its edge to confine the insects._] The ants in my nest I found on a hillside beneath a stone; they are brownish with yellow legs and a little less than a quarter of an inch in length. They were stupid at first and would not discover the chamber prepared for them, but persisted in hiding their young under bits of earth which were brought in with them. So I made a scoop of a sheet of writing paper and with it placed a heap of the young, with a few of the nurses, in the empty chamber, then put on the glass ceiling and cover and left them. In a few hours the whole colony had moved into this chamber, but evidently it was not humid enough for the health of the young, and by the next morning the pupæ and larvæ and eggs were all in the other chamber arranged around the edges of the blotting paper. What I have seen of interest in this nest on my table would fill a small volume, if written out in detail. Just now a worker approached a pupa, that appears through the lens like a little bag of meal tied at one end with a black string; she examined it carefully with her antennæ and concluded it needed to be moved, and, though it is as large as she, picked it up in her jaws and carried it to a position which she regarded as more favorable. Then she approached a larva which looks like a little crook-neck squash, inquired as to its needs with her antennæ and then cleaned it with her tongue, as a cat licks a kitten, and fed it. Her next duty was to pick up a whole bunch of little white oblong eggs and scurry off with them to get them out of the light. Then she stopped to help another worker to straighten out the soft legs and antennæ of a pale, new sister that was just emerging from the pupa skin. By the time I had seen as much as this I felt it my duty to replace the cover, as the light greatly disturbs the little captives. It is said that if a yellow glass be used for the upper piece, the ants feel that they are in darkness, and their actions may be watched constantly without disturbing them. For a permanent nest, it is necessary to secure a queen, which lays all the eggs for the colony. She may be recognized by her larger size and may sometimes be found in a nest under the stones. However, it is so difficult to obtain a queen that I more often bring in the young and the workers; the latter will be content as long as they have the babies to feed and bring up; when finally this is accomplished, I usually take my colony back to its nest in the field, where it is made most welcome. This may seem sentimental, but after you have watched these little people working so hard and taking such devoted care of their baby sisters and doing so many wise things in their home, you will be loth to let the tiny creatures die of discouragement because they have nothing else to do, and you will be still more loth to let them loose to scatter, bewildered and helpless, over a strange earth. However, I have to be very careful and mark the nest to which they belong, for if I should put them near another colony, my poor captives would soon die inglorious deaths. Food which we provide for the ants in captivity should be varied and should be put on the island, rather than in the nest as we may thus be able to better clean away the refuse. Crackers or bread soaked in sweetened water, sponge cake, berry-jam, sugar, bits of raw meat, yolks of hard boiled eggs crushed, freshly killed insects or earth-worms, all may prove acceptable to our little friends. Their food may be soft but should not be in a fluid state. QUESTIONS ABOUT ANTS. _If you have not made an ant-nest and observed the ant as indicated, make some field observations. These may be made with the naked eye, or with a tripod lens. Such a lens costs about thirty-five cents._ 1. Have you ever seen an ant-hill? If so, describe it. 2. Do all ants build mound nests? 3. In what situations have you found ant-nests? 4. How many kinds of ants do you know? 5. Have you ever seen winged ants? If so, describe the experience. 6. What is the reason for a winged form of ants? 7. Have you observed ants meet and "converse" with each other? If so, how did they do it? 8. Have you seen the ants carrying their young? If so, how do they do it? 9. If you have made an ant-nest, tell what you have seen going on within it. 10. Tell any experiences you have had with ants, that show their courage, energy or cleverness. [Illustration: _Fig. 156. Uncovered ant-nest, viewed from above, looking through the glass ceiling._ _The white pieces around the edges and at the center are strips of canton flannel, forming walls and partition to the nest. Note the doors at the lower left and upper right hand corners and at lower end of the partition. The piece of blotting paper in the chamber at the left chanced to have a picture of an eagle upon it. The small white objects are pupæ, assorted in heaps._] ANTS AND THEIR HERDS.[28] [28] Home Nature-Study Course, Vol. V, No. 8, May, 1904. [Illustration: _Fig. 157. Rose infested with aphids or plant-lice._] Very soon after the green leaves come, one may notice that the ants seem to be greatly interested in getting to the tops of trees, bushes and vines. If one watches for only a short time, he may see them hastening up and down with that important ant-air which says plainly, "There now, don't hinder me, I haven't a moment to waste." If we should follow with our eyes one of these hurried six-footed Marthas on her way up a tree, we would find that her business was that of milk-maid. Her cows are there pasturing on the leaves overhead, and she hastens to them coaxing for the milk, which is a clear drop of sweet honeydew. For many years entomologists repeated the statement that the honeydew secreted by aphids or plant-lice for the use of the ants came from the two little tubes on the back of the insect. It is easy to see how this mistake came about; the tubes were there, and so was the honeydew; the tubes suggested a cow's udder, and as the ants use the honeydew the natural inference was that it came from the tubes. This interesting error has been printed in so many honorable books, that it has become a classic. As a matter of fact, the caterpillars of our little, blue butterflies do have glands on the abdomen which secrete honeydew for the use of the ants; but the honeydew of the plant-lice, like honey itself, is manufactured in the alimentary canal, and issues from it. Observations have shown that each individual plant-louse may produce from five to seven drops of honeydew in twenty-four hours. If our cows could produce as much in proportion, then a good Holstein would give something like six thousand pounds of milk per day, and would be a highly profitable animal to have in the dairy. Although the honeydew does not come from the little tubes on the back of the plant-louse, yet those tubes have their uses. I once observed a young spider approaching an aphid, which was facing its enemy. As the spider approached, the aphid lifted its abdomen, and thrust one of these tubes over directly in the spider's face, and on this tube there suddenly appeared a little ball of yellow wax. The whole act was so like a pugilist thrusting his fist in his enemy's face that I laughed. The spider retreated and the aphid let its abdomen fall back in its natural position, but the little wax ball remained for some time on the tip of the tube. A German scientist, Mr. Busgen, of the University of Jena, discovered that a plant-louse smeared the eyes and jaws of his enemy, the aphis-lion, with this wax which dried as soon as applied. In action it was something like throwing a basin of paste at the head of an attacking party. Mr. Busgen discovered that the aphis-lion thus treated was obliged to stop and clean himself before he could go on with his hunt, and meantime the aphid walked off in safety. [Illustration: _Fig. 158. A stable made by ants for plant-lice._] The honeydew is excreted in such quantities that often the pavement beneath trees may be seen to be spattered by the drops of this sweet rain. It seems to be excreted solely for attracting the ants. In return for this, the ants give care and protection to their herds. They sometimes take them into their nests and care for them. In one case, at least, one species of ant builds for one species of aphid (which lives upon dogwood) a little mud stable which protects the aphids from all enemies. This stable is neatly placed at the fork of the twigs and has a little circular door by which the ants may enter (Fig. 158). The lady-bug larvæ and the ant-lions both feed voraciously on the aphids; an ant will attack single-handed one of these depredators, although it be much larger than herself, and will drive it away or perish in the attempt. Some so-called practical people say, "Let us study only those things in Nature that affect our pocketbook, and not waste our time studying irrelevant things." If this spirit had animated scientists from the first, many of the most important economic discoveries would never have been made. This relation of ants to aphids is an example to the point. For a hundred years has the fact been known that ants use the aphids for their cows, and the practical men said, "This is a very pretty story, but what we want is some method of killing the aphids." It remained for Professor Forbes, of Illinois, to show the practical application of this "pretty story" in the life history of the corn-root plant-louse, which did great damage to the corn crop of the West. These plant-lice winter in the ground wherever they chance to be left by the dying roots of the last year's crop, and with their soft bodies could never work their way in the hard earth and to the roots of the newly-planted corn in the spring. Professor Forbes discovered that the ants in these infested fields make mines along the principal roots of the new corn; and that they then go out and collect the plant-lice, and place them in these burrows, and there watch over them and protect them. OBSERVATION LESSON ON THE RELATION OF ANTS TO PLANT-LICE. _A reading-glass or lens may be used to advantage in making these observations._ _Find some plant near at hand that is infested by aphids in order to note from time to time the relation of ants to these little creatures. Some aphids on the petiole and leaves of the Virginia Creeper on our piazza once afforded me a convenient field for daily observation._ 1. How does the ant approach the aphid and ask for honeydew? 2. Does she wait long if there is no response? 3. Does the ant step on the aphids as she runs about among them? 4. What are the colors of the aphids you have observed? 5. On what plants were they feeding? 6. What sort of mouth parts have the aphids? 7. What part of the plant is their food, and how do they get it? 8. Why does not Paris green applied to the leaves on which aphids are feeding kill them? 9. Have you seen the lady-bird larvæ or the ant-lions destroying aphids? Explain. 10. Have you ever seen the little wax balls on the tubes of the plant-lice? If so, did you note when and why they were produced? 11. Have you ever seen an ant attacking the enemies of plant-lice? Describe. 12. How do you think this relation of ants to aphids affects agriculture? 13. Study what the ants do for the aphids which infest your rose bushes. Do you infer from this that it is well to exterminate the ant colonies in your flower garden? 14. Do you know how to clear your plants of plant-lice? If so, how? If not send to Cornell or some other experiment station for a spray bulletin. LEAFLET XXII. THE BIRDS AND I.[29] BY L. H. BAILEY. [29] Teachers' Leaflet No. 10, May, 1898. [Illustration] The springtime belongs to the birds and me. We own it. We know when the Mayflowers and the buttercups bloom. We know when the first frogs peep. We watch the awakening of the woods. We are wet by the warm April showers. We go where we will, and we are companions. Every tree and brook and blade of grass is ours; and our hearts are full of song. There are boys who kill the birds, and girls who want to catch them and put them in cages; and there are others who steal their eggs. The birds are not partners with them; they are only servants. Birds, like people, sing for their friends, not for their masters. I am sure that one cannot think much of the springtime and the flowers if his heart is always set upon killing or catching something. We are happy when we are free; and so are the birds. The birds and I get acquainted all over again every spring. They have seen strange lands in the winter, and all the brooks and woods have been covered with snow. So we run and romp together, and find all the nooks and crannies which we had half forgotten since October. The birds remember the old places. The wrens pull the sticks from the old hollow rail and seem to be wild with joy to see the place again. They must be the same wrens that were here last year and the year before, for strangers could not make so much fuss over an old rail. The bluebirds and wrens look into every crack and corner for a place in which to build, and the robins and chipping-sparrows explore every tree in the old orchard. If the birds want to live with us, we should encourage them. The first thing to do is to let them alone. Let them be as free from danger and fear as you or I. Take the hammer off the old gun, give pussy so much to eat that she will not care to hunt for birds, and keep away the boys who steal eggs and who carry sling-shots and throw stones. Plant trees and bushes about the borders of the place, and let some of them, at least, grow into tangles; then, even in the back yard, the wary cat-bird may make its home. For some kinds of birds we can build houses. Some of the many forms which can be used are shown in the pictures at the end of this Leaflet. Any ingenious boy can suggest a dozen other patterns. Although birds may not appreciate architecture, it is well to make the houses neat and tasty by taking pains to have the proportions correct. The floor space in each compartment should be not less than five by six inches, and six by six or six by eight may be better. By cutting the boards in multiples of these numbers, one can easily make a house with several compartments; for there are some birds, as martins, tree swallows, and pigeons that like to live in families or colonies. The size of the doorway is important. It should be just large enough to admit the bird. A larger opening not only looks bad, but it exposes the inhabitants to dangers of cats and other enemies. Birds which build in houses, aside from doves and pigeons, are bluebirds, wrens, tree-swallows, martins, and sometimes the chickadees. For the wren and the chickadee the opening should be an inch augur hole, and for the others it should be about one-and-a-half inches. Only one opening should be provided for each house or compartment. A perch or door-step should be provided just below each door. It is here that the birds often stop to arrange their toilets; and when the mistress is busy with domestic affairs indoors the male-bird often sits outside and entertains her with the latest neighborhood gossip. These houses should be placed on poles or on buildings in somewhat secluded places. Martins and tree-swallows like to build their nests twenty-five feet or more above the ground, but the other birds usually prefer an elevation less than twelve feet. Newly made houses, and particularly newly painted ones, do not often attract the birds. But if the birds and I are companions I must know them more intimately. Merely building houses for them is not enough. I want to know live and happy birds, not dead ones. We are not to know them, then, by catching them, or stuffing them, or collecting their eggs. Persons who make a business of studying birds may shoot birds now and then, and collect their eggs. But these persons are scientists and they are grown-up people. They are trying to add to the sum of human knowledge, while we want to know birds just because we want to. But even scientists do not take specimens recklessly. They do not rob nests. They do not kill brooding birds. They do not make collections merely for the sake of making them; and even their collections are less valuable than a knowledge of the bird as it lives and flies and sings. Boys and girls should not make collections of eggs, for these collections are mere curiosities, as collections of spools and marbles are. They may afford some entertainment, to be sure, but one can find amusement in harmless ways. Some persons think that the securing of collections makes one a naturalist, but it does not. The naturalist cares more for things as they really are in their own homes than for museum specimens. One does not love the birds when he steals their eggs and breaks up their homes; and he is depriving the farmer of one of his best friends, for birds keep insects in check. Stuffed birds do not sing and empty eggs do not hatch. Then let us go to the fields and watch the birds. Sit down on the soft grass and try to make out what the robin is doing on yonder fence or why the wren is bursting with song in the thicket. An opera-glass or spy-glass will bring them close to you. Try to find out not only what the colors and shapes and sizes are, but what their habits are. What does the bird eat? How much does it eat? Where is its nest? How many eggs does it lay? What color are they? How long does the mother bird sit? Does the father bird care for her when she is sitting? How long do the young birds remain in the nest? Who feeds them? What are they fed? Is there more than one brood in a season? Where do the birds go after breeding? Do they change their plumage? Are the mother birds and father birds unlike in size or color? How many kinds of birds do you know? These are some of the things that every boy or girl wants to know; and we can find out by watching the birds! There is no harm in visiting the nests, if one does it in the right way. I have visited hundreds of them and have kept many records of the number of eggs and the dates when they were laid, how long before they hatched, and when the birds flew away; and the birds took no offense at my inquisitiveness. These are some of the cautions to be observed: Watch only those nests which can be seen without climbing, for if you have to climb the tree the birds will resent it. Make the visit when the birds are absent, if possible; at least, never scare the bird from the nest. Do not touch the eggs or the nest. Make your visit very short. Make up your mind just what you want to see, then look in quickly and pass on. Do not go too often; once or twice a day will be sufficient. Do not take the other children with you, for you are then likely to stay too long and to offend the birds. Now let us see how intimately you can become acquainted with some bird this summer. [Illustration: _Fig. 159._] [Illustration: _Fig. 162._] [Illustration: _Fig. 160._] [Illustration: _Fig. 163._] [Illustration: _Fig. 161._] [Illustration: _Suggestions for home-made bird houses._] [Illustration: _Fig. 164._] [Illustration: _Fig. 165._] [Illustration: _Fig. 166._] [Illustration: _Fig. 167._] [Illustration: _Fig. 168._] [Illustration: _Fig. 169._] [Illustration: _Fig. 170._] [Illustration: _Fig. 171._] [Illustration: _Fig. 172._] [Illustration: _Improvised bird houses._] [Illustration: _Fig. 173._] [Illustration: _Fig. 176._] [Illustration: _Fig. 174._] [Illustration: _Fig. 175._] [Illustration: _Fig. 177._] [Illustration: _Suggestions for home-made bird houses._] LEAFLET XXIII. THE EARLY BIRDS.[30] BY L. A. FUERTES. [30] Nature-Study Quarterly, No. 4: Leaflet 17, March, 1900. [Illustration] After a long winter, many of us are too impatient for spring to wait for the swelling of the buds, the opening of the early flowers, and the springing of the grass. Several weeks lie between the end of winter and the truly genial spring days, and during this interval we look for something to herald the settled spring season. And the thing which gives us that for which we are unconsciously looking, more than all other signs, is the arrival of the birds. Who has not warmed to the quavering call of the first blue-bird, or been suddenly thrilled some early spring day with the sunny notes of the song-sparrow! In the southern part of this State, notably in the lower Hudson Valley, the winter is spent by several birds which elsewhere we are accustomed to see only after the winter has passed. Among these are the blue-bird, robin, song-sparrow, white-throated-sparrow, meadow-lark, and possibly the purple-finch. But in most of the State we must wait until the first or second week in March before we can be sure of seeing any of them. It is a question which of the earlier birds will first make its appearance, as these early migrants are much less regular in their movements than those that come late in April and in May, after the weather has become settled. Many a robin and blue-bird arrives during some early warm "spell," to find himself suddenly surrounded by flying snow and blown about by cold winds. But these and a few other hardy ones seem able to stand such rebuffs with great equanimity, and the momentary shining of a fickle March sun will often evoke some pent-up song-sparrow's notes from the shelter of a hedge or thicket. Robins, blue-birds, song-sparrows, cowbirds, meadow-larks, phoebes, bronzed grackles, kingfishers, and doves may be looked upon as the vanguards of the hosts of migrating birds that come to us each year, and the first four or five may be expected almost any time after the first week in March. If the winter has been late, these may not appear until the middle or even the latter part of the month, in which case one is busy keeping track of the arrivals, as the other birds have caught up then, and all come nearly at the same time. It is unnecessary to give detailed descriptions of robins, bluebirds, and song-sparrows, as nearly everyone is familiar with them; but some of the other early comers may be more easily recognized if some field impressions of them be given. * * * * * Almost any warm day in early March we may hear a thin, clear "tsssss" in a high piping key, and on looking up see from one to five black birds, about the size of orioles, flying in a strange undulating manner--some up and some down, with the wings held close to their sides during the "drop" in their flight. They are cowbirds. The flock may swirl into the top of a tree and sit close together. (Fig. 178.) If this happens within eyeshot, stop and watch them for a moment. One or two of the males are almost certain to utter the ridiculous song of the species, which, like that of their relatives, the grackles, is accompanied by the most grotesque of actions. The bird spreads its wings to their utmost, spreads and elevates the tail, stretches its neck upwards and forwards, and then, quivering and tottering, nearly falls forward off the perch. The only sound which accompanies this absurd action is a faint chuckling "clk-sfs'k," which is scarcely to be heard a hundred feet away. [Illustration: _Fig. 178. Cowbirds._] * * * * * With the cowbirds we may expect the arrival of the bronzed grackles, which resemble them much in flight, but are larger and come in far larger flocks--sometimes ten, sometimes a hundred or more. Their arrival is known by the vigorous calls they utter while flying, a loud bass "jook." When seen squabbling in the spruce trees or in the bare branches of the willows fringing the streams, the males are likely to be giving their "song." It is scarcely more of a note than the cowbird's, a rusty squeak, and it is accompanied by a contortion in the same manner. It is not such a pronounced effort, however, and is often only a slight shudder and shrug of the shoulders. They feed, like cowbirds, mostly on the ground, and walk about most sedately in the grass like small crows. In tall grass, however, they waddle too much to be graceful. When taking flight they spread their long pointed tails in a very peculiar and characteristic manner--not out in a horizontal plane, like most birds, but up at the sides in the shape of a gardener's trowel, which gives them an extraordinary appearance. * * * * * The redwings begin to come into the marshes soon after the grackles, and are at that time in full feather and song. Their rich, deliberate "clonk-ka lrrrrrrr," interlarded with the clear piping whistles of some of the flock, makes a concert of bird-notes very dear to all who are familiar with it. In their scarlet and black velvet dress these birds are impossible to mistake, whether seen chasing over the marshes, singing from an elm-top, or balancing with spread tail upon some tall reed stalk. * * * * * There is a bird-note so often and so justly mistaken for that of the phoebe that the error certainly merits correction. The spring song of the chick-a-dee (which may be heard on almost any warm day all winter, and is very easy to call forth by even a poorly whistled imitation) is a clear, pure "^[=eee]_{[=eee]}" or "[--__ __]" which really says "Phoebe" much more plainly than the true phoebe note, this latter being much lower in tone, and only to be heard after March is well on, and almost always in the vicinity of running streams and brooklets; while the gay little chick-a-dee whistles at any time or place that suits his versatile fancy. * * * * * [Illustration: _Fig. 179. Meadow larks._] The mellow flute notes of the meadow larks (Fig. 179) float to us from the middle of some large, open field, and are among the most beautiful bits of bird music we ever hear. They are not to be represented by notes, and can only be most inadequately described. There is great variation in the sequence of notes, but all are beautifully clear and ringing, and have a decided tinge of what would be sadness if it were not so sweet. The bird flies in a very characteristic manner, never raising the wings above the plane of the back, and when seen below the horizon line always shows the white feathers in the tail. His saffron breast and black breast-mark seldom show on the living birds, and the mottled brown back is a wonderful safeguard against his many overhead enemies. * * * * * Two or more doves may be seen winging their headlong flight through the air. These are among the swiftest of birds, and are generally out of eyeshot almost before you have seen them. (That is one way of knowing what they are.) In flight, they look like small pigeons with very long graduated tails, and when, in some old orchard or open wood, you see one rise from the ground into a tree, the white lateral feathers in the tail make an easily recognizable mark. (Fig. 180.) Their cooing notes are well known--a high-pitched "overtone," followed by several long bell-toned "[(ooooo],--[(ooooo]," notes. [Illustration: _Fig. 180. Mourning doves._] * * * * * About April 1 to 10, you may hear a scratching in the dead leaves among the underbrush in any thickly grown tangle, and upon cautiously coming up you may discover the authors--not big grouse as you may have supposed, but a flock of fine, vigorous fox-sparrows on their way to their northern breeding grounds. They are bright bay fellows, with boldly blotched brown and white breasts, diligently scattering the leaves for their food of seeds, spiders, ants, and various insects. If you have been fortunate enough not to have been seen you may hear their song, which is one of the finest of our sparrow songs, readily recognizable as such, though not resembling any of its fellows--a clear, vigorous carol, often ending abruptly with a rather unmusical "clip." If, however, they have seen you, you will be treated to a sharp "tseep!" and a rear view of a flock of rapidly retreating birds, for they are not sociable (with us, at least), and generally take a hint to move on before you know of their presence. They do not stay long with us on their migration, and seeing them one day is no indication that you can find them the next. * * * * * Although the white-throated sparrows spend the winter in our southern counties, they do not start their northward journey as early as we might expect, and it is not until the first part of April that we may be sure of finding them. I have one list, indeed that shows their first appearance on May first! They are to be found in places similar to those which the fox-sparrows choose, and are very similar to them in habits, but the boldly striped head and gray breast are very distinctive marks. Almost all of our native sparrows have a call note, the "tsweep" note, which is hard to distinguish in the different species without much patient listening--and I doubt if any person is infallible in this distinction. The white-throat has this note, as well as the song-sparrow, tree-sparrow (a winter-bird), fox-sparrow, white-crown, chippy, field-sparrow, grass-finch, in fact all our brown-backed sparrows. But the song of the white-throat is his own, and may be heard frequently during his very leisurely journey through our state. His Canadian name, "Peabody bird" is descriptive of his notes, "-- _.., _.., _.." When a number get together and whistle, as if they were singing a round, it makes a very sweet concert. [Illustration: _Fig. 181. White-throated sparrow._] * * * * * One of the foremost birds in the spring movement is the grass-finch (vesper-sparrow or bay-winged bunting). It is to be found in open fields and along roadside fences, in company with meadow larks, and its sweet song may be heard almost any warm evening after the middle of April. Unlike most of our birds, this sparrow sings at its best late in the afternoon and during twilight, which perhaps makes its song seem the sweeter. It is rather a gentle song, though to be heard at some distance, carrying quite as far as that of the song-sparrow. Although the quality of voice is somewhat similar in these two birds, the grass-finch lacks the merry abandon that characterizes the song-sparrow's song, but has instead a deeper chord, which is called by some people sadness. The bird may be easily recognized in the fields by the white tail-feathers, which always show in flight. It is about the size and general color of the song-sparrow. * * * * * By the time the foregoing birds are comparatively common, and the maple buds are bursting and the lilacs swelling, the gay purple finch appears. He is not purple at all, but has a crimson head, which fades on the lower breast through rosy pink into pure white. He is fond of spruces and larches, feeding greedily on the tender buds as well as on the ants and scale insects that infest them. His song is a fine one, and in addition to the charm of being poured forth in full flight, is so long and intricate that one finds himself holding his breath as the burst of melody continues, as if to help the little fellow catch up with his music. * * * * * Along the banks of some lake or stream, sitting idly on a telegraph pole or wire, rising and settling, elevating and depressing his long parted top-knot, a patriarchal old kingfisher may be seen silently awaiting the gleam of a shiner in the water below (Fig. 182). Or perhaps you may first see him flying like a big woodpecker, screaming his chattering cry high in the air, or scaling close to the water under the fringing hemlock branches that overhang the stream. His large size, slate-blue back, loud notes, and characteristic flight make him a hard bird to mistake in any case. [Illustration: _Fig. 182. Kingfisher._] * * * * * There are many other birds which pass us on their way north, but they herald rather the summer than the breaking of spring. The following list of spring migrations is taken from Mr. Chapman's "Handbook of the Birds of Eastern North America," and was compiled for use about New York City. The dates nearly coincide with those I have found about the central part of the State, and are, in the main, only a few days in advance of those for the northern counties. The latter dates in the column are about what may be taken for the middle tier of counties. It is the earnest hope of the writer that these few very brief sketches may be of use to those interested in entering the delightful field of the study of birds; your experience may and probably will be different from that which I have cited, which only goes to show that everyone must really see for himself, and not only that, but by so doing may make new observations and get new ideas on practically all of even our best known birds. Birds are not, as a rule, hard to watch, and the patience it requires to sit still and "be a stump" long enough for birds to cease noticing you is soon and amply repaid by the new insight into an unknown realm which is sure to follow. LIST OF BIRDS COMPRISING THE SPRING MIGRATION. (Until April 20--Approximate.) (_Taken from Chapman's Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America._) Date of arrival. Feb. 15-Mar. 10. Purple Grackle. Rusty Grackle. Red-winged Blackbird. Robin. Bluebird. Mar. 10-20 Woodcock. Phoebe. Meadow Lark. Cowbird. Fox-sparrow. Mar. 20-31 Wilson's Snipe. Kingfisher. Mourning Dove. Swamp-sparrow. Field-sparrow. April 1-10 Great Blue Heron. Purple Finch. Vesper-sparrow. Savanna-sparrow. Chipping-sparrow. Tree Swallow. Myrtle Warbler. American Pipit. Hermit Thrush. April 10-20 Yellow-bellied Woodpecker. Barn Swallow. Yellow Palm Warbler. Pine Warbler. Louisiana Water Thrush. Ruby-crowned Kinglet. LEAFLET XXIV. THE WOODPECKERS.[31] BY ANNA BOTSFORD COMSTOCK. [31] Home Nature-Study Course, Vol. IV, No. 30, March, 1903. [Illustration] It is best to follow some definite line of bird study for an entire year. All of the observations that could be made in a single month on any bird would give but an inadequate idea of its habits. To know the life of a bird, one must study it month by month for at least one year. The woodpeckers seem a most attractive group for our study. They are not only very interesting, but of great importance to the farmer, orchadist and forester. There are five common species in New York State that we all may learn to know, and then make observations of our own on their habits. These species are the downy, the hairy, the sapsucker, the flicker and the redhead. The way to begin our observations in winter is to tie a piece of suet to the branch of some tree easily observed from our windows. Such a bird feast as this is on a branch of a chestnut oak in front of my office window, and though I never have time to watch more than momentarily the birds that come there to eat, yet each glance tells me something of their ways, and my own day's work is much brighter and happier therefor. The "downy" (Fig. 183), as he is universally called, comes with his mate every day and they eat greedily of the suet; when they first arrive they are so absorbed in working this food mine that I sometimes stand directly beneath and watch them without frightening them. Perhaps they know that I am the friend who invited them to breakfast. Anyway, as soon as they leave the suet they hunt industriously over my tree, finding there all of the hidden insects, and thus they keep my oak clean and pay for their breakfast. Occasionally the hairy woodpecker comes, a self-invited guest to the suet banquet. To the untrained eye he looks very like an over-grown downy, as he is by two or three inches the longer; but his outer tail feathers are entirely white, while the downy's are barred with black; usually the red cap of the hairy is divided by a black stripe. The hairy is said to be a shy bird, but I have seen him several times this winter at a suet party near dwellings. In April there is likely to appear in any region of New York State a bird which is often mistaken for the downy or hairy, although it is very different in both coloring and habits. This is the sapsucker, the only woodpecker of bad repute (Fig. 184). However, I am sure its deeds are not nearly so black as they are painted. The male sapsucker has a bright red crown and chin and throat, his breast is yellow, and he is also yellowish on the back; while the males of the downy and hairy are red-capped and black and white with no yellow. [Illustration: _Fig. 183. Downy woodpecker._] [Illustration: _Fig. 184. Sapsucker._] QUESTIONS ON WOODPECKERS TO BE ANSWERED IN MARCH. 1. What is the difference in appearance between the male and female downy? 2. How does the downy travel down a tree; does it go head-first? What food have you seen it eat? 3. How does the downy use its tail in going up and down the tree trunk? 4. Have you approached a woodpecker closely enough to see how its toes are arranged? If so, describe them. 5. How does it manage its head to make its blows forceful? 6. Are you able to discriminate between the hairy and the downy when you see them? How? 7. Do you know the difference in the notes of the hairy and downy? Explain. DOWNY, SAPSUCKER AND RED-HEAD.[32] [32] Home Nature-Study Course, Vol. IV, No. 31, April, 1903. This morning I was awakened by the beating of a drum over in the woods. My ear was not yet sufficiently trained so that I knew whether my drummer was Mr. Downy or Mr. Hairy, yet I strongly suspected the former. The tattoo of the Sapsucker (which does not nest here) James Whitcomb Riley has aptly characterized as "Weeding out the lonesomeness." This is exactly what the drumming of woodpeckers in the early spring means. The male selects some dried limb of hard wood and there beats out his well-known signal which advertises far and near, "Wanted, a wife." And after he wins her he keeps on drumming to cheer her, while she is busy with her family cares. The woodpecker has no voice for singing, like the robin or thrush, and realizing his deficiency, he does not insist on singing like the peacock, whether he can or no. He chooses rather to devote his voice to terse and business-like conversation, and when he is musically inclined he turns drummer. He is rather particular about his instrument, and, having found one that pleases him in tone, returns to it day after day. In case the drumming I heard this morning was an advertisement for a wife, I am interested to know what has become of Mrs. Downy, who has been true to her mate all winter. Does, perhaps, the springtime bring divorce as well as marriage? Mr. Burroughs tells of a downy that was absolutely brutal in his treatment of his mate in winter, not allowing her to live in his neighborhood. Be this as it may, the downy and the hairy woodpeckers that have feasted upon my suet this winter have invariably come in pairs, and while only one at a time sits at meat, and the lord and master is somewhat "bossy," yet they seem to get along as well as most married pairs. The sapsucker is a woodpecker that has strayed from the paths of virtue; he has fallen into temptation by the wayside, and instead of drilling a hole for the sake of the grub at the end of it he drills it for its own sake. He is a tippler and sap is his beverage. He is especially fond of the sap of the mountain ash, apple, thorn apple, canoe birch, red maple, red oak and white ash. He drills his holes in beautiful rows, and sometimes girdles a limb or tree, and for this he is pronounced a rascal by men who have themselves ruthlessly cut from our land millions of trees that should now be standing. However, the sapsucker does not live solely on sap and the soft cambium layer of the tree; he also feeds on insects wherever he finds them. When feeding their young, sapsuckers are true flycatchers, getting the insects while on the wing. If you find a sapsucker girdling a tree in your orchard or a birch on your lawn, just protect the trees with a wire netting, and let the sapsucker catch mosquitoes for you instead, and remember that he belongs to a good family and is entitled to some consideration, even if he has taken to drink. The red-head (Fig. 185) is well named, for his helmet and visor show a vivid, glowing crimson that stirs the sensibilities of the color lover. He is readily distinguished from all other woodpeckers because his entire head and the bib under his chin are red. For the rest, he is a beautiful dark metallic blue and white. He is a most adept drummer, and his roll is a long one. One that I observed last spring selected a dead limb at the top of an oak tree and there he drummed merrily every morning. He is an adaptable fellow and has been known to drum on tin roofs and lightning rods, thus braving the dangers of civilization for the sake of better music. Though he can rattle so well when he is musically inclined, he is not, after all, much of a woodpecker, for he lives mostly on insects which he catches while they are crawling or on the wing, and he also likes nuts. He is especially fond of beech nuts, and, being a thrifty fellow as well as musical, in time of plenty he stores up food against time of need. He places his nuts in crevices and forks of branches, in holes in trees, and other hiding places. Lets us watch him this spring and see whether we can discover what he eats. [Illustration: _Fig. 185. The Red-headed Woodpecker._] QUESTIONS ABOUT WOODPECKERS TO BE ANSWERED IN APRIL AND MAY. 1. Have you observed any species of woodpecker drumming? 2. Have you been able to see the drum? If so, describe it. 3. Are you able to distinguish between the tapping of the woodpecker when searching for food, and his drumming when he is making music? 4. If you have made any observations on the sapsucker, please give them. 5. Have you seen the sapsucker at work? If so, did the holes girdle the tree? Were the holes round or square? 6. Have you seen the red-head this spring? 7. Describe the way the woodpecker uses its tail when climbing a tree. 8. Send for Bulletin No. 7, of the United States Department of Agriculture, Division of Ornithology, called "Food of Woodpeckers." Read this Bulletin and answer these questions: Does the sapsucker do more harm than good? What special benefit to us is the red-head? Which is the most useful of our woodpeckers? THE FLICKER OR YELLOW HAMMER.[33] [33] Home Nature-Study Course, Vol. IV, No. 32, May, 1903. The first time I ever saw a flicker I said, "What a wonderful meadow lark, and what is it doing on that ant hill?" But another glance revealed to me a red spot on the back of the bird's neck, and as soon as I was sure that this was not a bloody gash I knew it belonged to no meadow lark. The golden brown plumage dotted with black, the under wings of luminous yellow, the white spot above the tail, the ashen gray back, and, above all, the oriental ornaments of crescents,--one brilliant red across the back of the neck, one black across the breast,--all conduce to make the flicker one of our most showy and beautiful birds. The flicker has many names, such as golden-winged woodpecker, yellow hammer, highhole, and yarup or wake-up, and many others. It earned the name of highhole because of its way of excavating its nest high up in trees, usually between ten and twenty-five feet from the ground. It especially loves an old apple tree as a site for a nest, and most of our large, old orchards of New York State may boast of a pair of these handsome birds during the nesting season of May and June. However, the flicker is not above renting any house he finds vacant which was made by other birds last year. The flicker earned his name of "yarup" or "wake-up" from his spring song, which is a rollicking jolly "wick-a-wick-a-wick." As a business bird the flicker shines in the rather extraordinary line of eating ants. It has a tongue equipped almost exactly like the tongue of the animal called the ant eater, and it often may be seen using it with great effectiveness in catching the little communal laborers. [Illustration: _Fig. 186. Young Flickers._] Those who have observed the flicker during the courting season declare him to be the most silly and vain of all the bird wooers. Mr. Baskett says, "When he wishes to charm his sweet-heart he mounts a very small twig near her, and lifts his wings, spreads his tail, and begins to nod right and left as he exhibits his mustache to his charmer, and sets his jet locket first on one side of the twig and then the other. He may even go so far as to turn his head half around to show her the pretty spot on his 'back hair.' In doing all this he performs the most ludicrous antics, and has the silliest of expressions of face and voice as if in losing his heart, as some one phrases it, he had lost his head also." SUMMARY OF THE STUDY OF WOODPECKERS. We have now studied our five species of woodpeckers common in New York State, and I trust that you know them all by sight. When you are teaching the children about the woodpecker, there are many interesting stories to tell about the way that his form is adapted to his life. Some of these stories are as follows: First. The woodpecker's bill, which is a drill and chisel, and how he uses it for getting at the grub or the borer in the wood, and for making the hole for the nest, and for drumming when he feels musical. Second. The tongue, which is a barbed spear, and has a wonderful spring attachment of bones which allows it to be thrust far out. This tongue is fitted in each case to get the kind of food which sustains its owner. Third. The feet have a special arrangement of toes which allows the bird to cling tenaciously to a tree trunk. Study the way the fourth toe, which may be compared to our little finger, has been moved around backward so that it acts as another thumb. Fourth. Study how the tail made of stiff feathers is particularly adapted to act as a brace, helping the bird to climb a tree. In studying all these things I would especially recommend you to a little book called, "The Woodpeckers" by Fannie Hardy Eckstrom, published by Houghton, Mifflin & Co., price $1.00. QUESTIONS ON THE FLICKER. 1. Have you ever seen a flicker? 2. Do you know its song? 3. Has the flicker a straight bill like the downy's? 4. What are the differences between the male and female flicker? 5. Have you ever seen a flicker catching ants? Describe. 6. Do you think the flicker is a beneficial bird? If so, why? 7. Have you ever seen a flicker's nest? Describe. 8. Do you know how the flicker feeds its young? Explain. 9. Describe the difference in color between the male and female of the (a) downy, (b) the hairy, (c) the redhead, (d) the sapsucker, (e) and the flicker. 10. How can you tell the difference between a flicker and a meadow lark during flight? [Illustration: _Downy's long tongue._] LEAFLET XXV. THE CHICKADEE.[34] [34] Home Nature-Study Course, Vol. V, No. 3, December, 1903. BY ANNA BOTSFORD COMSTOCK. _He is the hero of the woods; there are courage and good nature enough in that compact little body, which you may hide in your fist, to supply a whole groveful of May songsters. He has the Spartan virtue of an eagle, the cheerfulness of a thrush, the nimbleness of Cock Sparrow, the endurance of the seabirds condensed into his tiny frame, and there have been added a pertness and ingenuity all his own. His curiosity is immense, and his audacity equal to it; I have even had one alight upon the barrel of the gun over my shoulder as I sat quietly under his tree._--ERNEST INGERSOLL. [Illustration] However careless we may be of our friends when we are in the midst of the luxurious life of summer, even the most careless among us give pleased attention to the birds that bravely endure with us the rigors of winter. And when this winged companion of winter proves to be the most fascinating little ball of feathers ever created, constantly overflowing with cheerful song, our pleased attention changes to active delight. Thus it is that in all the lands of snowy winters the chickadee is a loved comrade of the country wayfarer; that happy song, "chick-a-dee-dee-dee," finds its way to the dullest consciousness and the most callous heart. One day in February we were, with much enjoyment, wading through a drifted highway that skirted a forest, the least twig of which bore a burden of soft snow. Over all hung that silence of winter which is the most "silent silence" that rests upon the earth anywhere outside the desert. No breeze swayed a creaking branch or shook from it the snow in soft thud to the white carpet below. Even the song of the brook was smothered beneath coverlets of ice and pillows of drift. We stood fast, awed by the stillness, when suddenly it was broken by the thrilling notes of the chickadees. We could hardly credit our senses, for it seemed as if the woods was a hopeless place for any living creature that morning. But there before our eyes was a flock of these courageous birds hunting for food on the leeward sides of boles and branches left bare and black in the recent storm. Their tiny weights sent the snow in showers from the terminal twigs, which phenomenon was greeted with triumphant song while the cheerful midgets hunted the relieved branches topside and bottomside for any lurking tidbit. As we watched them, Emerson's poem came to mind: "Piped a tiny voice near by, Gay and polite, a cheerful cry-- Chick-chickadeedee! saucy note Out of sound heart and merry throat, As if it said, 'Good-day, good Sir! Fine afternoon, old passenger! Happy to meet you in these places Where January brings few faces.'" No wonder that the great American philosopher was attracted by this other American philosopher who sings when he is cold and hungry. [Illustration: _Fig. 187. A chickadee at the entrance to its nest._] Besides its usual song the chickadee has a song that says "phoebe" much more distinctly than does the song of the phoebe itself. Few people recognize this, and often in February or early March it is announced in the local newspaper, "The phoebe-birds were heard to-day" though it may be weeks yet before these birds arrive. The two songs may be easily distinguished by even the ear untrained to music. In the phoebe song of the chickadee, the last syllable is at least one note lower than the first and has a falling inflection; while the last syllable of the phoebe bird's song is at least a half note higher than the first and has a rising inflection. Not long since I visited the deserted nest of a devoted pair of chickadees. It was cuddled down in the bottom of a hole that opened on the very top of a fence post, and, one would imagine, must have been wet more than once while inhabited. However, a large family was raised there during the past season and much enjoyment was derived from watching the many fubsy birdlings that found home and comfort in that unattractive retreat. I looked upon them with special interest, for I was sure they would visit the suet on my trees this winter and thus become friendly neighbors. As soon as the trees are bare, nail or tie bits of suet to branches which may be observed from your windows. I know of no investment which pays such enormous dividends both to pleasure and pocket as do suet restaurants in orchards patronized by chickadees. Every child, at home or school, will be attracted by this experiment. QUESTIONS ON THE CHICKADEE. 1. Describe the colors of the chickadee above; below; wings; tail; throat and head. 2. Describe the differences in coloring between the chickadee and the nuthatch. 3. What is the shape of the chickadee's beak and for what is it adapted? 4. Does it frequent the trunks of trees, or the twigs? 5. Describe its actions when hunting for food on a twig. 6. What is the chief food of the chickadee? 7. Why is it of special value to the farmer? 8. What are the differences in the winter and summer habits of the chickadee? 9. Do you know the "phoebe" note of the chickadee? 10. Where do these birds build their nests and of what material? 11. What are the colors and markings on the eggs? 12. When is the nesting season? LEAFLET XXVI. THE WHITE-BREASTED NUTHATCH.[35] BY ANNA BOTSFORD COMSTOCK. [35] Home Nature-Study Course, Vol. V, No. 4, January, 1904. The busy nuthatch climbs his tree, Around the great bole spirally, Peeping into wrinkles gray, Under ruffled lichens gay, Lazily piping one sharp note From his silver mailèd throat. --MAURICE THOMPSON. "_With more artless inquisitiveness than fear, this lively little acrobat stops his hammering or hatching at your approach, and stretching himself out from the tree until it would seem he must fall off, he peers down at you, head downward, straight into your upturned opera-glass. If there is too much snow on the upper side of a branch watch how he runs along underneath it like a fly, busily tapping the bark, or adroitly breaking the decayed bits with his bill, as he stretches for the spider's eggs, larvæ, etc., hidden there; yet somehow, between mouthfuls, managing to call out his cherry quank! quank! hank! hank!_" --NELTJE BLANCHAN. [Illustration] A voice outside is calling at me; I cannot describe it accurately, but it is making delightful woodsy remarks that make me long to throw aside the pen and go out and wander where the snow is making still softer the carpet of dead leaves on the forest floor. It is not a musical note but it is most enticing and translates into sound the picture of bare-branched trees and the feeling of enchantment that permeates the forest in winter. Neltje Blanchan says the voice reiterates "quank, quank," others say it is "nay, nay"--but no nasal sound of the human voice, and no spelling of the English language adequately represent this call of the white-breasted nuthatch. On the tree in front of the window I can see the owner of this sylvan voice. He is a little bird blue-gray above with black head and black and white V-trimmings on the back of his suit and with soft, white breast. He is flitting blithely from tree to tree enjoying the snow storm and coming often to the suet feast which I have spread for him and for his little feathered kin. [Illustration: _Fig. 188. The nuthatch, one of the winter birds._] We have been having exciting times at the suet banquet this morning. The building in which my office is, stands on a high knoll near the forest-covered brink of a deep gorge. Thus my window is opposite the tops of the trees. One of our nature-study staff, a brave and gallant knight, who loves birds and knows that I love to watch them, climbed two of these trees at imminent risk of breaking his neck in order to place this suet just opposite my window. The whole chickadee family and four nuthatches, and Sir Downy and Madam Hairy had been reveling in the feast all the morning when suddenly one after another three crows appeared upon the scene. My heart sank as I saw them eying the suet with interest. Nearer and nearer they hopped from branch to branch. I pounded on the window and called out, "Go away" in both the crow and the English language, all in vain. One crow braver or hungrier than the others with one defiant eye on me flapped confidently down and sought to carry the suet off in his beak; to his surprise it was tied on. That seemed suspicious and when we raised the window and leaning far out explained matters he lifted slowly with a jeering "caw" that said plainly "I'll call sometime when you are not at home" and with that he and his companions disappeared up the gorge. The invited guests at the suet table were less disturbed than was I, and I suppose it is rather inconsistent to feed the chickadees and let the ravens go hungry. But this suet will last the little birds a month while it would hardly furnish a breakfast for three crows; and in philanthropic enterprises one is obliged to draw the line somewhere even at the cost of consistency. I will return to my nuthatch, who, by the way, has just hammered off a piece of suet and thrust it into a crevice of the bark on the tree bole. Why does he do that: is it for convenience in eating or is it an attempt to store up some of his dinner for future need? Anyway it is bad manners, like carrying off fruit from _table d' hote_. But he is polite enough in another respect; every time after eating the suet he wipes his beak on his branch napkin with great assiduity, first one side and then the other, almost as if he were sharpening it. The woodpeckers are similarly fastidious in cleaning suet off their beaks. The loud note of the nuthatch, seeming to be out of proportion to the size of the bird is, by no means, its only note. Yesterday we observed a pair hunting over the branches of an elm over our heads, and they were talking to each other in sweet confidential syllables "wit, wit, wit," entirely different from the loud note that is meant for the world at large. The nuthatches and chickadees hunt together all winter. This is no business partnership, but one of congeniality based upon similar tastes. Thus it is that the two birds are often confused. There is, however, a very noticeable character that distinguishes them at the first glance. Strange to say the nuthatch has also been confused with the sapsucker and has gained unjust obloquy thereby. How any one with eyes could confuse these two birds is a mystery, for they resemble each other in no particular nor in general appearance. While the nuthatch finds much of its food on trees, yet Mr. Torrey tells of seeing one awkwardly turning over the fallen leaves for hidden cocoons and other things quite worth his while; and Mr. Baskett tells of having seem them catch flies in the air and becoming quite out of breath at this unusual exercise. Audubon made some most interesting observations on the nuthatch. He says they may sleep hanging head downward. He also says of their nesting habits that "both birds work together, all the time congratulating each other in the tenderest manner. The male, ever conspicuous on such occasions, works some, and carries off the slender chips chiseled by the female. He struts around her, peeps into the hole, cherups at intervals, or hovers about her on the wing. While she is sitting on her eggs, he seldom absents himself many moments; now with a full bill he feeds her, now returns to be assured that her time is pleasantly spent." The red-breasted nuthatch is sometimes associated with its white-breasted cousin; it is a smaller bird and is essentially a northern species. The nuthatches get their name from their habit of wedging nuts and acorns into bark and then hatching them open. From every standpoint the nuthatches are most desirable acquaintances, and we cannot spend our time to better advantage than in getting familiar with their interesting habits. QUESTIONS ON THE WHITE-BREASTED NUTHATCH. 1. Describe from your own observations the colors of the nuthatch above and below. 2. (a) What is the most noticeable character that distinguishes the nuthatch from the chickadee? (b) Does the nuthatch usually frequent the bole or the twigs of a tree? (c) Is there any difference in this respect between the habits of the nuthatch and the chickadee? 3. Does the nuthatch alight with its head down or up? 4. Does it travel down or up? Does it always go in a spiral? 5. What is its food? 6. Does it open nuts for the meat or the grubs within? 7. Does it use its tail as a brace in climbing trees as does the woodpecker? 8. Where does it build its nest? 9. What is the color of the eggs? 10. Why does it seem less common in summer than in winter? 11. How does it use its feet when resting on a tree trunk? 12. Has it any special development of the feet to help it in traveling on tree trunks? 13. Do you know the note of the nuthatch? Describe. 14. How would you spell its note? 15. How does the nuthatch help the farmer and fruit grower? LEAFLET XXVII. ABOUT CROWS.[36] BY MARY ROGERS MILLER. [36] Home Nature-Study Course, Vol. IV, No. 27, December, 1902. [Illustration] Thousands and thousands of crows fast asleep amongst the branches of a grove of pines! The trees themselves look dark and sombre against the snowy hillside, but when the assemblage of dusky birds has gathered there, the shadows thicken and the darkness settles like a pall. Soon all is hushed and silent. Would you not go miles to see such a sight? Yet maybe you have lived for years within easy walking distance of a great crow "dormitory" without even suspecting its existence. You may have watched the crows flying overhead every morning and then again every afternoon, without noticing that they came from the same direction each morning and returned at nightfall. This was just my experience until I began to care about crows and their ways. Now I know that there is a sleeping roost a mile or so up one of our wooded valleys and the oldest inhabitant tells me that he remembers seeing "more'n a million" crows up there in winters when he was a boy. Undoubtedly generation after generation of crows return to these sleeping places; certain localities have probably been so used for centuries. Although we have crows here all winter they may not be the same individuals that spent the summer here. The center of crow population in the eastern United States from November till February is the neighborhood of Chesapeake Bay. There the food supply is more abundant than where the ground is snow-covered in winter, and thither the crows migrate in innumerable armies. Dormitories from ten to thirty acres in extent and accommodating from ten thousand to three hundred thousand crows each have been found in that region. Why crows gather thus in companies either small or large is undoubtedly due to their natural sociability. The opportunities for exhibition of conversational powers offered by such a custom seems to be greatly appreciated by every crow. Such a babel as they raise when in early morning their watchman rouses them from sleep! They appear to be reviling him for his untimely interruption. For several minutes the woods fairly ring with their loud, coarse shouts. Then, as if resigned to their fate, they take flight towards the feeding grounds. By sunset they all congregate again and after recounting their adventures, settle down early to sleep. In open winters crows fare well enough. Seeds and berries are easy to get and considerable grain may be found in harvested fields. But like barnyard fowls, crows are omnivorous. After the grasshoppers disappear, a supply of animal food is hard to get. The silken egg-sacs of spiders are often found torn open and rifled, while suspiciously near by are the tracks of crows. Undoubtedly rabbits and field mice would unite with the spiders in declaring the crow to be their deadly enemy. That crows eat corn is undeniable. The farmers know it to their sorrow, the bird's champions reluctantly admit it, the crow himself goes openly into the field, both in winter and summer, with no intent to conceal his intentions. And yet this universally acknowledged habit will bear investigation. Upon the real or supposed injury done to sprouting corn and to roasting-ears, the farmer and his sons base their animosity toward crows and rejoice at the wholesale or retail slaughter of these birds. Carefully prepared estimates show conclusively that the crow is the farmer's friend. Only _three per cent_ of the total food of the crow consists of corn in any form, while _twenty-six per cent_ consists of insects such as grasshoppers, May beetles (June bugs, whose young are the white grubs), cutworms and other injurious kinds. On such evidence as this would not an unprejudiced jury acquit the crow? The best way to establish the crow in this new and true relationship to the farmer, is to interest the boys and girls in studying crows and their ways. To make a fair judgment, one must collect evidence. Mere hearsay is not always to be depended on. Justice and truth are worth working for. The case of the Crow _vs._ the Farmer, will give opportunity for the practice of both of these virtues. WINTER BIRDS.[37] [37] Quiz on Lesson No. 27, December, 1902. The winter is not so devoid of life as we sometimes think. There are mammals in the woods and coverts, fishes in the lakes and deep brooks, birds in the forest and the open. Let us devote one early midwinter lesson to the birds. Have the children make particular observations on the English sparrow. Other birds may be observed, as, for example, our old friend the crow. All these birds touch the life of the farmer and the nature-lover. Those students who are so situated that a study of crows is impossible may substitute English sparrows, chickadees, woodpeckers or any other winter birds. A bulletin entitled "The Common Crow" was issued by the U. S. Department of Agriculture in 1895. Students in this course can obtain one copy each by sending ten cents to Superintendent of Documents, Union Building, Washington, D. C. Do not send stamps. Do crows winter in your vicinity? Are you able to verify the statements made in the lesson concerning the flight in opposite directions in morning and evening? Give observations made since receiving this lesson. Is there a crow dormitory in your vicinity? (Inquire of old residents and keep a close watch.) Watch a crow on the wing. If he is flying low, try to count the big wing feathers. Note here any peculiarities of this bird's way of flying. How does a crow hold on to a limb when asleep? What characteristics have crows and chickens in common? How do they differ? Compare feathers, bills and feet of chickens and crows. Look for crow tracks in the snow. Where have you seen them? Can you always tell which way the bird was going? How? Sketch the tracks on separate sheet. How long is the longest toe, including the claw? Which toe is this? Is the track ever longer than the toe itself? If so, why? Have you ever seen the scratches in the snow made by the stiff wing feathers when the crow takes its flight from the ground? Count the scratches. What food have you seen crows eating? Watch during the whole month and mention any new items you can add to their bill of fare. Have you ever seen crow's nests? Where? When? Describe the nest, eggs and nestlings, if you have seen them. (These are things to look for during the spring and summer.) Does the plumage of the yearling crow differ from that of the older birds? Do males and females differ in color? Crows are said to possess remarkably well developed brains. What evidence have you of their sagacity, fearlessness, cunning or greed? What other winter birds have you seen this year? Give on separate sheet an account of a winter walk. LEAFLET XXVIII. HOW A SQUASH PLANT GETS OUT OF THE SEED.[38] BY L. H. BAILEY. [38] Teacher's Leaflet No. 1, December, 1896. The first Cornell nature-study leaflet. For a discussion of the title of this leaflet and what it signifies pedagogically, consult "The Integument Man," in "The Nature-Study Idea." (Doubleday, Page & Co.) [Illustration] If one were to plant seeds of a Hubbard or Boston Marrow squash in loose warm earth in a pan or box, and were then to leave the parcel for a week or ten days, he would find, upon his return, a colony of plants like that shown in Fig. 189. If he had not planted the seeds himself or had not seen such plants before, he would not believe that these curious plants would ever grow into squash vines, so different are they from the vines which we know in the garden. This, itself, is a most curious fact,--this wonderful difference between the first and the later stages of nearly all plants, and it is only because we know it so well that we do not wonder at it. [Illustration: _Fig. 189. Squash plant a week old._] It may happen, however,--as it did in a pan of seed which I sowed a few days ago--that one or two of the plants may look like that shown in Fig. 190. Here the seed seems to have come up on top of the plant; and one is reminded of the curious way in which beans come up on the stalk of the young plant. If we were to study the matter, however,--as we may do at a future time--we should find a great difference in the ways in which the squashes and the beans raise their seeds out of the ground. It is not our purpose to compare the squash and the bean at this time, but we are curious to know why one of these squash plants brings its seed up out of the ground whilst all the others do not. In order to find out why it is, we must ask the plant, and this asking is what we call an experiment. We may first pull up the two plants. The first one (Fig. 189) will be seen to have the seed-coats still attached to the very lowest part of the stalk below the soil, but the other plant has no seed at that point. We will now plant more seeds, a dozen or more of them, so that we shall have enough to examine two or three times a day for several days. A day or two after the seeds are planted, we shall find a little point or root-like part breaking out of the sharp end of the seed, as shown in Fig. 191. A day later this root part has grown to be as long as the seed itself (Fig. 192), and it has turned directly downwards into the soil. But there is another most interesting thing about this germinating seed. Just where the root is breaking out of the seed (shown at _a_ in Fig. 192), there is a little peg or projection. In Fig. 193, about a day later, the root has grown still longer, and this peg seems to be forcing the seed apart. In Fig, 194, however, it will be seen that the seed is really being forced apart by the stem or stalk above the peg for this stem is now growing longer. The lower lobe of the seed has attached to the peg (seen at _a_, Fig. 194), and the seed-leaves seem to be backing out of the seed. Fig. 195 shows the seed a day later. The root has now produced many branches and has thoroughly established itself in the soil. The top is also growing rapidly and is still backing out of the seed, and the seed-coats are still firmly held by the obstinate peg. [Illustration: _Fig. 190. Squash plant which has brought the seed-coats out of the ground._] [Illustration: _Fig. 191. Germination just beginning._] [Illustration: _Fig. 192. The root and peg._] [Illustration: _Fig. 193. Third day of root growth._] [Illustration: _Fig. 194. The plant breaking out of the seed._] Whilst we have been seeing all these peculiar things in the seeds which we have dug up, the plantlets which we have not disturbed have been coming through the soil. If we were to see the plant in Fig. 195, as it was "coming up," it would look like Fig. 196. It is tugging away in getting its head out of the bonnet which is pegged down underneath the soil, and it has "got its back up" in the operation. In Fig. 197 it has escaped from its trap and it is laughing and growing in delight. It must now straighten itself up, as it is doing in Fig. 197, and it is soon standing proud and straight, as in Fig. 189. We now see that the reason why the "seed" came up on the plant in Fig. 190, is that in some way the peg did not hold the seed-coats down (see Fig. 195), and the expanding leaves, being pinched together must get themselves loose as best they can. [Illustration: _Fig. 195. The operation further progressed._] There is another thing about this interesting squash plant which we must not fail to notice, and this is the fact that these first two leaves of the plantlet came out of the seed and did not grow out of the plant itself. We must notice, too, that these leaves are much smaller when they are first drawn out of the seed-coat than they are when the plantlet has straightened itself up. That is, these leaves increase very much in size after they reach the light and air. The roots of the plantlet are now established in the soil and are taking in food which enables the plant to grow. The next leaves which appear will be very different from these first or seed leaves. These later ones are called the true leaves. They grow right out of the little plant itself. Fig. 199 shows these true leaves as they appear on a young Crookneck squash plant, and the plant now begins to look much like a squash vine. [Illustration: _Fig. 196. The plant just coming up._] [Illustration: _Fig. 197. The plant liberated from the seed-coats._] [Illustration: _Fig. 198. The plant straightening up._] We are now curious to know how the stem grows when it backs out of the seeds and pulls the little seed-leaves with it, and how the root grows downwards into the soil. Now let us pull up another seed when it has sent a single root about two inches deep into the earth. We will wash it very carefully and lay it upon a piece of paper. Then we will lay a ruler alongside of it, and make an ink mark one-quarter of an inch from the tip, and two or three other marks at equal distances above (Fig. 200).[39] We will now carefully replant the seed. Two days later we will dig it up, when we shall most likely find a condition somewhat like that in Fig. 201. It will be seen that the marks E, C, B, are practically the same distance apart as before and they are also the same distance from the peg AA. The point of the root is no longer at DD, however, but has moved on to F. The root, therefore, has grown almost wholly in the end part. [39] NOTE.--Common ink will not answer for this purpose because it "runs" when the root is wet; indelible ink, used for marking linen or for drawing, should be used. It should also be said that the root of the common pumpkin and of the summer bush squashes is too fibrous and branchy for this test. It should be stated also that the root does not grow at its very tip, but chiefly in a narrow zone just back of the tip; but the determination of this point is rather too difficult for the beginner, and, moreover, it is foreign to the purpose of this tract. [Illustration: _Fig. 199. The true leaves developing._] [Illustration: _Fig. 200. Marking the root._] [Illustration: _Fig. 201. The root grows in the end parts._] [Illustration: _Fig. 202. The marking of the stem, and the spreading apart of the marks._] Now let us make a similar experiment with the stem or stalk. We will mark a young stem, as at A in Fig. 202; but the next day we shall find that these marks are farther apart than when we made them (B, Fig. 202). The marks have all raised themselves above the ground as the plant has grown. The stem, therefore, has grown between the joints rather than from the end. The stem usually grows most rapidly, at any given time, at the upper or younger part of the joint (or internode); and the joint soon reaches the limit of its growth and becomes stationary, while a new one grows out above it. [Illustration] LEAFLET XXIX. HOW THE TREES LOOK IN WINTER.[40] BY L. H. BAILEY. [40] Teacher's Leaflet No. 12, January, 1899. [Sidenote: _To the teacher._--We want the country child to have a closer touch with nature in the winter time. Teach him to see, to know, and to care for the trees when they are leafless. This leaflet will suggest how you may interest him. You can also intensify his interest in the subject, and at the same time increase his knowledge of drawing, by having him make skeleton or outline drawings of the trees about the schoolhouse or the home. Leaflet XXX gives suggestions for drawing. You can correlate this work with geography by giving the distribution or range of the different kinds of trees. Indicate the limit of distribution northward, southward, eastward, westward; also the regions in which the species is most abundant. The common manuals of botany will help you in this work; or you may consult the many excellent special books on trees. In teaching nature-study, remember that a great part of its value lies in the enthusiasm and zeal with which you handle it. Try, also, to develop the æsthetic sense of the pupil; but do not teach mere sentiment.] [Illustration] Only the growing and open season is thought to be attractive in the country. The winter is bare and cheerless. The trees are naked. The flowers are under the snow. The birds have flown. The only bright and cheery spot is the winter fireside. But even there the farmer has so much time that he does not know what to do with it. Only those who have little time, appreciate its value. But the winter is not lifeless and charmless. It is only dormant. The external world fails to interest us because we have not been trained to see and know it; and also because the rigorous weather and the snow prevent us from going afield. In the spring, summer, and fall, the hours are full to overflowing with life and interest. On every hand we are in contact with nature. If the farmer's winter is to be more enjoyable the farmer must have more points of contact with the winter world. One of the best and most direct of these points of sympathy is an interest in the winter aspects of trees. [Illustration: _Fig. 203. Small-fruited Shagbark Hickory._] [Illustration: _Fig. 204. Pignut Hickory. This and Fig. 203 are from "Lessons with Plants."_] a. THE STRUCTURE OF THE TREE-TOP. In the summer time we distinguish the kinds of trees chiefly by means of the shape and the foliage. In winter the foliage is gone; but the shape remains, and the framework of the tree is also conspicuous. Trees are as distinct in winter as in summer; and in some respects their characters are more apparent and pronounced. Observe the outline of a tree against the dull winter sky. It does not matter what kind of tree it is. Note its height, shape, and size of top, how many branches there are, how the branches are arranged on the main trunk, the direction of the branches, whether the twigs are few or many, crooked or straight. [Illustration: _Fig. 205. Slippery Elm. The expression is stiff and hard._] Having observed these points in any tree, compare one kind of tree with another and note how they differ in these features. Compare an apple tree with an elm, an elm with a maple, a basswood with a pine, a poplar with a beech, a pear tree with a peach tree. Having made comparisons between very dissimilar trees, compare those which are much alike, as the different kinds of maples, of elms, of oaks, of poplars. As your powers of observation become trained, compare the different varieties of the same kind of fruit trees, if there are good orchards in the vicinity. The different varieties of pears afford excellent contrasts. Contrast the Bartlett with the Flemish Beauty, the Kieffer with the Seckel. In apples, compare the Baldwin with the Spy, the King with the Twenty Ounce. The sweet and sour cherries show marked differences in method of branching. Fruit men can tell many varieties apart in winter. How? Two common hickories are shown in Figs. 203 and 204. How do they differ? Do they differ in length of trunk? General method of branching? Direction of branches? Character of twig growth? Straightness or crookedness of branches? Contrast the slippery elm (Fig. 205) and the common or American elm (Fig. 211). The former has a crotchy or forked growth, and long, stiff, wide-spreading branches. The latter is more vase-like in shape. The branches are willowy and graceful, with a tendency to weep. Compare the oaks. The white and scarlet oaks have short trunks when they grow in fields, and the main branches are comparatively few and make bold angles and curves. The swamp white oak (Fig. 206), however, has a more continuous trunk, with many comparatively small, horizontal, and tortuous branches. [Illustration: _Fig. 206. Swamp White Oak._] With Fig. 206 compare the pepperidge (Fig. 207). This is one of the most unusual and interesting of all our native trees. It grows in swales. It has a very tough-grained wood. The autumn foliage is deep red and handsome. The peculiarities of the tree are the continuation of the trunk to near the summit, and the many lateral, short, deflected, tortuous branches. Consider the structure of the sassafras in Fig. 208. The great branches stand off nearly at right angles to the trunk, and are bushy and twiggy at the ends. Each large branch if cut off at its base and stood upright would look like an independent tree, so tree-like are its branches. Observe how much more bushy the sassafras is than any of the other trees already figured. Compare it in the method of branching and the twigginess with the slippery elm (Fig. 205). [Illustration: _Fig. 207. Pepperidge or Sour Gum. The oddest of New York trees._] But there is still greater brushiness in the thorn-apple (Fig. 209). In twigginess Figs. 208 and 209 are very unlike, however. Pick out the differences. Observe the very short and spur-like twigs in the thorn-apple; also notice how soon the trunk is lost in the branches. With all the foregoing pictures compare the steeple-like form of the Lombardy poplar (Fig. 210). The tree is frequent along roadsides and about yards. What is its structure? Observe it as it stands against the winter sky. There is nothing else in our northern landscape so straight and spire-like. If you know a beech tree standing in a field, contrast it with the Lombardy poplar. These two trees represent extremes of vertical and of horizontal branching. Aside from the general structure of the tree-top, the pupil will become interested in the winter color of the tree and in the character of the bark. How does the bark differ between elms and maples, oaks and chestnuts, birches and beeches, hickories and walnuts? Why does the bark separate in ridges or peel off in strips? Is it not associated with the increase in diameter of the trunk? The method of breaking of the bark is different and peculiar for each kind of tree. Look at these things; and think about them. THE EXPRESSION OF THE TREE. Consciously or unconsciously, we think of trees much as we think of persons. They suggest thoughts and feelings which are also attributes of people. A tree is weeping, gay, restful, spirited, quiet, sombre. That is, trees have expression. [Illustration: _Fig. 208. Sassafras. Type of a bushy-topped tree._] The expression resides in the observer, however, not in the tree. Therefore, the more the person is trained to observe and to reflect, the more sensitive his mind to the things about him, and the more meaning the trees have. No one loves nature who does not love trees. We love them for what they are, wholly aside from their uses in fruit-bearing or shade-giving. A knowledge and love of trees binds one close to the external world. [Illustration: _Fig. 209. Thorn-apple. One of the most picturesque objects in the winter landscape._] How shall one increase his love of trees? First, by knowing them. He learns their attributes and names. Knowing them in winter, as already suggested, is one of the ways of becoming acquainted. Second, by endeavoring to determine what thought or feeling they chiefly express. The slippery elm is stiff and hard. The American elm is soft and graceful. The Lombardy poplar is prim and precise. The oak is rugged, stern, and bold. The pepperidge is dejected. The long white branches of a leaning buttonwood standing against a distant forest, suggest some spectre hurrying away from the haunts of men. Trees which have very strong expressions, or which are much unlike others, are said to have character. They are peculiar. Of such trees are oaks, pepperidges, Lombardy poplars, button woods, old apple trees. [Illustration: _Fig. 210. Group of Lombardy Poplars. From Bulletin 68._] A tree with very strong characters is said to be picturesque. That is, it is such an object as an artist delights to put into a picture. Trees which are very unsymmetrical, or knotty, gnarled, or crooked, are usually picturesque. Of all common trees, none is more picturesque than an old apple tree. Observe its gnarled and crooked branches, and the irregular spaces in its top. Encourage the pupil to extend his observation to all the trees about him, especially to such as are common and familiar. Teach him to observe the growths of bushes and trees in the fence-rows which lie on his way to school; and to observe carefully and critically. How do gooseberry bushes differ from currant bushes, and raspberries from blackberries? Observe the lilac bush and the snowballs. How is the snow held on the different kinds of evergreens--as the pines, spruces, arbor-vitæ? See how the fruit-spurs on pears and plums stand out against the sky. (Consult Leaflet No. XXXI, "Four Apple Twigs.") Are there any bright colors of branch and twig to relieve the bareness of the snow? Do you see any warmth of color in the swales where the willows and osiers are? Do you see old plumes of grass and weeds standing above the snow? Do they bring up any visions of summer and brooks and woods? [Illustration] LEAFLET XXX. ONE WAY OF DRAWING TREES IN THEIR WINTER ASPECT.[41] BY C. W. FURLONG. [41] Teacher's Leaflet, No. 12, January, 1899. The few suggestions which are set forth in these pages are based upon two assumptions:--first, that the teacher has some knowledge of the most salient principles of elementary perspective; and second, that she has a love for all things beautiful. It is feasible to deal here not to any extent with art in either its abstract or its concrete form, but only with drawing. Drawing, in its simplest analysis, is the ability to record objects as they appear to the normal eye. Art is more complicated. It includes many elements, a few of which are composition, expression of movement, and action. The very thought, feeling, and refinement of the artist must be expressed in his work. He must tell not only what he sees, but also what he feels. He interprets nature through his own moods. There are no outlines in nature. The boundaries, shapes, and character of various forms are determined by the difference of their color values, and the contrasts of light and shade. Yet an outline drawing is the simplest means of representing form and proportion. Although inadequate in many respects, this somewhat conventional rendering is important to the beginner, for it is necessary that the child be taught to observe forms and proportions correctly; and these impressions may be recorded most simply and definitely by outline drawings. Michael Angelo emphasized its importance in these words: "The science of drawing or of outline is the essence of painting and all the fine arts, and the root of all the sciences." To a great extent, one may show in an outline drawing the character and texture of surfaces. Our main object should be to train the boys and girls to observe in order to acquire a correctness of perception, for "education amongst us consists too much in telling, not enough in training." [Illustration: _Fig. 211. The American Elm, one of the most typical of vase-form trees._] One of the greatest difficulties is to impress upon the minds of beginners the fact that they must think while they look and draw. Insist upon the pupil's looking repeatedly at the object. It is better to observe for five minutes and draw for one, than to observe for one and draw for five. Make the drawing lesson more interesting by telling the class something about the object which they are to draw, involving in the story facts that will impress upon their minds some of the most salient characteristics of the object. Encourage the children to discuss the object, drawing out facts for their own observation. Certain kinds of trees, like certain races of people, have a general similarity, yet every single tree has an individuality of its own. Apply a few essential questions that will help to determine at least the kind of tree it is, the race to which it belongs; for first we must get its general character, seeing its big proportions and shape; and later must search for its individualities. Is it tall for its greatest width? How far does the trunk extend before dividing? At what height do the lowest branches arise? What is their general direction? Do they appear to radiate from the trunk? How do they appear to radiate from the trunk? How do the main branches compare in size with the trunk? Are they crooked or straight? The manner of branch growth must be studied carefully. We see in our elm (Fig. 211) that the trunk divides at about a fourth of its height into several main branches, while in the case of the pepperidge (Fig. 207) the trunk extends to the very top of the tree, the branches being small in proportion to the trunk, not varying much in size, and taking an oblique downward direction. Notice the weird expression of these trees with their crookedly bent tops, one side of each trunk being almost devoid of branches. The trunk of the sassafras (Fig. 208) continues nearly to the top of this tree, while the large branches, though unsymmetrical, give it a well-balanced appearance. Again in our picture of the thorn-apple (Fig. 209), we are at once impressed with its irregular form, the branches on the left taking a more oblique direction than those of the other side, the trunk dividing a little short of half the height of the tree. For an example, let our subject be an elm tree (Fig. 211); our drawing to be rendered in outline. [Illustration: _Fig. 212. Blocking-in the elm tree (Fig. 211). The first work which the artist does when he draws the tree._] [Illustration: _Fig. 213. Working in the details with sharp lines. The original pencil sketch is not followed exactly._] _Material._--Almost any good drawing paper, white or buff in color, will answer our purpose; 9x12 is a good size. Our pencil should be of medium grade lead (F. or HB.) of any standard make, Kohinoor preferred. If procurable, we should have a light drawing board 17x22 inches (here is an opportunity for the carpenters) to place the paper on, otherwise a very stiff piece of cardboard; or a large geography book might answer. It is best, however, to fasten our paper, which we cannot do in using the book. For fastening the paper use four thumb tacks for the corners. A Faber or multiplex pencil eraser is needed; also a sponge eraser with which to remove the light lines and clean the drawing before lining it in. _Our position._--Our point of view will depend upon our subject, but it is not well to be so near as to necessitate raising the head in order to see the top of the tree. If we take longer than one sitting for our drawing (which I do not think advisable, as we must not choose too complicated a subject), we must mark our position in order to obtain again the same point of view. _Position of the drawing-board._--Our paper must be placed on the board with its edges parallel to those of the board. The drawing-board should be held perpendicular, or nearly so, to the direction in which it is seen, for if the board is tilted far backward, it will be fore-shortened and our tree will probably have been drawn longer than it should be. _How to look._--The tendency of the beginner is to see and draw too much in detail. It is most essential that we look first for the large shapes, the greatest dimensions; next for the smaller ones; last for detail. It is not well for the pupils to work too close to their drawings. They should occasionally sit well back in their seats or get up and stand behind the seats to obtain the general effect of their drawing, to see that the big shapes are right and that the character of the tree has not been lost. As an aid to placing our drawing so as best to fill the space it has to occupy, we may use what the French call a _cherche-motif_, the English, a finder. This is nothing more than a small piece of stiff paper or cardboard about 5x8 inches, in which is cut a small rectangular opening about 3/4x1 inch; the size and proportion may vary somewhat. We may look through this opening, the card acting as a frame to our picture. This will help us to decide whether our subject will look better placed the horizontal or the vertical way of the paper and how much of the subject to include and where to place it in that space. We may include more or less in the finder by varying its distance from the eye. Now, I am sure we should not place ourselves within a dozen yards of our tree if we wished to get its general effect; therefore, we must have plenty of foreground in our drawing. We must give the eye a chance to look, allowing plenty of space between the lowest point of our drawing and the lower edge of our paper. As the height of tree we are to draw (Fig. 211) is greater than its greatest width, we find that it will fill the space best if placed the vertical way of the paper. After indicating the extreme height and width by four light marks, before carrying the drawing further we must test these proportions by comparing the width with the height, always testing the shorter dimension into the longer, viz.: _To test the drawing._--Close one eye. The pencil may be used to test the drawing by holding it in front of you at arm's length (as in Fig. 214) perpendicular to the direction in which the object is seen; also revolving it in a plane perpendicular to the direction in which the object is seen, in order to compare one dimension with another. For example, hold your pencil horizontally at arm's length so that its blunt end covers the outermost left-hand point of the elm. Slide your thumb along the pencil till it covers the extreme right-hand point; retain that measurement (keeping the same position in your chair, pencil always at arm's length); revolve the pencil in the same plane until it coincides with the height of the elm, at the same time lowering it so that the end of the thumb covers the lowest point of the tree; note carefully the point that the blunt end covers; raise the pencil so that the end of the thumb covers that point, noting again where the blunt end occurs and notice how many times, and how much over, the width goes into the height. In our elm (Fig. 211) we find that the width goes about once and six-sevenths into the height, or a little short of twice. If the latter statement is preferred, we must bear in mind the proportion left over. [Illustration: _Fig. 214. How to test the drawing._] Do not use the scale side of a ruler or marks on the pencil or object used in order to test the proportions, and never transfer measurements from the object used in testing to your paper. A scale or other mechanical means should not be used in free-hand drawing. The teacher should have a spool of black thread and should give a piece about 2 feet 6 inches long to each pupil. An eraser, a knife, or some small article may be attached to one end of the thread. By holding the weighted thread as a plumb-line in front of us, we have an absolutely vertical line; so by having it intersect a desired point of our tree we may obtain the relative positions to the right and left of other points above and below this intersected point. _Blocking-in._--We may conceive of the general shape of our elm by looking at it with half closed eyes. It appears in silhouette. Now imagine lines joining its outermost points; this will give the general mass or shape of our tree. Now if we represent the outermost points contained in these lines by sketching lightly these "blocking-in" lines, as they are called, we obtain the general shape of the elm (Fig. 212). We must emphasize the fact that these blocking-in lines are to be sketched in lightly by holding the pencil near the blunt end, using a free-arm motion. Now before going farther we again test these new points to see if they occupy their correct positions in relation to the height and width. Do not, however, transfer the measurements from the pencil to the paper. This test is only to obtain the proportion of one dimension to another. Having tested these smaller dimensions we may draw lightly the main branches. After having indicated their general direction and character of growth, we may indicate some of the smaller branches and twigs (Fig. 213). All this work should be carried out without erasing; all corrections should be made by slightly darker lines. Let us now sharpen our pencils to a good point and go over the drawing with a fine dark line, carefully studying the character and spirit of the tree. Now erase the lighter and superfluous lines, as the dark lines remain distinct enough to indicate our drawing. _Lining-in._--We may now take our pencil nearer the point and proceed to line-in the drawing, going over it with a definite, consistent line. If desirable, we may accent and bring out certain parts of the tree more strongly than others by darker or shade lines and short, strong markings called accents. These are especially effective at the junction and underside of branches, and where one wishes to give the object a nearer appearance. A soft, broad, grey line may be obtained by using a softer pencil (B) and the drawing given variety by breaking lines here and there. We should be cautious in using them, however; but lack of space does not permit further discussion of the subject of accented outlines. [Illustration: _Fig. 215. The outline drawing complete, and the first pencil marks erased._] Allow the pupils to make short ten- or fifteen-minute "time sketches" of trees. In these it is the spirit and general effect of the tree that we must strive for. Above all, we must allow our little draughtsmen to give their own interpretation of the tree. A helpful suggestion as to proportion, etc., would be in place, but we must allow their individuality to have as much play as possible. The suggestions given on these pages are necessary for the beginner. Some of them are hard facts; but it lies with the teacher to develop the æsthetic and artistic qualities lying dormant in the pupil, ready to be moulded and started in the right direction. If you have confined the pupils to the flat copy, break away from it; allow them to create. Let them see the beautiful things all about them. They will respond. Let them draw from nature and still life. Train them to observe. The early summer days, just before school closes, with their bright sunlight and strong shadows, make many subjects interesting as light-and-shade drawings. Fall, with its brilliant coloring, gives us a chance to use the color-box, while the early winter twilights will bring many an interesting silhouette before our boys and girls, and next day during the drawing hour these impressions may be carried out in pen and ink. The most successful teacher will be the one of sympathetic nature whose love reaches out to the boys and girls, as well as to all things beautiful. The most successful teacher will be the one who endeavors to place the children where they may view nature sympathetically and in the most intimate relationship. LEAFLET XXXI. FOUR APPLE TWIGS.[42] BY L. H. BAILEY. [42] Teachers' Leaflet No. 3, March, 1897. [Illustration] As I walked through an apple orchard the other day for the first time since the long winter had set in, I was struck by the many different shapes and sizes of the limbs as I saw them against the blue-gray of the February sky. I cut four of them in passing, and as I walked back to the house I wondered why the twigs were all so different; and I found myself guessing whether there would be any apples next summer. I have had pictures made of these four little apple limbs. Let us look them over and see whether they have any story to tell of how they grew and what they have set out to do. I. One of these twigs (Fig. 216) was taken from a strong young tree which, I remember, bore its first good crop of apples last year. This simple twig is plainly of two years' growth, for the "ring" between the old and new wood is seen at B. That is, the main stem from the base up to B grew in 1895, and the part from B to the tip grew in 1896. But the buds upon these two parts look very unlike. Let us see what these differences mean. We must now picture to ourselves how this shoot from B to 10 looked last summer while it was growing. The shoot bore leaves. Where? There was one just below each bud; or, to be more exact, one bud developed just above each leaf. These buds did not put out leaves. They grew to their present size and then stopped. The leaves fell. What are these buds of the tip shoot preparing to do in 1897? We can answer this question by going back just one year and seeing what the buds on the lower (or older) part of the shoot did in 1896. On that part (below B) the buds seem to have increased in size. Therefore, they must have grown larger last year. There were no leaves borne below these buds in 1896, but a cluster of leaves came out of each little bud in the spring. As these leaves expanded and grew, the little bud grew on; that is, each bud grew into a tiny branch, and when fall came each of these branches had a bud on its end to continue the growth in the year to come. What we took to be simple buds at 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, are, therefore, little branches. But the strangest part of this wonderful little twig has not yet been seen,--the branches are of different sizes, and three of them (7, 8, 9) have so far outstripped the others that they seem to be of a different kind. It should be noticed, too, that the very lowermost bud (at 1) never grew at all, but remained perfectly dormant during the entire year 1896. It will be seen, then, that the dormant bud and the smallest branches are on the lower part of the shoot, and the three strong branches are at the very tip of the last year's growth. If, now, we picture the twig as it looked in the fall of 1895, we shall see that it consisted of a single shoot, terminating at B. It had a large terminal bud (like those at 7, 8, 9, 10), and this bud pushed on into a branch in 1896, while three other buds near the tip did the same thing. [Illustration: _Fig. 216.--A two-year-old shoot from a young apple tree. Half size._] Why did some of these branches grow to be larger than others? "Simply because they were upon the strongest part of the shoot, or that part where the greatest growth naturally takes place," some one will answer. But this really does not answer the question, for we want to know why this part of the shoot is strongest. Probably the real reason is that there is more sunlight and more room on this outward or upward end. In 1897,--if this shoot had been spared--each of these four largest twigs (7, 8, 9, 10) would have done the same thing as the parent twig did in 1896: each would have pushed on from its end, and one or two or three other strong branches would probably have started from the strong side-buds near the tips, the very lowest buds would, no doubt, have remained perfectly inactive or dormant for lack of opportunity, and the intermediate buds would have made short branches like 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. In other words, the tree always tries to grow onward from its tips, and these tip shoots eventually become strong branches, unless some of them die in the struggle for existence. What, now, becomes of the little branches lower down? II. From another apple tree I took the twig shown in Fig. 217. We see at once that it is very unlike the other one. It seems to be two years old, one year's growth extending from the base up to 7, and the last year's growth extending from 7 to 8; but we shall see upon looking closer that this is not so. The short branchlets at 3, 4, 5, 7 are very different from those in Fig. 216. They seem to be broken off. The fact is that the broken ends show were apples were borne in 1896. The branchlets that bore them, therefore, must have grown in 1895, while the main branch, from 1 to 7, grew in 1894. It is plain, from the looks of the buds, that the shoot from 7 to 8 grew last year, 1896. [Illustration: _Fig. 217. A three-year-old shoot and the fruit-spurs. Half size._] Starting from the base, then, we have the main twig growing in 1894; the small side branches growing in 1895; these little branches bearing apples in 1896; and the terminal shoot also growing in 1896. Why was there no terminal shoot growing in 1895? Simply because its tip developed a fruit-bud (at 7) and therefore could not send out a branch; for there are two kinds of buds,--the small, pointed leaf-bud and the thick, blunt fruit-bud. If the branchlets 3, 4, 5, 7 are two years old, the dormant buds--1, 2--must be of the same age. That is, for two long years these little buds have been waiting (if I may use the expression) for some bug to eat off the buds and leaves above, or some accident to break the shoot beyond them, so that they might have a chance to grow; but they have waited in vain. We have now found, therefore, that the little side shoots upon apple twigs often become fruit-branches or fruit-spurs, while the more ambitious branches above them are making a great display of stem and leaves. [Illustration: _Fig. 218.--A fruit-spur which has borne six apples. Half size._] But will these fruit-spurs bear fruit again in 1897? No. The bearing of an apple is hard work, and these spurs did not have enough vitality left to make fruit-buds for the next year; but as they must perpetuate themselves, they have sent out small side buds which will bear a cluster of leaves and grow into another little spur in 1897, and in that year these new spurs will make fruit-buds for bearing in 1898. The side bud is plainly seen on spur 5, also on spur 4, whilst spur 7 has sown a seed, so to speak, in the bud at 6. It is plain, therefore, why the tree bears every other year. III. There was one tree in the orchard from which the farmer had not picked his apples. Perhaps the apples were not worth picking. At any rate, the dried apples, shriveled and brown, are still hanging on the twigs, and even the birds do not seem to care for them. I broke off one of these twigs (Fig. 218). Let us see how many apples this interesting twig has borne. We can tell by the square-cut scars. An apple was once borne at 1, another at 2, another at 4, another at 5, another at 6, and another at 7,--and at 7 there will be a scar when the apple falls. Six apples this modest shoot has borne! And I wonder how many of them got ripe, or how many were taken by the worms, or how many were eaten by the little boys and girls on their way to school! A peculiar thing happened when the fruit was growing at 2. Two side buds started out, instead of one, and both of them grew the next year. But one of the little branchlets fell sick and died, or a bug nipped off its end, or it starved to death; and its memory is preserved by the little stick standing up at 3. The other branchlet thrived, and eventually bore apples at 4, 5, 6, and 7. I have said that these fruit-spurs bear only every other year; then, if this branch has borne six apples consecutively, it must be twelve years old. The truth is that it is about twenty years old, for some years it failed to bear; but the age cannot be traced out in the picture, although any little boy or girl with bright eyes could soon learn to trace out yearly rings on the shoot itself. IV. The last shoot that I got that day has a whole volume of history in it, and I cannot begin to tell its story unless I should write a small book. But we will trace out its birthdays and see how many apples it has borne. It is shown in Fig. 219, and because it is so long I have had to break it into several pieces to get it on the page. It begins at A, and is continued at B, C, D, E, and F. Let us count the yearly rings and see how old the whole limb is. These rings are at 28, 26, D, 12, 1,--five of them; and as the shoot grew one year before it made any ring, and another year made no increase in length--as we shall presently see--the whole branch must be seven years old. That is, the limb probably started in 1890.[43] Let us begin, then, at A, and follow it out. [43] It is really impossible to tell whether the shoot started from the limb A in 1889 or 1890, without knowing the age of A; for the spur may have developed its blossom bud at the end in either the first or second year of its life. That is, young fruit-spurs sometimes make a blossom bud the very year they start, but they oftener "stand still" the second year and delay the blossom bud until that time. 1890. Started as a spur from the main branch, A, and grew to 1. 1891. Apple borne at 1. This apple did not mature, however, as we can readily see by the smallness of the scar. In this year, two side buds developed to continue the spur the next year. [Illustration: _Fig. 219. A seven-year-old apple twig and its curious history. (Half size.)_] 1892. Ceased to be a fruit-spur, and made a strong growth on to 12. For some reason, it had a good chance to grow. Perhaps the farmer pruned the tree, and thereby gave the shoot an opportunity; or perhaps he plowed and fertilized the land. In the meantime, one of the side buds grew to 3, and the other to 7, and each made a fruit-bud at its end. 1893. Shoot grew lustily,--on to D. The fruit-bud at 3 bore an apple, which probably matured, as shown by the scar 2. Two side buds were formed beneath this apple, to continue the spur next year. The fruit-bud at 7 bloomed, but the apple fell early, as shown by the small scar. Two side buds were formed. The buds upon the main shoot--1 to 12--all remained dormant. 1894. Shoot grew from D to beyond E. Side bud of 2 grew to 4, and made a fruit-bud on its end; the other side bud grew on to 5, and there made a fruit-bud. Side bud of 7 grew on to 10, and the other one to 8, each ending in a fruit-bud. Buds on old shoot--1 to 12--still remained dormant. Some of the buds on the 1893 growth--12 to D,--remained dormant; but some of them made fruit-spurs,--14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23. 1895. Shoot grew from beyond E to 28. Flowers were borne at 4 and 5; but at 4 the fruit fell early, for the five or six scars of the flowers can be seen, showing that no one of them developed more strongly than the other; that is, none of the flowers "set." A fairly good fruit was probably borne at 5. At the base of each, a bud started to continue the spur next year. Upon the other spur, flowers were borne both at 8 and 10. At 10 none of the flowers set fruit, but a side bud developed. At 8 the fruit partially matured, and a side bud was also developed. The buds upon the old stem from 1 to 12 still remained dormant. Some of the spurs on the 1893 growth--12 to D--developed fruit-buds for bearing in 1896. Some of the buds on the 1894 growth--D to beyond E--remained dormant, but others developed into small fruit-spurs. One of these buds, near the top of the 1894 growth, threw out a long shoot, starting from E; and the bud at 26 also endeavored to make a long branch, but failed. 1896. Main shoot grew from 28 to the end. The side bud below 4 (where the fruit was borne the year before) barely lived, not elongating, as seen above 3. This branch of the spur is becoming weak and will never bear again. The side bud of 5, however, made a fairly good spur and developed a fruit-bud at its end, as seen at 6. The side bud of 10 grew somewhat, making the very short spur 11. This branchlet is also getting weak. The bud of 8, however, developed a strong spur at 9. Both 11 and 9 bear fruit-buds, but that on 11 is probably too weak ever to bear fruit again. In fact, the entire spurs, from 1 to 6 and 1 to 9, are too weak to be of much account for fruit-bearing. This year several of the spurs along the 1893 growth--12 to D--bore flowers. Flowers were borne from two buds on the first one (at 13 and 14), but none of the flowers "set." One of the little apples that died last June still clings to the spur at 14. A side bud (15) formed to continue the spur in 1897. Flowers were borne at 16, 20, 21, and 23, but no apples developed. Upon 16 and 20 the flowers died soon after they opened, as seen by the remains of them. Upon 23, one of the flowers set an apple, but the apple soon died. The spurs 17 and 18 are so weak that they have never made fruit-buds, and they are now nearly dead. The spurs 19 and 22 have behaved differently. Like the others, they grew in 1894 and would have made terminal fruit-buds in 1895, and would have borne fruit in 1896; but the terminal buds were broken off in the fall or winter of 1894, so that two side buds developed in 1895, and each of these developed a fruit-bud at its end in 1896 in the spur 19, but only one of them developed such a bud in 22. Upon these spurs, therefore, the bearing year has been changed. Upon the growth of 1894--D to beyond E--only three spurs have developed, nos. 24, 25, 26. These started out in 1895, and two of them--25 and 26--have made large fat buds which are evidently fruit-buds. The shoot at E grew on to EE, and all the buds on its lower two-year-old portion remained dormant. On the 1895 growth--from beyond E to 28--all the buds remained dormant save one, and this one--27--made only a very feeble attempt to grow into a spur. The buds upon the 1892 growth--1 to 12--are still dormant and waiting for an opportunity to grow. What an eventful history this apple twig has had! And yet in all the seven years of its life, after having made fifteen efforts to bear fruit, it has not produced a single good apple! The fault, therefore, does not lie in the shoot. It has done the best it could. The trouble has been that the farmer either did not give the tree enough food to enable it to support the fruit, or did not prune the tree so as to give the twig light and room, or allowed apple-scab or some other disease to kill the young apples as they were forming. I am wondering, therefore, whether, when trees fail to bear, it is not quite as often the fault of the farmer as it is of the trees? LEAFLET XXXII. THE BURST OF SPRING.[44] BY L. H. BAILEY. [44] Nature-Study Quarterly No. 4, Leaflet 17, March, 1900. [Illustration] Spring is coming! The buds will burst and the birds will sing! How do the buds burst? Watch them as the spring opens; or, if you are impatient, cut long twigs and place them in bottles of water in a living-room, and the buds will swell. First, notice what the winter buds are like,--that they are spherical, or oblong, or conical bodies lying close to the limb and tightly covered with scales. Notice that there is a mark or scar beneath the bud, showing where a leaf was borne. It is excellent practice to collect winter twigs of different kinds of trees and bushes, and to compare the form and color of the shoots, and the size, shape, color, and make-up of the buds. Lay the twigs side by side on the table and notice how one differs from the other. What part of the twig grew last year? Notice the "ring" at the base of the last year's growth. After all the differences are noted, put the twigs in water, as you would a bouquet. Sometimes flowers and leaves will appear. If the twigs are two or three feet long, the buds are more likely to grow, for then there is sufficient supply of food in them. Change the water frequently, and cut off the lower ends of the twigs so that a fresh surface will be exposed to the water. It will be two to five weeks before the buds open, depending mostly on the kind of plant. Mark one bud on a maple, or apple, or lilac, or other plant, by tying a string about the twig. Look at it carefully from day to day: observe how it opens, and what comes out of it. The pupil should know that a winter twig has interest. * * * * * The bud may be peach or apricot. Soon the bud begins to swell at its top. The scales open. A white lining appears. This lining soon protrudes (Fig. 220). Soon the lining opens. We see that it is a flower. Or perhaps the peach bud sends out a green shoot rather than a flower. There must be two kinds of peach and apricot buds,--a flower-bud and a leaf-bud. Can you tell them apart? The flower-bud is thicker and rounder. Usually one stands on either side of a leaf-bud. But the leaf-bud may stand alone. Find one: any peach tree or apricot tree will have leaf-buds, but all may not have flower-buds. As the bud expands and the flower or leaf appears, notice that the bud-scales fall away. Do these scales leave scars? And do not these scars, standing together, make the "ring" which marks the beginning of the new growth? [Illustration: _Fig. 220. Opening of an apricot bud._] * * * * * Observe a pear bud. Notice that the scales elongate as the bud swells. You can see the white bases of the scales, marking the new growth (Fig. 221). If it is a leaf-bud the scales may become three-fourths of an inch long before they fall. But sooner or later, they are cast, and their places are marked by scars. If it is a flower-bud, notice that several flowers come out of it. In the apricot and peach, there is only one flower in each bud. Each of these little pear flowers is closed up like a bud and elevates itself on a stalk before it opens: and this stalk becomes the stem of the pear fruit. But this pear flower-bud contains leaves as well as flowers. Fig. 222 shows what comes out of a pear bud. This, then, is a mixed flower-bud,--it contains both leaves and flowers. The apricot and the peach bear true or simple flower-buds. [Illustration: _Fig. 221. Opening of a pear bud._] [Illustration: _Fig. 222. What came out of a pear bud._] * * * * * Watch apple buds. The scales do not elongate as in the pear, but the flower-buds are mixed. Fig. 223 shows the expanding cluster from an apple flower-bud. Four flowers will open; and there are six leaves. If the buds are made to open in the house on severed twigs, the leaves do not grow so large before the flowers expand, for the twig does not contain sufficient food. Fig. 224 is a photograph of an apple twig which I had in my window one winter's day. [Illustration: _Fig. 223. Opening of an apple bud._] [Illustration: _Fig. 224. Apple flowers in midwinter._] * * * * * Examine a hickory twig. The illustration (Fig. 225) shows the "ring" marking the beginning of the annual growth. See the large leaf-scars. Notice that the terminal bud is much the largest. It is the one which will grow. The other buds will remain dormant unless they are forced into growth by the death of the terminal bud or by other unusual circumstances. Notice that buds differ in size on shoots of all plants; consider that not all the buds are to grow: there is a struggle for existence. When the hickory bud expands, some of the scales fall away; but some of the inner parts enlarge into leaf-like bodies, as shown in Fig. 226. In some hickories these bodies become two or three inches long before they fall. Hickories open very late in the season. The Norway maple, commonly planted on lawns, behaves in a similar way. Observe the sugar maple. * * * * * [Illustration: _Fig. 225. Shoot of a hickory._] [Illustration: _Fig. 226. The opening of a hickory bud._] A twig of the common elm is shown in Fig. 227. Notice the "ring." See the two kinds of buds. We suspect that the three larger ones are flower-buds. With the very first warm days--before the robin has built her nest--these three buds will burst; soon the red-brown tassels will hang on the leafless twigs. Each tassel is a flower. Several flowers come from each bud. We see them in Fig. 228; and the leaf-buds have elongated somewhat. Watch for the fruits or seeds that blow about the walks so early in spring; and note how the leaves come out. [Illustration: _Fig. 227. Twig of elm._] [Illustration: _Fig. 228. Blossoms of the elm._] * * * * * With the first breath of spring, the "pussy willows" come. And what are the "pussies"? They are clusters of flowers. So snugly are the little flowers wrapped in wool, that the "pussies" are silken-soft as they begin to expand. Fig. 229 is a willow shoot. Find one when the buds first begin to burst. Notice the big brown-black scale that covers the bud as a shield and falls when the "pussy" first begins to appear. * * * * * And now what is a winter bud? It is a miniature shoot or flower, resting for the time, and snugly wrapped for the long winter. It was made last season. It is ready to leap into growth the moment the warm rain of spring wakens it. A good hand lens will show the embryo branch, if a section is made of the bud. This bud is not only ready-formed but is ready-fed. The winter shoots contain starch. On a cut surface of a dormant twig, apply a drop of tincture of iodine; note the bluish color, which is indicative of starch. This starch is insoluble; but with the first awakening of life, it changes into sugar, which is soluble and is transferred to the growing part. The burst of spring is made possible by means of this stored food. Notice the azalea in the florist's window (Fig. 230). The large flower-buds were formed the year before, and it is a short operation to "force" them into bloom. The flowers come in advance of the leaves; therefore these leaves could not have made the food required for the bloom. The blooming of the apple twig (Fig. 224) in the winter shows that the food is in the twig and buds. Once I drew a branch of a tree into a room and fastened it there. It made leaves and began to grow while the tree to which it was attached was perfectly dormant (Fig. 231). [Illustration: _Fig. 230. Bloom of azalea._] * * * * * [Illustration: _Fig. 229. The opening of a pussy willow._] Not only are the buds ready-formed and ready-fed, but they are covered. Snugly is the tender, growing part protected. Pull away the scales of a winter bud one by one. Observe how closely they are placed. Often the chinks are filled with a packing of wool, or are sealed with varnish. Dip the bud in water: then see whether the water permeates the covering. The chief value of the bud covering is not to protect from freezing, as commonly supposed, but to prevent the soft growing parts from drying out. The plants are waiting for spring. They are ready. [Illustration: _Fig. 231. Branch of a tree bearing leaves inside a window, when the tree itself is dormant._] LEAFLET XXXIII. EVERGREENS AND HOW THEY SHED THEIR LEAVES.[45] BY H. P. GOULD. [45] Teacher's Leaflet No. 13, February, 1899. [Sidenote: _Note to the teacher._--This leaflet has two particular objects: to teach how evergreens shed their leaves, and to enable you to distinguish a few of the evergreens which are most commonly met. These studies (and those suggested in Leaflet No. XXIX) should be the means of adding much cheer to the winter. Encourage pupils to make collections of cones, to observe when they shed their seeds, and how long (how many seasons) they remain attached to the branch. Remember that mere identification of the kinds of trees is not the highest type of nature-study. Cones are good subjects for free-hand drawing. Beginners should draw them in outline, omitting the shading. Encourage pupils to draw single leaf-clusters of the different pines, cautioning them to show the right number of leaves in each case.] [Illustration] Cone-bearing evergreens are familiar to everyone; yet this familiarity is usually with the trees as entire objects. We do not often stop to analyze a tree in order to find out what gives it its characteristic appearance or to see what makes it look as it does. We shall often find, if we stop to look, that much of the character of a tree,--that is, its general appearance or the way in which it impresses us,--is due to the leaves and to their arrangement on the branches. This is true of many of the evergreen trees. Why are certain kinds of trees called evergreen in distinction from those which are said to be deciduous? The reason is obvious. One kind is always green from the presence of foliage, while the other sheds all of its leaves every season. The evergreen trees, like the pines and the spruces and the firs, always appear to be well covered with foliage; hence it does not often occur to us that these trees shed their leaves. And yet perhaps we can recall happy hours when we used to play beneath some large pine tree where the ground was carpeted with pine "needles." The falling of the leaves of the maple trees or the oaks is a familiar sight, but who has seen the spruce leaves fall, and who can tell when the pine needles drop? That the evergreen trees do shed their foliage, as truly as the maples and the elms do, we will not question, for we can see the fallen leaves under any tree. Look up into the top of a spruce or pine. See that the interior is bare of foliage. The leaves are towards the ends of the branches, where they receive sunlight. Yet the branches which are now in the interior once bore leaves, for we can see the leaf-scars. [Illustration: _Fig. 232. Shoot of the common white pine, one-third natural size._] It will be interesting to find out something about the leaves of our common evergreens. Let us look at some of them. THE WHITE PINE. In Fig. 232 is shown a white pine branch. Notice that the leaves are borne in bunches or clusters of five. Each bunch of leaves is produced in the axil (or angle) of a minute scale-like body, but this scale can best be seen and studied on the very young growth. It has been worn away or broken from the older growth by the wind and the rain and the other forces of nature. Another strange fact should be well observed. The leaves of the maples and other deciduous trees are borne only on the present season's growth; but this is not the case in the pines, and kindred trees. If we trace back the growth of the past two or three years, we may find that there are as many leaves on the wood that is two years old as there are on the last season's growth; and in many cases we can find leaves on the part of the branch that is three years old. This means that the pine leaves or needles are two and sometimes three years old when they fall. The Fig. 232 shows the falling of the leaves from the different years' growth. The part of the branch between the tip and A is the last season's growth; between A and B it is two years old; the part between B and C is three years old. The part that grew four seasons ago--beyond C--has no leaves. [Illustration: _Fig. 233. Cone of white pine. It has shed its seeds. Half natural size._] The different seasons' growth is indicated not by distinct "rings" as in the case of deciduous trees, but by the branching. Each whorl of branches about a limb represents the end of a season's growth. A young pine tree, or the younger limbs of an old tree, shows this character very plainly. Do the leaves of the pines and of the other evergreen trees fall at the end of the growing season, as the leaves of most of the deciduous trees do? Or do they gradually become lifeless and fall at any season, from the force of the wind and other natural forces? Tie a large sheet of cloth in the top of some evergreen tree, in such a way as to form a receptacle to catch the leaves. Do you catch leaves in winter as well as in summer? Do you find leaves on the snow? As there are several different kinds of pines, we must picture carefully in our minds the foliage of the white pine, for it is different from that of any others. The leaves are soft and very slender, and from three to four inches long. The base of each cluster of leaves is at first surrounded by a small sheath. A scar is left when the leaves drop and these scars can often be seen on parts of the branches that are eight or ten years old. Do the leaves of other kinds of trees make a scar when they fall? The white pine cones, in which the seeds are borne, are conspicuous objects. They are five or six inches long and slightly curved. It will be interesting to find out whether the seeds ripen the same year in which they are formed. Perhaps a cone still containing seeds can be secured. Carefully tear it apart and see where the seeds are attached. Red squirrels sometimes eat the pine seeds. A white pine cone, which has shed its seeds, is shown in Fig. 233. [Illustration: _Fig. 234. Shoot of common pitch pine. One-half natural size._] This kind of pine is found widely scattered in New England, New York, and westward to Minnesota and Iowa and along the Alleghany Mountains as far south as Georgia; also in some parts of Canada. It is a valuable lumber tree. THE PITCH PINE. This kind of pine is very different, in many respects, from the white pine. Let us find some of the differences. Instead of having leaves in bunches of five, it has them in clusters of three, and the base of each cluster is inclosed by a scaly sheath which does not fall away as in the case of the white pine; neither does the little scale-like body upon the branch, in the axil of which the leaf-cluster is borne, fall away, but it may be found just below the leaf, and even on branches that are several years old. Sometimes a sheath is found with only two leaves. We shall want to know, too, how old the leaves are when they fall. Do they remain on the tree longer than the white pine leaves do? [Illustration: _Fig. 235. Cone of pitch pine. One-half natural size._] Again, instead of being soft and slender as the white pine leaves are, we shall find that these leaves are rigid and thick in comparison, and stand out straight from the branches. The shape of the leaves is also distinct from that of the white pine needles. See whether you can find any other differences. A pitch pine branch is shown in Fig. 234. The part between the tip and A is the past season's growth. Observe the foliage on the part that is two years old. Part of it has fallen. We often find it on growth which is older than this; but in this specimen there are no leaves on the three-year wood. [Illustration: _Fig. 236. Pitch pine. One-third natural size._] The cone of the pitch pine is very unlike that of the white pine. Fig. 235 gives a good idea of one that has shed its seeds. Compare this with Fig. 233; or, better, examine the two kinds of cones side by side. The pitch pine cones are sometimes borne in clusters of two or more and they persist,--that is, remain on the tree for several years after the seeds have ripened and scattered. Notice how the new cones are borne with reference to last season's growth. Are they attached to the tip of a branchlet? Or are they closely attached to the side of a branch? Figs. 236 and 237 will help us answer this question. The little cones in Fig. 237 near the tip of the twig, are just beginning to form. [Illustration: _Fig. 237. Pitch pine, showing young cones. Half natural size._] The pitch pine usually grows in sandy or rocky soil and is found in the United States along the Atlantic coast to Virginia, along the mountains to Georgia, westward to Western New York, Eastern Ohio, Kentucky, and Eastern Tennessee. It has little value as timber, because it does not grow large enough. SCOTCH AND AUSTRIAN PINES. In the same manner other pines may be studied. Fig. 238 shows a cone and a bit of foliage of the Scotch pine, and Fig. 239 the Austrian pine. These cones grew the past season and are not yet mature. After they ripen and shed the seeds which they contain, they will look somewhat like the cone in Fig 235. The Scotch pine has short and blue-green needles. The Austrian pine is coarser, and has long dark-green needles. There are but two leaves in a cluster on these kinds of pines and we shall find that the sheath which incloses the base of the leaf-cluster is more conspicuous than in either the white or the pitch pine. Do the leaves persist in the Scotch and Austrian pines longer than they do in the others we have examined? Study the cones of these and other pines. [Illustration: _Fig. 238. Scotch pine. Half natural size._] The Scotch and Austrian pines are not native to this country, but are much grown for ornament. They can be found in almost any park and in many other places where ornamental trees are grown. THE NORWAY SPRUCE. The leaves of spruce trees are borne very differently from those of the pines. Instead of being in clusters of two or more, they are single and without a sheath at the base; neither are there scale-like bodies on the branches where the leaves are borne. Notice, too, that the leaves have a very short stem or petiole. The leaves of the Norway spruce are about one inch long, although the length varies more or less in different parts of the tree and in different trees. They are rather stiff and rigid and sharp-pointed. In a general way, the leaves are four-sided, though indistinctly so. It will be interesting to study the position which the leaves take on the branches. A hasty glance might give us the impression that the leaves are not produced on the under side of the branches; but a more careful examination will convince us that there are nearly as many on the under side as on the upper. The leaves are all pointing outward from the branch and as nearly upward as is possible. In other words, the leaves grow toward the light. [Illustration: _Fig. 239. Austrian pine. One-third natural size._] We must not forget to see how long the leaves of the Norway spruce persist and to find out when the leaf-scars disappear. We can find leaves that must surely be six or seven years old and sometimes we can find them even older than this. The leaf scars, too, remain a long time. The falling of the leaves is illustrated in Fig. 240. It shows the extremities of a limb which is eight years old. The part between the tip and A is last season's growth; between A and B it is two years old; and beyond B is a part that grew three seasons ago. The section beyond C is six years old; from C to D is seven years of age. The four years' growth of this limb not shown in the drawing was as densely covered with foliage as is the part shown in the upper figure; but there are not many leaves between C and D (seven years old) and none on the eight-year-old wood (except those on the branchlets, and these are younger). The cone of the Norway spruce is nearly as long as that of the white pine, but it is not so rough and coarse as the white pine cone is. The cones are usually borne on the tips of small branchlets, although occasionally one is borne in the manner shown in Fig. 241. The cones usually fall the first winter. [Illustration: _Fig. 240. Twig of the common Norway spruce. Half natural size._] The Norway spruce is not a native of this country, but like the Scotch and Austrian pines, it was introduced from Europe and is grown very widely as an ornamental tree. It is the commonest evergreen in yards and parks. THE BLACK SPRUCE AND ITS KIN. There are several different kinds of spruces which we find growing in our forests and swamps, and sometimes these are planted for ornament. A sprig of foliage and a cone of one of these,--the black spruce,--is shown in Fig. 242. The foliage is not very unlike that of the Norway spruce, but the cones are very small in comparison. They are about one inch long, though they vary considerably in size. Before they open they are oval or plum-shaped; but when mature and the scales of the cone have expanded, they are nearly globular. They are often borne in clusters, as well as singly, and persist for many years after the seeds have fallen. The position of the cones will depend upon their age. When young they point upward, but they gradually turn downward. In general appearance the white spruce resembles the black very closely. The leaves of the white spruce have a whitish or dusty looking tinge of color and when crushed or bruised give forth a peculiar, disagreeable odor. The cones vary in length from an inch to two inches, and in shape are more cylindrical or finger-shaped than the cone of the black spruce. The foliage of the red spruce lacks the whitish tinge of color of the white spruce and the cones, which are from one inch to two inches in length, are obovate in shape--that is, the widest place is through the upper part of the cone, and from this point it gradually tapers to the tip. They seldom persist longer than the second summer. The leaves of all these different kinds of spruces vary greatly in length, thickness, and sharpness of point, according to the part of the tree on which they grow, and their surroundings. The shedding of the leaves on these or other spruces can be determined as easily as in the Norway spruce. [Illustration: _Fig. 241. Cone of Norway spruce. Half size._] These three spruces like a cold climate and grow in many sections of the northern United States and Canada and farther south in the mountains. They are sometimes all found growing together, but the black spruce likes best the damp, cold swamps, while the others grow best on the drier and better drained lands. The black spruce is commonest. The red spruce is least known. THE BALSAM FIR. This is another evergreen tree which grows naturally in the cold, damp grounds of the northern United States and Canada, and to some extent in the eastern states as far south as West Virginia. The foliage is borne in much the same manner as that of the spruces; yet there are interesting differences in the characters of these two kinds of leaves. Perhaps the most noticeable difference is in the shape; and the color of the fir leaves will attract our attention because the under side is a silvery color, while the upper side is green. What is the nature of the tip of the leaf and how does it compare with the pines and spruces in this respect? Does the leaf have a stem or petiole or is it attached directly to the branch without any stem? How are the leaves shed? [Illustration: _Fig. 242.--Black spruce. Half natural size._] The cones are about three inches long and present a rather delicate appearance. It will be interesting to determine the position of the cones, that is, the direction in which they point, and to learn whether it is the same when they are young as it is after they have matured. The grayish colored bark of the trunk and limbs bears many "blisters" from which Canada balsam is obtained. THE HEMLOCK. A hemlock twig is an interesting object. It may have many characters in common with the spruce and fir; yet the impression which we get from it, or from a large hemlock tree, is entirely distinct. The arrangement of the leaves and the gracefulness of the drooping branchlets are most pleasing. We are led to examine it more closely. We notice that the leaves appear to be borne in two more or less regular rows,--one on each side of the branch or twig; but in reality they come from all sides of the branch, and it is the position which the leaves assume that gives this two-rowed appearance. The leaves have a short stalk or petiole, and this stalk rests along the side of the branchlet in such a direction that the leaves are placed in single rows on either side of the branch. The petioles of the leaves are nearly parallel with the branch while the leaves often make a decided angle with the petiole. This fact can best be brought out by carefully examining a small twig. While we are noting the arrangement of the leaves on the branchlets, we should also notice the points of similarity and difference between these leaves and those of the spruces and firs. We shall find that there is more in common, at least so far as shape and color are concerned, between the hemlock and the fir than between the hemlock and the spruce. [Illustration: _Fig. 243. Spray of the hemlock. Two-thirds natural size._] The small, delicate cones, borne on the tips of the branchlets, will also attract our attention (Fig. 243.) We may wonder at their small size, for they are only about three-quarters of an inch long, and very delicate; yet a second glance at the tree will impress us with the number of cones which the tree bears, and we conclude that, although the cones may be small, yet there are so many of them that there will be no lack of seeds. It is more difficult to trace the age of a hemlock limb than of many other kinds of trees, yet we can easily determine that many of the leaves are several years old when they fall. The bark of the hemlock is used in tanning hides for leather. The tree is much used for lumber. Where does it grow? THE ARBOR-VIT�. One might almost wonder, at first sight, if the arbor-vitæ (often, but wrongly, called the white cedar) has any leaves at all. It does possess them, however, but they are very different in size and shape from any of the others that we have examined. They are small scale-like bodies, closely pressed together along the sides of the branchlets, in four rows. Leaves pressed to the branches in this manner are said to be "appressed." The leaves of the arbor-vitæ are so close together that they overlap one another. The leaves are of two distinct shapes, sometimes known as the surface leaves and the flank leaves. The former are located on what appears to be the flattened surface of the branchlets, while the latter are on the sides or edges. See Fig. 244. [Illustration: _Fig. 244. The Arbor-vitæ. Nearly full size._] If we carefully look at the leaves, we shall notice a raised spot near the point or tip. This is said to be a resin gland. This gland can be seen more plainly on the surface leaves that are two years old. Most of the leaves persist for at least two and sometimes three years; but even older ones can be found. These older leaves, however, exist not as green, active leaves, but merely as dried and lifeless scales. These lifeless leaves are probably detached from the branches by the forces of nature. The cones are even smaller than the hemlock cones. They are borne in the axils of the leaves in the same manner as the branchlets and are not conspicuous unless one is close to the tree. The arbor-vitæ is much planted for hedges and screens, as well as for other ornamental purposes. There are many horticultural varieties. The tree is abundant in a wild state in New York. SUMMARY OF THE KINDS OF COMMON EVERGREENS. _The white pine_ (Pinus Strobus).--Leaves in clusters of five, soft and slender; cones five or six inches long, slightly curved; bark smooth except on the trunks and larger limbs of old trees, where it is fissured. _The pitch pine_ (Pinus rigida).--Leaves in clusters of three, from three to four inches long, rather rigid; cones two to three inches long, often in clusters of two or more but frequently borne singly, persisting long after the seeds have been shed; bark more or less rough on the young growth and deeply fissured on the trunks of old trees. _The Scotch pine_ (Pinus sylvestris).--Leaves usually in clusters of two, from two to four inches long, rigid, of a bluish-green hue when seen in a large mass on the tree; cones two to three inches long and the scales tipped with a beak or prickle. _The Austrian pine_ (Pinus Austriaca).--Leaves in clusters of two, five or six inches long and somewhat rigid, dark green in color, and persisting for four or five years; cones about three inches long, conical in shape; and scales not beaked or pointed as in the Scotch pine. _The Norway spruce_ (Picea excelsa).--Leaves borne singly, about one inch long, dark green, four-sided; cones about six inches long, and composed of thin scales, and usually borne on the tips of branchlets. The small branches mostly drooping. _The black spruce_ (Picea nigra).--In general appearance, this is not very unlike the Norway spruce, but the small branches stand out more horizontally and the cones are only one or one and one-half inches long, recurving on short branches. The cones persist for several years after shedding the seed. _The white spruce_ (Picea alba).--Leaves about one inch long, having a glaucous or whitish tinge; twigs stout and rigid, of a pale greenish-white color; cones from one to two and one-half inches long, more or less cylindrical or "finger-shaped," and easily crushed when dry. _The red spruce_ (Picea rubra).--The foliage lacks the whitish tinge of the white spruce and is of a dark or dark yellowish color; twigs stouter than those of the black spruce and not so much inclined to droop; cones about one inch long, obovate, and usually falling by the second summer. _The hemlock_ (Tsuga Canadensis).--Leaves about one-half inch long, flat with rounded point, green on the upper side, whitish beneath, and borne on short appressed petioles; cones about three-quarters of an inch long, oval or egg-shaped, and borne on the ends of small branchlets and often persisting for some time. _The balsam fir_ (Abies balsamea).--Leaves narrow, less than one inch long, borne singly, very numerous and standing out from the branchlets in much the way of the spruce; cones about three inches long, cylindrical, composed of thin scales, and standing upright on the branches, or recurved; bark smooth, light green with whitish tinge. _The arbor-vitæ_ (Thuya occidentalis).--Leaves very small, scale-like, and over-lapping one another in four rows, adhering closely to the branchlets; the cones oblong and small,--a half-inch or less in length,--and composed of but few scales. LEAFLET XXXIV. THE CLOVERS AND THEIR KIN.[46] BY ANNA BOTSFORD COMSTOCK. The pedigree of honey does not concern the bee, A clover any time to him is aristocracy. --EMILY DICKINSON. [46] Home Nature-Study Course, Vol. V, No. 8, May, 1904. [Illustration: _White clover._] There is a deep-seated prejudice that usefulness and beauty do not belong together;--a prejudice based obviously on human selfishness, for if a thing is useful to us we emphasize that quality so much that we forget to look for its beauty. Thus it is that the clover suffers great injustice; it has for centuries been a most valuable forage crop, and, therefore, we forget to note its beauty, or to regard it as an object worthy of æsthetic attention. This is a pitiful fact; but it cheats us more than it does the clover, for the clover blossoms not for us, but for the bees and butterflies as well as for itself. As I remember the scenes which have impressed me most, I find among them three in which clover was the special attraction. One was a well-cultivated thrifty orchard carpeted with the brilliant red of the crimson clover in bloom. One was a great field of alfalfa spread near the shore of the Great Salt Lake, which met our eyes as we came through the pass in the Wasatch Mountains after days of travel in dust-colored lands; the brilliant green of that alfalfa field in the evening sunlight refreshed our eyes as the draught of cold water refreshes the parched throat of the traveller in a desert. And another was a gently undulating field in our own State stretching away like a sea to the west, covered with the purple foam of the red clover in blossom; and the fragrance of that field settled like a benediction over the acres that margined it. But we do not need landscapes to teach us the beauty of clover. Just one clover blossom studied carefully and looked at with clear-seeing eyes, reveals each floweret beautiful in color, interesting in form, and perfect in its mechanism for securing pollination. The clover is especially renowned for its partnerships with members of the animal kingdom. It readily forms a partnership with man, thriftily growing in his pastures and meadows, while he distributes its seed. For ages it has been a special partner of the bees, giving them honey for carrying its pollen. Below the ground it has formed a mysterious partnership with microbes, and the clover seems to be getting the best of the bargain. For many years clover was regarded as a crop helpful to the soil, and one reason given was the great length of the roots. Thus the roots of red clover often reach the depth of several feet, even in heavy soil, which they thus aerate and drain, especially when they decay and leave channels. But this is only half the story; for a long time people had noted that on clover roots were little swollen places or nodules, which were supposed to have come from some disease or insect injury. The scientists became interested in the supposed disease, and they finally ascertained that these nodules are filled with bacteria, which are the underground partners of the clovers and other legumes. These bacteria are able to fix the free nitrogen of the air, and make it available for plant-food. As nitrogen is the most expensive of the fertilizers, any agency which can extract it from the free air for the use of plants is indeed a valuable aid to the farmer. Thus it is that in the modern agriculture, clover or some other legume is put on the land once in three or four years in the regular rotation of crops, and it brings back to the soil the nitrogen which other crops have exhausted. An interesting fact about the partnership between the root bacteria and the clover-like plants is that the plants do not flourish without this partnership, and investigators have devised a method by which these bacteria may be scattered in the soil on which some kinds of clover are to be planted, and thus aid in growing a crop. This method is to-day being used for the introduction of alfalfa here in New York State. But the use of clover as a fertilizer is not limited to its root factory for capturing nitrogen; its leaves break down quickly and readily yield the rich food material of which they are composed, so that the farmer who plows under his second-crop clover instead of harvesting it, adds greatly to the fertility of his farm. The members of three distinct genera are popularly called clovers: The True Clovers (_Trifolium_), of which six or seven species are found in New York State, and more than sixty species are found in the United States. The Medics (_Medicago_), of which four species are found here. The Melilots (_Melilotus_), or sweet clovers, of which we have two species. THE TRUE CLOVERS. (_Trifolium._) [Illustration: _Fig. 245. The common red clover._] _The Red Clover (Fig. 245). (Trifolium pratense._[47])--This beautiful dweller in our fields came to us from Europe, and it is also a native of Asia. It is the clover most widely cultivated in New York State for fodder, and is one of our most important crops. Clover hay often being a standard of excellence by which other hay is measured. The export of clover seed from the United States has sometimes reached the worth of two million dollars per year, and this great industry is supposed to be carried on with the aid of that other partner of the red clover, the bumblebee. Bumblebees had to be imported into Australia before clover seed could be produced there. The whole question of the relation of the bumblebee to the pollination of clover no doubt needs to be re-studied, for recent observations have led to the contesting of prevailing opinions. It has been supposed that the failure of the clover seed crop in some places is due to the destruction of bumblebees; whether this is true or not, we are certain that bumblebees visit clover blooms, and the teacher can observe for himself. [47] Pronounced _Trifol' -ium praten' -se_, the second or specific name with three syllables. There is a more perennial form of red clover, known as variety _perenne_. It is distinguished from the common form of red clover by its taller growth and mostly less hairy herbage, and by the fact that the flower-head is usually somewhat stalked. Some persons regard it as a hybrid of red and zig-zag clover. _Zig-Zag Clover. (T. medium.)_--This is another species of red clover, resembling the one just discussed, except that its flower-head rises on a long stalk above the upper leaves, while the red clover has the flower-head set close to these leaves. The color of the blossom is darker than in red clover, and the flower-head is looser. The stems of the zig-zag clover are likely to be bent at angles and thus it gets its name. It is a question whether this species is really grown on farms. It is probable that some or all of the clover that passes under this name is _Trifolium pratense_ var. _perenne_. At all events, the zig-zag clover seems to be imperfectly understood by botanists and others. _Crimson Clover--Scarlet Clover (Fig. 246). (T. incarnatum.)_--While this beautiful clover grows as a weed in the southern parts of our State, it has only recently begun to play an important part in our horticulture. It is an annual, and its home is the Mediterranean region of Europe. It thrives best in loose, sandy soils, and in our State is chiefly used as a cover-crop for orchards, and to plow under as a fertilizer. It usually has bright, crimson flowers, arranged in a long, pointed head, and its brilliant green fan-shaped leaves make it the most artistically decorative of all our clovers. [Illustration: _Fig. 246. Crimson clover._] _Buffalo Clover (Fig. 247). (T. reflexum.)_--This is sometimes taken for a variety of the red clover, but only a glance is needed to distinguish it. While the head is perhaps an inch in diameter the flowerets are not directed upward and set close as in the red clover, but each floweret is on a little stalk, and is bent abruptly backward. The flowers are not pink. The standard is red, while the wings and keel are nearly white. The leaves are blunt at the tip. It grows in meadows in western New York and westward. This species is native to this country. _Alsike Clover. (T. hybridum.)_--This is a perennial and grows in low meadows and waste places from Nova Scotia to Idaho. It was introduced from Europe. It is especially valuable in wet meadows, where the red clover would be drowned. The blossoms of the alsike look like those of the white clover except that they are a little larger and are pink; but the long branching mostly upright stems are very different in habit from the creeping stems of the white clover; the blossoms are very fragrant. [Illustration: _Fig. 247. Three clovers, respectively, Buffalo, Yellow, and Rabbit-foot clover._] _The White Clover. (T. repens.)_--This beautiful little clover, whose leaves make a rug for our feet in every possible place, is well known to us all. It is the clover best beloved by honey-bees, and the person who does not know the distinct flavor of white clover honey has lost something out of life. While in hard soil the white clover lasts only two or three years, on rich, moist lands it is a true perennial. While it was probably a native in the northern part of America, yet it is truly cosmopolitan and may be found in almost all regions of the temperate zones. Very likely the common stock of it is an introduction from Europe. By many this is considered to be the original shamrock. _The Yellow, or Hop Clover (Fig. 247). (T. agrarium.)_--This friendly little plant, filling waste places with brilliant green leaves and small yellow flower-heads, is not considered a clover by those who are not observant. But if the flowerets in the small, dense heads are examined, they will be seen to resemble very closely those of the other clovers. The stems are many-branched and often grow a foot or more in height. The flowers are numerous, and on fading turn brown, and resemble the fruit of a pigmy hop vine, whence the name. Its leaves are much more pointed than those of the medics, with which it might be confused because of its yellow flowers. _Low Hop Clover, or Hop Trefoil. (T. procumbens.)_--This resembles the above species, except that it is smaller and also more spreading, and the stems and leaves are more downy. _The Least Hop Clover. (T. dubium.)_--This may be readily distinguished from the above species by the fact that its yellow flowerets occur from three to ten in a head. This is said by some to be the true shamrock, although the white clover is also called the shamrock. _The Rabbit-Foot, or Stone Clover (Fig. 247). (T. arvense.)_--This is another clover not easily recognized as such. It grows a foot or more in height and has erect branches. The leaflets are narrow and all arise from the same point. The flowerets occur in long, dense heads. The calyx is very silky, and the lobes are longer than the white corollas, thus giving the flower-head a soft, hairy look, something like the early stages of the blossom of the pussy willow. Because of its appearance it is often called "pussy clover." THE MEDICS. (_Medicago._) _Alfalfa (Fig. 248). (Medicago sativa.)_--This is the veteran of all the clovers, for it has been under cultivation for twenty centuries. It is a native of the valleys of western Asia. In America it was first introduced into Mexico with the Spanish invasion. It was brought from Chile to California in 1854, where it has since been the most important hay crop. In fact, there is no better hay than that made from alfalfa. It was probably introduced into the Atlantic States from southern Europe, and has grown as a weed for many years in certain localities in New England and the Middle States; only recently has it been considered a practicable crop for this climate, although it was grown in Jefferson Co., N. Y., in 1791. Its special value is that it is a true perennial, and may be cut three times or more during a season, and when once established it withstands hot, dry weather. It is of marvelous value to the semi-arid regions. The alfalfa flower is blue or violet, and grows in a loose raceme. The plant grows tall and its stems are many branched. This and all these medics are introduced from Europe. _Black or Hop Medic. (M. lupulina.)_--This would hardly be called a clover by the novice. The long stems lie along the ground, and the tiny yellow flower-heads do not much resemble the clover blossom. It is a common weed in waste places in our State. It is perennial. _The Toothed Medic. (M. denticulata.)_--Instead of having the yellow flowerets in a dense head, this species has them in pairs or perhaps fours, or sometimes more. It is widely distributed as a weed, and is also introduced as a pasture plant for early grazing. It is of little value as hay. _The Spotted Medic. (M. Arabica.)_--This very much resembles the preceding species except that the leaves are likely to have on them conspicuous dark spots near the center. Like the preceding species it is an annual and a weed, and has also been introduced as a plant for early grazing. This and the toothed medic are known to farmers under the name of bur-clover. The reason for this name is found in the seed-pod, which is twisted in a spiral and has an outer margin of curved prickles. [Illustration: _Fig. 248. Alfalfa, foliage and flowers._] THE MELILOTS, OR SWEET CLOVERS. (_Melilotus._) In driving or walking along the country roads, we may find ourselves suddenly immersed in a wave of delightful fragrance, and if we look for the source we may find this friendly plant flourishing in the most forbidding of soils. Growing as a weed, it brings sweet perfume to us, and at the same time nitrogen, aeration and drainage to the hopeless soil, making rich those places where other weeds have not the temerity to attempt to grow. When the soil is generous, the sweet clover often grows very tall, sometimes as high as ten feet. It is a cheerful, adaptable and beneficial plant, and I never see it without giving it a welcome, which, I am sorry to say, I cannot always grant to other roadside wayfarers. The sweet clovers are European. _The White Sweet Clover (M. alba)_ is sometimes called Bokhara clover and has white flowers (Fig. 249). _The Yellow Sweet Clover (M. officinalis)_ has yellow blossoms. It has interesting old English names, such as Balsam Flowers, King's Clover and Heartwort. [Illustration: _Fig. 249. White sweet clover._] QUESTIONS ON THE CLOVERS. _Two general kinds of types of studies are to be made of the clovers: identification studies, whereby you will come to know the kinds of clover; life history studies, whereby you will come to know under what conditions the plants live and thrive. The latter is the more important, but the former usually precedes it, for one is better able to discover and discuss the biological questions when he is acquainted with the species. The following questions will bring out some of the important biological aspects:_ 1. How many of the true clovers, the medics, and the sweet clovers do you know? 2. Send me properly labelled pressed specimens of the leaves and blossoms of the clovers that you have been able to find. 3. Dig a root of red clover and find the nodules on it. Please describe them. 4. What methods does the U. S. Department of Agriculture employ to inoculate the soil with bacteria so that alfalfa may grow? 5. How do clover roots protect the land from the effects of heavy rains? 6. How do the clover plants conserve the moisture in the soil? 7. How does this conservation of moisture aid the farmer and orchardist? 8. What is a cover-crop, and what are its uses? 9. Why do farmers sow red clover with grass seed? 10. How do the habits of the stems of white clover differ from those of other clovers? 11. Why is white clover so desirable for lawns? 12. Compare the floweret of the red clover with the sweet pea blossom and describe the resemblance. 13. Study a head of white clover from the time it opens until it is brown, and tell what changes take place in it day by day. 14. What has happened to the flowerets that are bent downward around the stalk? 15. Watch one of these flowerets deflect, and describe the process. 16. How many flowerets do you find in a head of red clover? Of white clover? Of alsike? 17. Which flowerets open first in a head of red clover? 18. Describe a clover seed. Describe a seed of alfalfa. 19. What insects do you find visiting the red clover blossoms? The white clover blossoms? ALFALFA, OR LUCERNE.[48] [48] Home Nature-Study Course, New Series, Vol. I, No. 1, October, 1904. The alfalfa plant is just now coming into great prominence in New York State. Every teacher, particularly in the rural schools, will need to know the plant and to have some information about it. _What alfalfa is._--It is a clover-like plant. It is perennial. It has violet-purple flowers. The leaves have three narrow leaflets. It sends up many stiff stems, 2 to 3 feet high. The roots go straight down to great depths. _Why it is important._--It is an excellent cattle food, and cattle-raising for dairy purposes is the leading special agricultural industry in New York State. In fact, New York leads all the States in the value of its dairy products. Any plant that is more nutritious and more productive of pasture and hay than the familiar clovers and grasses will add immensely to the dairy industry, and therefore to the wealth of the State. Alfalfa is such a plant. It gives three cuttings of hay year after year in New York State, thereby yielding twice as much as clover does. In the production of digestible nutrients per acre ranks above clover as 24 ranks above 10. When once established it withstands droughts, for the roots grow deep. Alfalfa is South European. It was early introduced into North America. It first came into prominence in the semi-arid West because of its drought-resisting qualities, and now it has added millions of dollars to the wealth of the nation. Gradually it is working its way into the East. It is discussed in the agricultural press and before farmers' institutes. Last year the College of Agriculture offered to send a small packet of seeds to such school children in New York State as wanted to grow a little garden plat of it. About 5,000 children were supplied. The teacher must now learn what alfalfa is. In nearly every rural community, sufficient alfalfa can be found for school purposes. In many places it has run wild along roadsides. On these plants make the following observations: 1. Under what conditions have you found alfalfa growing? How did the plant come to grow there,--sown, or run wild? 2. Describe the form of the root. How does the root branch? 3. Do you find the little tubercles or nodules on the roots? On what part of the roots? How large? How numerous? 4. The crown of the plant (at the surface of the ground),--describe it, and how the tops and the roots start from it. 5. The stems,--how many from each crown, whether erect or prostrate, how they branch. 6. The leaves,--simple or compound? Form? Edges entire or fine toothed? Do the leaves "sleep" at night, as those of clover do? 7. Do you find any distinct spots on the leaves? What do you think is the cause of them? 8. Flowers,--how borne (whether singly or in clusters), color, form, resemblance to any other flowers you may know. Do they vary in color? 9. If possible, find the seed-pods and seeds, and describe. 10. Make inquiries as to whether alfalfa is becoming well known in your vicinity. _Agricultural Account of Alfalfa._ You may be asked some practical questions about alfalfa; therefore we give you a brief agricultural account of it. If you desire further information, write to the College of Agriculture, Ithaca, N. Y., for Bulletin 221, "Alfalfa in New York." Alfalfa is grown mostly for hay. It is not adapted to pasture, because the new growth springs from the crown at the surface of the ground, and if this is destroyed the growth will not be renewed vigorously. New York is a hay-producing State. Grain feeds can be grown more cheaply in the West. It is of great importance to the State, therefore, if a better hay-producing plant can be found. We have seen that New York leads the States in dairy cattle. Other livestock also is abundant. Last year more than half a million horses and mules were fed in the State. Success has not attended efforts to grow alfalfa in all parts of New York. This is due to two principal reasons: (1) farmers have not known the plant and its habits well enough to give it the care and treatment it demands; (2) the soils of many localities, because of their physical condition or composition, are not suitable for the plant. The alfalfa seedling is not a strong plant. It cannot compete with weeds nor overcome adverse conditions of moisture; it cannot adapt itself to conditions resulting from poor preparation of land, and it is not vigorous in its ability to get food from any source. Care must be given to the preparation of the land in order that sufficient moisture may be supplied during the early stages of growth and that there may be an abundance of quickly available plant-food. After growth has started, alfalfa has the power to get some of its nitrogen from the air through the nodules which grow upon its roots; yet during the early stages of growth it is essential that the soil be supplied with all elements of plant-food in available form. While alfalfa requires an abundance of moisture for its best growth and development, yet it will not grow in soils that hold water for any considerable length of time. Such soils are usually those with an impervious subsoil or hard-pan, or those of clay or silt structure which retain free water to the exclusion of air. Therefore, it is important that alfalfa soils be well and uniformly drained, either by natural conditions or by underground drains. One other essential of prime importance is that the soil be neutral or alkaline in its reaction; in other words, that it contain no free acid. Limestone or blue-grass soils are ideal in this regard for alfalfa. If acid is present, the difficulty may be corrected either wholly or in part by the application of 500 to 2,000 pounds of lime per acre. As in most other legumes (members of the family Leguminosæ, including peas, beans, clovers), there is a peculiar relationship existing between the plant and excrescences or nodules upon its roots. These nodules are essential to the normal growth and development of the plant. They contain bacteria, and these bacteria have the power of "fixing" or appropriating the free atmospheric nitrogen in the soil. Legumes are "nitrogen-gatherers," whereas most other plants secure their nitrogen only from decomposing organic matter. Failure to have the soil inoculated with the proper bacteria for alfalfa is the cause for many failures with the crop. In most instances when the plants do not make satisfactory growth, or have a yellow, dwarfed appearance, the trouble can be traced to the absence of these bacteria from the soil, and hence to a lack of nodules on the roots. The relationship existing between the plant and the organism is one of mutual benefit. Each kind of leguminous plant seems to have its characteristic bacterium, which grows on no other plant, although this question is not thoroughly settled. Farmers are becoming aware of this requisite in alfalfa culture and usually supply it in two different ways. The older method is to take the surface soil from an old alfalfa field, where the plants have grown well and where nodules are to be found on the roots, and to sow it on the land to be seeded at the rate of one hundred or more pounds per acre. In this way the soil becomes inoculated with the bacteria, and as the young plants spring into growth the bacteria develop on the roots. Another method is to inoculate the seed before sowing with artificial cultures of the bacteria. Both of these methods are usually successful, and if soil conditions are right the chances for failure are few. Alfalfa should be cut when it opens into flower. At this time the stems and leaves contain their highest percentage of nutrients, the leaves do not so easily fall off in curing, and the stems are not so woody. Besides these reasons, if cutting be delayed until after flowering, the plant may not spring quickly into subsequent growth. Disease does not spare the alfalfa plant. Both leaves and roots are attacked, the leaf spot being serious. The parasitic dodder is a serious enemy in some parts of New York State. LEAFLET XXXV. HOW PLANTS LIVE TOGETHER.[49] BY L. H. BAILEY. [49] Nature-Study Quarterly No. 6: Leaflet 19, October, 1900. [Illustration] To the general observer, plants seem to be distributed in a promiscuous and haphazard way, without law or order. This is because he does not see and consider. The world is now full of plants. Every plant puts forth its supreme effort to multiply its kind. The result is an intense struggle for an opportunity to live. Seeds are scattered in profusion, but only the few can grow. The many do not find the proper conditions. They fall on stony ground. In Fig. 250 this loss is shown. The trunk of an elm tree stands in the background. The covering of the ground, except about the very base of the tree, is a mat of elm seedlings. There are thousands of them in the space shown in the picture, so many that they make a sod-like covering which shows little detail in the photograph. Not one of these thousands will ever make a tree. [Illustration: _Fig. 250. A carpet of young elms, all of which must perish._] Since there is intense competition for every foot of the earth's surface that is capable of raising plants, it follows that every spot will probably have many kinds of plant inhabitants. Plants must live together. They associate; they become adapted or accustomed to each other. Some can live in shade; they thrive in the forest, where sun-loving plants perish. Others prefer the sun, and thereby live together. There are plant societies. [Illustration: _Fig. 251. A plant society waiting for the spring._] [Illustration: _Fig. 252. Weak, narrow-leaved grasses grow in the cat-tail forest._] Every distinct or separate area has its own plant society. There is one association for the hard-tramped dooryard,--knot-weed and broad-leaved plantain with interspersed grass and dandelions; one for the fence-row,--briars and choke-cherries and hiding weeds; one for the dry open field,--wire-grass and mullein and scattered docks; one for the slattern roadside,--sweet clover, ragweed, burdock; one for the meadow swale,--smartweed and pitchforks; one for the barnyard,--rank pigweeds and sprawling barn-grass; one for the dripping rock-cliff,--delicate bluebells and hanging ferns and grasses. Indefinitely might these categories be extended. We all know the plant societies, but we have not considered them. In every plant society there is one dominant note. It is the individuality of one kind of plant which grows most abundantly or overtops the others. Certain plant-forms come to mind when one thinks of willows, others when he thinks of an apple orchard, still others when he thinks of a beech forest. The farmer may associate "pussly" with cabbages and beets, but not with wheat and oats. He associates cockle with wheat, but not with oats or corn. We all associate dandelions with grassy areas, but not with burdock or forests. It is impossible to open one's eyes out-of-doors, outside the paved streets of cities, without seeing a plant society. A lawn is a plant society. It may contain only grass, or it may contain weeds hidden away in the sward. What weeds remain in the lawn? Only those which can withstand the mowing. What are they? Let a bit of lawn grow as it will for a month, and see what there is in it. A swale, a dry hillside, a forest of beech, a forest of oak, a forest of hemlock or pine, a weedy yard, a tangled fence-row, a brook-side, a deep quiet swamp, a lake shore, a railroad, a river bank, a meadow, a pasture, a dusty roadway,--each has its characteristic plants. Even in the winter, one may see these societies,--the tall plants still asserting themselves, others of less aspiring stature, and others snuggling just under the snow (Fig. 251). [Illustration: _Fig. 253. The wild grape covers the treetop, and the children play in the bower. The grape is searching for light._] Often these societies are in the nature of overgrowth and undergrowth--one society living beneath another. Of such are forest societies. Few woods are so dark that some plants do not grow on the ground, unless they are evergreen or coniferous woods. Even in humbler communities, the overgrowth and undergrowth are usually apparent if one looks closely. Separate the cat-tails in the dense swamp and see the weak and narrow-leaved grasses growing between (Fig. 252). Note the clover, young grasses, and other plants between the grass in the meadow: the farmer says that his meadow has good "bottom." Some plants even grow on top of other plants. It is their way of getting light. Of such are the climbers. Note the mantle which the wild grape throws over the trees (Fig. 253). Often the supporting tree is smothered and killed. When an area is newly cleared, many plants rush for it. Quickly it is covered with ambitious growths,--pokeweeds, fireweeds, thistles, briars, nettles. Often each plant occupies large places alone, making clumps or patches. These patches are plant colonies,--made up mostly of one species or kind (Fig. 254). But as the struggle tightens, other plants insinuate themselves into the colony and it is broken up; a mixed population results. Sometimes these colonies are broken up by the shade of trees and tall bushes which have come up near them, for all neglected areas, in this part of the world, tend to return to forest if they are not mown, pastured or burned. Mown and pastured areas run into grass, for the grass withstands the cutting and grazing. In burned areas the struggle begins anew when the fire has passed. [Illustration: _Fig. 254. A colony of clotbur._] Plant societies are easy to study for the school. The study of them appeals to the desire for exploration and adventure, and adds zest to the excursion. Go to a swale, swamp, roadside, forest, weedy field, or other place, and ask the pupil to note: (1) that the flora of the place is unlike that of places with different physical features; (2) that these particular plants grow together because they can all survive under similar conditions; (3) what these conditions are,--whether sun, shade, dry soil, wet soil, sand, clay, rock; (4) what particular plant is most abundant or gives character to the society. [Illustration: _Fig. 255. Two plant societies,--the close-bitten sward and the rushy pond._] Study one society thoroughly. Make lists of the kinds of plants and of the relative numbers of each. If the names of the plants are not known, call them by numbers; make dried specimens of them for reference. When another society is visited, repeat these observations, and compare one society with another. [Illustration: _Fig. 256. The edge of the road. Trees and bushes crowd the drive-way, and a ribbon of grass and weeds has pushed itself to the very margin._] _Ask every plant why it grows there._ LEAFLET XXXVI. PLANTING A PLANT.[50] BY L. H. BAILEY. [50] Nature-Study Quarterly, No. 8: Leaflet 21, January, 1901. [Illustration] Most persons are interested in plants, even though they do not know it. They enjoy the green verdure, the brilliant flower, the graceful form. They are interested in plants in general. I wish that every person were interested in some plant in particular. There is a pleasure in the companionship, merely because the plant is a living and a growing thing. It expresses power, vitality. It is a complete, self-sufficient organism. It makes its way in the world. It is alive. The companionship with a plant, as with a bird or an insect, means more than the feeling for the plant itself. It means that the person has interest in something real and genuine. It takes him out-of-doors. It invites him to the field. It is suggestive. It inculcates a habit of meditation and reflection. It enables one to discover himself. I wish that every child in New York State had a plant of his own, and were attached to it. Why cannot the teacher suggest this idea to the pupils? It may be enough to have only one plant the first year, particularly if the pupil is young. It matters little what the plant is. The important thing is that it shall be alive. Every plant is interesting in its way. A good pigweed is much more satisfactory than a poor rosebush. The pupil should grow the plant from the beginning. He should not buy it ready grown, for then it is not his, even though he own it. It is well to begin with some plant that grows quickly and matures early. One is ambitious in spring, but his enthusiasm may wither and die in the burning days of summer. If possible, grow the plant in the free open ground; if this is not feasible, grow it in a pot or box or tin can. Take advantage of the early spring enthusiasm. Choose hardy and vigorous plants: sow the seeds when the "spirit moves." If a pupil is interested in kitchen-garden vegetables, recommend lettuce and radish, or a potato. If in flowers, suggest sweet pea, bachelor's button or blue-bottle, annual phlox, candytuft, China aster. If in fruits, suggest strawberry. * * * * * We desire to inaugurate a general movement for the planting of plants. The school ground should be planted. Private yards should be planted. Roadsides should be planted. In some cities and villages there are committees or other organizations whose object it is to encourage the planting of public and private places. Sometimes this organization is connected with the school interest, sometimes with a local horticultural or agricultural society, sometimes with a business men's organization. There should be such a committee in every village and town. We wish that the teachers might help in this work, for they would not only be lending their aid to planting, but also be interesting their pupils in some concrete and useful work, and teaching them the value of public spirit. Arbor Day should be more than a mere ceremonial. It should be a means of awakening interest in definite plans for the adornment of the neighborhood and of directing the attention of the children nature-ward. LEAFLET XXXVII. CUTTINGS AND CUTTINGS.[51] BY L. H. BAILEY. [51] Nature-Study Quarterly No. 3: Leaflet 16, January, 1900. [Illustration] Perhaps no subject connected with the growing of plants awakens so much popular wonder and inquiry as their propagation by means of cuttings and grafts. We assume that propagation by means of seeds is the natural way, and therefore do not wonder, notwithstanding that it is wonderful. We assume that propagation by cuttings is wholly unnatural, and therefore never cease to wonder, notwithstanding that this is less wonderful than the other. To common minds, common things are not wonderful. Mere commonplace familiarity takes away the charm, for such minds have no desire of inquiry. The well trained mind goes beneath the surface, and wonders at everything; and this wonder, grown old and wise, is the spirit of science. A plant does not have a definite number of parts, as an animal does. It may have ten branches or fifty. Each of these branches may do what every other branch does--produce leaves, flowers, fruits, seeds. It is not so with the higher animals, for in them each part may do something which some other part cannot do: if the part is a leg, it runs; if an ear, it hears. Each part serves the whole animal; and it cannot reproduce the animal. But in the plant, each branch lives for itself: it grows on the parent stock; or, if it is removed, it may grow in the soil. And if it grow in the soil, it is relieved of competition with other branches and grows bigger: it makes what we call a plant. Having thus bewildered my reader, I may say that a bit of a plant stuck into the ground stands a chance of growing; and this bit is a cutting. Plants have preferences, however, as to the kind of bit which shall be used; but there is no way of telling what this preference is except by trying. In some instances this preference has not been discovered, and we may say that the plant cannot be propagated by cuttings. Most plants prefer that the cuttings be made of the soft or growing wood, of which the "slips" of geraniums and coleus are examples. Others grow equally well from cuttings of the hard or mature wood, as currants and grapes; and in some instances this mature wood may be of roots, as in the blackberry. Somewhat different principles underlie the handling of these two kinds of cuttings; and these principles we may now consider. We shall find it excellent practice to set the pupils to making cuttings now and then. If we can do nothing more, we can make cuttings of potatoes, as the farmer does; and we can plant them in a box in the window. [Illustration: _Fig. 257. Geranium cutting. One-half natural size._] THE SOFTWOOD CUTTING. The softwood cutting is made from tissue which is still growing, or at least from that which is not dormant. It must not be allowed to wilt. It must, therefore, be protected from direct sunlight and dry air until it is well established; and if it has many leaves, some of them should be removed, or at least cut in two in order to reduce the evaporating surface. Keep the soil uniformly moist; and avoid soils which contain much decaying organic matter, for these soils are breeding places of fungi which attack the soft cutting and cause it to "damp off." For most plants, the proper age of maturity of wood for the making of cuttings may be determined by giving the twig a quick bend; if it snaps and hangs by the bark, it is in proper condition; if it bends without breaking it is too young and soft or too old; if it splinters, it is too old and woody. [Illustration: _Fig. 258. Carnation cutting. Natural size._] The tips of strong upright shoots usually make the best cuttings. Preferably each cutting should have a joint or node near its base; and if the internodes are short, it may comprise two or three joints. Allow one to three leaves to remain at the top. If these leaves are large, cut them in two. Insert the cutting half or more its length in clean sand or gravel. Press the earth firmly about it. Throw a newspaper over the bed to exclude the light--if the sun strikes it--and to prevent too rapid evaporation. See that the soil is moist clear through, not on top only. [Illustration: _Fig. 259. Rose cutting. More than one-half natural size._] Mason's sand is good earth in which to start cuttings. Or fine gravel--sifted of most of its earthy matter--may be used. If the cuttings are to be grown in a window, put three or four inches of the earth in a shallow box or a pan. A soap box cut in two lengthwise, so that it makes a box four or five inches deep--like a gardener's flat--is excellent. [Illustration: _Fig. 260. Cutting-bed, showing carnations and roses._] If the box does not receive direct sunlight, it may be covered with a pane of glass to prevent evaporation; and then the children may see the plants more readily. But take care that the air is not kept too close, else the damping-off fungi may attack the cuttings and they will rot at the surface of the ground. See that the pane is raised a little at one end to afford ventilation; and if water collects in drops on the under side of the glass, remove the pane for a time. Cuttings of common plants, as geranium, coleus, fuchsia, carnation, should be kept in a living-room temperature. The pictures are better than words. The line across them shows where the soil comes. There are softwood cuttings of the geranium (Fig. 257), the carnation (Fig. 258), and the rose (Fig. 259); and there is a gardener's cutting bed (Fig. 260) with cuttings of carnations and roses. Be patient. As long as the cuttings look bright and green, they are safe. It may be a month before roots form. When roots have formed, the plants will begin to make new leaves at the tip. Then they may be transplanted into other boxes or into pots. The verbena in Fig. 261 is just ready for transplanting. Each child will want a plant. [Illustration: _Fig. 261. Verbena cutting ready for transplanting. Two-thirds natural size._] It is not always easy to find growing shoots from which to make the cuttings. The best practice is to cut back some old plant severely, then keep it warm and well watered, and thereby force it to throw out new shoots. The old geranium plant from the window garden, or the one taken up from the lawn bed, may be served this way. See Fig. 262. This may seem hard treatment, but that is all the old plant is good for; it has passed its usefulness for bloom. The best plants of the geranium and the coleus and many window plants are those which are not more than one year old. The cuttings that are made in January, February, or March will give compact blooming plants for the next winter; and thereafter new ones take their place. Some plants may be propagated by means of cuttings of leaves. The Rex begonias or "beefsteak geraniums" are the commonest examples. The large, nearly mature leaf is divided into triangular pieces, each piece containing at its point a bit of the leaf-base (top of the leaf-stalk). This kind of cutting is shown in Fig. 263. This base is sometimes split (as at o) by gardeners to hasten the formation of roots. Only the tip of the cutting is stuck into the sand; otherwise it is treated like other softwood cuttings. THE HARDWOOD CUTTING. Many plants grow readily from cuttings of ripe or dormant wood. The willows cast their branchlets in snow and wind, and these, falling in pleasant places propagate their kind; and thus the river sides and the lake shores become willow-crowned. Grapes, currants, gooseberries, poplars readily take root from the hardwood. Fig. 264 shows a currant cutting. It has only one bud above the ground. [Illustration: _Fig. 262. Old geranium plant cut back to make it throw out shoots from which cuttings can be made._] The best results are attained when the cuttings are made in the fall, and then buried until spring in sand in the cellar. They are not idle while they rest. The lower end calluses or heals, and the roots form more readily when the cutting is planted in the spring. But if the children are interested, take cuttings at any time in winter, plant them in a deep box in the window, and watch. They will need no shading or special care. When plants of any variety are scarce, the cuttings may be shorter. Sometimes they are reduced to a single "eye" or bud, with an inch or two of wood attached; and these single-eye cuttings are planted much as one plants seeds. [Illustration: _Fig. 263. Begonia leaf cutting. Natural size._] THE GRAFT. If the cutting were planted in a plant rather than in the soil, we should have a graft; and the graft might grow. In this case, the cutting would not make roots, but it would grow fast to the other plant, and the twain would become one. When the cutting is inserted in a plant it is no longer called a cutting, but a cion; and the plant in which it is inserted is called the stock. The completed thing--the cion growing in the stock--is a graft. [Illustration: _Fig. 264. Currant cutting. One-third natural size._] Plants are particular as to their companions, when it comes to such close relationships as these. They choose the stocks upon which they will grow; but we can find out what their choice is only by making the experiment. There are queer things about it. The pear grows well on the quince, but the quince does not grow so well on the pear. The pear grows on some of the hawthorns, but it is an unwilling subject on the apple. Tomato plants will grow on potato plants and potato plants on tomato plants. When the potato is the root, both tomatoes and potatoes may be produced; when the tomato is the root, neither potatoes nor tomatoes will be produced. Chestnuts are said to grow on some kinds of oaks. [Illustration: _Fig. 265. Cion for cleft-grafting. One-half natural size._] Why do we graft? Think a bit. If I sow seeds of a Baldwin apple, I shall probably have as many kinds of apples as I have trees. Some of these apples may be like the Baldwin, and they may not. That is, apple seeds do not reproduce the particular variety. They will not be held to any stricter account than merely to produce apples; these apples may range all the way from toothsome kinds to Ben Davis. The nurseryman knows this, and he does not wait for the trees to bear in the hope that they will produce something to his liking. So he grafts them when they still are young,--takes a cion from the kind which he wishes to perpetuate. So it happens that all the Baldwins and the Kings and the Russets, and all other named varieties, are growing on alien roots; and what kinds of fruits these stocks would have produced no one will ever know, because their heads were cut off in youth and other heads were put on to order. In this way apples and pears and plums and peaches and cherries and apricots are propagated, for they will not grow readily from cuttings. But raspberries and blackberries and gooseberries and currants and grapes grow willingly from cuttings, and they are not grafted by the nurseryman. The forming, growing tissue of the trunk is the cambium, lying on the outside of the woody cylinder, beneath the bark. In order that union may take place, the cambium of the cion and the stock must come together. Therefore, the cion is set in the side of the stock. I once knew a man who believed that everything was designed for some useful purpose. The hole in the pith bothered him, until he discovered that a cion just filled it. He grafted his trees accordingly; but the experiment was productive of nothing except pithy remarks. [Illustration: _Fig. 266. Cleft-graft. One-half natural size._] There are many ways of shaping the cion and of preparing the stock to receive it. These ways are dictated largely by the relative sizes of cion and stock, although many of them are matters of mere personal preference. The underlying principles are two: see that there is close contact between the cambiums of cion and stock; cover the wounded surfaces to prevent evaporation and to protect the parts from disease. [Illustration: _Fig. 267. The graft waxed._] On large stocks the common form of grafting is the cleft-graft. The stock is cut off and split; and in one or both sides a wedge-shaped cion is firmly inserted. Fig. 265 shows the cion; Fig. 266, the cions set in the stock; Fig. 267, the stock waxed. It will be seen that the lower bud--that lying in the wedge--is covered by the wax; but being nearest the food supply and least exposed to weather, it is the most likely to grow: it pushes through the wax. [Illustration: _Fig. 268. Shield-budding. One-half natural size._] The wax is made of beeswax, resin, and tallow. The hands are greased, and the wax is then worked until it is soft enough to spread. For the little grafting which any school would do, it is better to buy the wax of a seedsman. However, grafting is hardly to be recommended as a general school diversion, as the making of cuttings is; and this account of it is inserted chiefly to satisfy the general curiosity on the subject. But we hope that now and then a youngster will make the effort for himself, for nothing is more exciting than to make a graft grow all by one's self. Cleft-grafting is done in spring, as growth begins. The cions are cut previously, when perfectly dormant, and from the tree which it is desired to propagate. The cions are kept in sand or moss in the cellar. Limbs of various sizes may be cleft-grafted--from one-half inch up to four inches in diameter; but a diameter of one inch is the most convenient size. All the leading or main branches of a tree top may be grafted. If the remaining parts of the top are gradually cut away and the scions grow well, the entire top will be changed over to the new variety in three or four years. Each cion may be a different variety; but there is no difference in the operation or the treatment of the tree. On young or small stocks, like nursery trees, the cleft-graft is not practicable, and a different form of grafting is employed; but the teacher will not care to be confused with further details. [Illustration: _Fig. 269. The bud set in the matrix. One-half natural size._] We have seen that a cutting may be reduced to a single bud; so may a cion. If the bud-cion has very little or no wood attached, and is inserted underneath the bark, the operation is known as budding. The commonest form of budding is shown in Figs. 268, 269, 270. This is the method known as shield-budding, because the bud, with its attached bark, is shield-shaped (Fig. 268). A T-shape incision is made in the stock, and under the bark the bud is inserted (Fig. 269); then the wound is tightly bound with soft cord or bast (Fig. 270). Budding may be performed whenever the bark will "slip" and when well grown buds can be secured,--that is, either in spring or late summer. It is usually performed at the latter season; and then the bud does not throw out a shoot the same season, but merely grows fast to the stock. The next spring it throws out a shoot and makes a trunk; and in the meantime the stock has been cut off just above the bud. That is, the bud-shoot takes the place of the top of the stock. Shield-budding is performed only on small and young stocks. It is usually exclusively employed in the propagation of stone fruits, as cherries, peaches, plums, apricots, for experience has proved that it is preferable to other forms of grafting. It may also be employed for other fruit trees. [Illustration: _Fig. 270. The bud tied._] How is a peach tree made? In 1898 a pit or seed is saved. In the spring of 1899 it is planted. The young tree comes up quickly. In August, 1899, the little stock has one bud--of the desired variety--inserted near the ground. In the spring of 1900 the stock is severed just above the bud: the bud throws out a shoot which grows to a height of four or six feet; and in the fall of 1900 the tree is sold. It is known as a year-old tree; but the root is two years old. How is an apple tree made? The seed is saved in 1898, planted in 1899. The seedlings do not grow so rapidly as those of the peach. At the end of 1899 they are taken up and sorted; and in the spring of 1900 they are planted. In July or August, 1900, they are budded. In the spring of 1901 the stock is cut off above the bud; and the bud-shoot grows three or four feet. In 1902 the shoot branches, or the top begins to form; and in the fall of 1902 the tree may be sold as a two-year-old, although most persons prefer to buy it in 1903 as a three-year-old. In some parts of the country, particularly in the west, the little seedling is grafted in the winter of 1899-1900 in a grafting-room; and the young grafts are set in the nursery row in the spring of 1900, to complete their growth. I have now given my reader an elementary lesson in horticulture; but I shall consider it of little avail if it is not transformed into practice for the children. February is the gardener's time for the starting of his cutting-beds, in which to grow plants for the summer bloom. Ask the children to bring the old geraniums and fuchsias and coleus, and other favorites. Keep them in a warm window; cut them back; see that they are well watered; then take the cuttings when the time comes. The children will be interested to watch the fortunes of the different cuttings. They will be interested in Vergil's couplet, as set to rhyme in old-fashioned English: Some need no root, nor doth the Gardner doubt, That Sprigs though headlong set, will timely sprout. LEAFLET XXXVIII. A CHILDREN'S GARDEN.[52] BY L. H. BAILEY. [52] Teachers' Leaflet No. 4, April, 1897. [Illustration] We want every school child in the State to grow a few plants. We want every one of them to learn something of why and how plants grow; and the best and surest way to learn is to grow the plants and to watch them carefully. We want everyone to become interested in everything that lives and grows. It does not matter so very much just what kinds of plants one grows as it does that he grows something and grows it the best that he knows how. We want the children to grow these plants for the love of it,--that is, for the fun of it,--hence we propose that they grow flowers; for when one grows pumpkins and potatoes, and such things, he is usually thinking of how much money he is going to make at the end of the season. Yet, we should like some rivalry in the matter in every school, and we therefore propose that a kind of a fair be held at the school-house next September, soon after school begins, so that each child may show the flowers which he has grown. What a jolly time that will be! Now, we must not try to grow too many things or to do too much. Therefore, we propose that you grow sweet peas and China asters. They are both easy to grow, and the seeds are cheap. Each one has many colors, and everybody likes them. Now let us tell you just how we should grow them. _1. The place._--Never put them--or any other flowers--in the middle of the lawn,--that is, out in the center of the yard. They do not look well there, and the grass roots run under them and steal the food and the moisture. I am sure that you would not like to see a picture hung up on a fence-post. It has no background, and it looks out of place. The picture does not mean anything when hung in such a spot. In the same way, a flower bed does not mean anything when set out in the center of a lawn. We must have a background for it, if possible,--a wall upon which to hang it. So we will put the flower bed just in front of some bushes or near the back fence, or alongside the smoke-house, or along the walk at the side of the house, or in the back yard. The flowers will not only look better in such places, but it will not matter so much if we make a failure of our flower bed; there are always risks to run, for the old hen may scratch up the seeds, the cow may break into the yard some summer night, or some bug may eat the plants up. Perhaps some of the children may live so near to the school-house that they can grow their plants upon the school grounds, and so have sweet peas and asters where there are usually docks and smartweeds. Grow them alongside the fence, or against the school-house if there is a place where the eaves will not drip on them. _2. How to make the bed._--Spade the ground up deep. Take out all the roots of docks and thistles and other weeds. Shake the dirt all out of the sods and throw the grass away. You may need a little manure in the soil, especially if the land is either very hard or very loose and sandy. But the manure must be very fine and well mixed into the soil. It is easy, however, to make sweet pea soil so rich that the plants will run to vine and not bloom well. Make the bed long and narrow, but not narrower than three feet. If it is narrower than this the grass roots will be likely to run under it and suck up the moisture. If the bed can be got at on both sides it may be as wide as five feet. Sow the seeds in little rows crosswise the bed. The plants can then be weeded and hoed easily from either side. If the rows are marked by little sticks, or if a strong mark is left in the earth, you can break the crust between the rows (with a rake) before the plants are up. The rows ought to be four or five inches further apart than the width of a narrow rake. _3. How to water the plants._--I wonder if you have a watering-pot? If you have, put it where you cannot find it; for we are going to water this garden with a rake! We want you to learn, in this little garden, the first great lesson in farming,--how to save the water in the soil. If you learn that much this summer, you will know more than many old farmers do. You know that the soil is moist in the spring when you plant the seeds. Where does this moisture go to? It dries up,--goes off into the air. If we could cover up the soil with something, we should prevent the moisture from drying up. Let us cover it with a layer of loose, dry earth! We will make this covering by raking the bed every few days,--once every week anyway, and oftener than that if the top of the soil becomes hard and crusty, as it does after a rain. Instead of pouring water on the bed, therefore, we will keep the moisture in the bed. If, however, the soil becomes so dry in spite of you that the plants do not thrive, then water the bed. Do not _sprinkle_ it, but _water_ it. Wet it clear through at evening. Then in the morning, when the surface begins to get dry, begin the raking again to keep the water from getting away. Sprinkling the plants every day or two is one of the surest ways to spoil them. _4. When and how to sow._--The sweet peas should be put in just as soon as the ground can be dug, even before frosts are passed. Yet good results can be had if the seeds are put in as late as the 10th of May. In the sweet pea garden at Cornell last year, we sowed the seeds on the 20th of April. This was about right. The year before, we sowed them on the 30th. If sown very early, they are likely to bloom better, but they may be gone before the middle of September. The blooming can be much prolonged if the flowers are cut as soon as they begin to fade. Plant sweet peas deep,--two or three or sometimes even four inches. When the plants are a few inches high, pull out a part of them so that they will not stand nearer together than six inches in the row. It is a good plan to sow sweet peas in double rows,--that is, put two rows only five or six inches apart,--and stick the brush or place the chicken-wire support between them. China asters may be sown from the middle of May to the first of June. In one large test at Cornell, we sowed them the 4th of June, and had good success; but this is rather later than we would advise. The China asters are autumn flowers, and they should be in their prime in September and early October. Sow the aster seed shallow,--not more than a half inch deep. The tall kinds of asters should have at least a foot between the plants in the row, and the dwarf kinds six to eight inches. Sometimes China asters have rusty or yellow spots on the undersides of their leaves. This is a fungous disease. If it appears, have your father make some ammoniacal carbonate of copper solution and then spray them with it; or Bordeaux mixture will do just as well or better, only that it discolors the leaves and flowers. _5. What varieties to choose._--In the first place, do not plant too much. A garden which looks very small when the pussy willows come out and the frogs begin to peep, is pretty big in the hot days of July. A garden four feet wide and twenty feet long, half sweet peas and half asters, is about as big as most boys and girls will take care of. [Illustration: _Fig. 271. A clump of weeds in the corner by the house,--motherwort and Virginia creeper. How pretty they are!_] In the next place, do not get too many varieties. Four or five kinds each of peas and asters will be enough. Buy the named varieties,--that is, those of known colors,--not the mixed packets. If you are very fond of reds, then choose the reddest kinds; but it is well to put in at least three colors. The varieties which please you may not please me or your neighbor, so that I cannot advise you what to get. Of China asters, the Comet type--in various colors--will probably give the most satisfaction. They are mostly large-growing kinds. Other excellent kinds are the Perfection and Peony-flowered, Semple or Branching, Chrysanthemum-flowered, Washington, Victoria, and, for early, Queen of the Market. Odd varieties are Crown, German Quilled, Victoria Needle, and Lilliput. Very dwarf kinds are Dwarf Bouquet or Dwarf German, and Shakespeare. One of the chief merits of the China aster is the lateness of bloom, allowing the flowers to be used in the schools after they open in the fall. An excellent flower for sowing during May is the common annual Phlox (_Phlox Drummondii_ of the catalogues). Poppies are also satisfactory, but the flowers do not last long. Petunias are excellent and Balsams, Clarkias, Coreopsis (or Calliopsis), and Zinnias may be sown. Now, let us see how many boys and girls in New York State will raise sweet peas and China asters this year! And we should like them to write us all about it. LEAFLET XXXIX. A HILL OF POTATOES.[53] BY I. P. ROBERTS. [53] Nature-Study Quarterly, No. 7: Leaflet 20, January, 1901. [Illustration] Plant a hill of potatoes. You can do it in the school-room. Plant in a box or a flower-pot. Keep the box warm, and do not let the soil dry out. Plant whole tubers and pieces of tubers. Plant pieces of various sizes. Plant some that have no "eyes." Plant shallow--so that the tuber is just covered with soil--and deep. Watch the results. All plants are abundantly supplied with means for reproducing their kind: some by seed, some by multiplication at the crown or base or by roots, others by means of underground stems; and some, as the potato, have two or more means of reproduction. In its wild or partially improved state the potato is abundantly supplied with fruit, "seed balls," borne on the top of the stalks. The seeds of a single ball will often produce many varieties of potatoes; but they cannot be depended upon to reproduce the parent stock. Farmers seldom attempt to raise potatoes from the seeds; when they do it is for the purpose of securing new varieties. The common method of reproduction is to plant a part or all of an enlarged underground stem, that is, a part of the "potato" or tuber. When the soil is reasonably porous and fertile, a strong root may start at the seed-piece and descend more or less directly into the subsoil. In most cases, however, the roots spread laterally. This is a good illustration of how plants may vary in their root habits in order to adapt themselves to their environment. Notice where the roots form on the plants you are growing. Few farmers know where they form. Distinguish the true or feeding roots from the underground stems. Determine how many tubers form on each underground stem. Dig up a hill of potatoes from the garden before school closes. [Illustration: _Fig. 272. Underground part of potato plant in mellow soil._] A single eye, with a portion of the tuber attached to furnish nourishment to the bud until sustenance can be secured from newly formed rootlets, may produce one, occasionally more, strong upright stems. A most interesting study of manifold reproduction may be made even in the winter time by planting in a fertile soil a piece of potato containing a single eye (Fig. 273). As soon as the rootlets begin to start, divide each eye and piece into two parts and re-plant. In a few days after the rootlets have again started, divide the two pieces into four and re-plant. This operation may be performed again and again, until many plants suitable for transplanting in the open may be secured from a single eye. [Illustration: _Fig. 273. Piece of tuber for planting, bearing a single eye._] Demonstrate that the potato contains starch. This can be done by applying a drop of dilute iodine to a freshly cut surface of the tuber: the starch grains turn blue-black. Five cents' worth of iodine purchased at the drug-store will be sufficient for many tests. Dilute it about one-half with water. This starch, after being changed to sugar, supplies the young plant with nourishment. Dig up the pieces you have planted and see which start first, shoots or roots. The "potato" is an enlarged underground stem provided with numerous buds similar to those on the stems of plants above ground. These buds are placed spirally on the underground stem or tuber with a considerable degree of uniformity. As on the stems of other plants, the buds are less numerous and weaker at the base and most numerous and vigorous at the top or upper end. On a smooth well developed long potato, the spiral arrangement of the buds may be illustrated by sticking a tooth-pick or pin in each eye, beginning at the base or stem end, and connecting the pins with a string (Fig. 274). [Illustration: Fig. 274. How to illustrate the spiral arrangement of the eyes.] FARM NOTES ON THE POTATO. Now that we have seen the potato growing in the school-room, some information may be given respecting its treatment in the field as a crop. Potatoes are easily raised, even under adverse conditions, although they respond quickly to superior fertility and tillage. The average yield in the United States during the last ten years was 76.6 bushels an acre, although from three to four hundred bushels an acre are not uncommon under superior tillage when soil and climate are at their best. The area devoted to potatoes during the last decade was two and a half million acres annually. Potatoes do best on a moderately moist and deep soil and in a climate relatively cool. Since the period of growth is short, varying from three to five months, they should be planted in soil which has an abundance of readily available plant-food. Notice in Fig. 272 that most of the underground stems which have produced potatoes leave the main stem about four inches below the surface and but a short distance above the seed-piece. This suggests that the seed should be planted about four inches deep. To produce three hundred bushels of potatoes requires the exhalation of over three hundred tons of water: therefore water or moisture is of quite as much importance in securing large yields as plant-food. It is best to prepare the land deeply, to plant deep, and then to practice nearly or quite level culture. The practice of hilling up potatoes, so common in most parts of the country, is to be discouraged, usually, because it is wasteful of moisture and the tubers do not grow in the coolest part of the soil. For very early potatoes, hilling-up may be allowable. Till the soil very often to save the moisture. For the philosophy of this, see Leaflet No. IX. Not infrequently the potato is seriously injured by blights which attack the leaves. The early blight, which usually appears in June, may destroy some of the foliage, thereby checking growth. The late blight, which also attacks the foliage, is far more serious. It differs little in outward appearance from the early blight. In rare cases the vines are so seriously injured that no potatoes are formed. The potato rot or blight did great damage to the potato in many localities in the United States in 1845. In 1846 the blight appeared in Ireland and virtually destroyed the entire crop. Before this date the potato had become the chief food supply of the peasantry. The cultivation of oats as a food crop had been universal before the introduction of the potato, but oats furnished so little food on a given area as compared to the potato that the cultivation of them at the time the blight appeared had been very largely abandoned. The loss of the potato crop produced widespread famine. The most conservative estimate of the numbers who perished for want of food or by disease caused by a meager diet of unhealthy and innutritions food is set down at six hundred thousand during the two years of the potato blight. This disease was not so destructive in 1847 as in 1846; and by 1848 it had virtually disappeared. Some one has said that if Great Britain had expended one dollar for investigating the diseases of potatoes where she had spent a thousand dollars for perfecting the engines of war, the terrible famine might have been averted. We now think it a relatively easy matter to keep the blight in check by thorough spraying with Bordeaux mixture. HOW THE POTATO HAS BEEN IMPROVED. All plants have their origin in pre-existing plants. While the young plant is always similar to the one from which it was derived, it is never exactly like its parent in every detail. This arises from the fact that all of the conditions under which the parent plant and its offspring grow are never exactly alike. The variations or differences in the plants are usually exceedingly small in a single generation; but occasionally they are wide, in which case they are called "sports" and are usually difficult to perpetuate. If successive generations of plants are reared under continuously improved conditions, there will be a continuous and accumulating variation from generation to generation, which in time may come to be so great as to make it difficult to discover a marked similarity between the wild and the cultivated forms of the same plant. When conditions are undisturbed by man there is found to be a fierce struggle for existence. The hardiest or those best suited to the conditions preponderate, and this without any reference to the wants of mankind. The farmer steps in and selects those plants which give promise of being most useful or most beautiful and then decreases or eliminates the struggle for these selected plants, by destroying the plants which are least desirable, by fertilizing and tilling the soil, by conserving moisture, and by improving the physical conditions of the land, thereby making it more comfortable for the plants which he has chosen. The selected or "improved" plant, by reason of being more comfortable and better nourished, tends to vary in one or more directions from the wild and unimproved types. Whenever these variations tend towards greater productiveness, better quality or enhanced beauty, selection is again made of such specimens as give promise of supplying the wants and gratifying the desires of civilized man. The bettered conditions of the plant, by reason of man's effort, do not usually result in producing like variation along all lines. One part of the plant as the flower, the fruit, or the stem, varies more than the other parts. All this tends to break up a single type or stock into many varieties. There are hundreds of varieties of potatoes all traceable to a single wild species. The kind and quantity of nourishment supplied plays the most important part of any single factor in producing variation. The general character of the cultivated potato plant as to leaf, stem, root, and habit of growth, is virtually the same as the wild plant, variation having been directed and accentuated along the line of increasing the size and quality of the underground tubers. This habit of producing enormously enlarged underground stems has been operating so long that the plant has inherited the power of transmitting this acquired quality to the succeeding plants. The most improved varieties seldom produce seed balls, because growth has been directed so largely toward enlarging and multiplying the tubers. By selecting tubers with shallow buds or eyes and avoiding those with deep, sunken eyes, varieties have been produced with few eyes or buds, and these set not in deep indentations but nearly even with the surface of the potato. * * * * * As a school-room subject, the potato is not very tractable, unless we study merely the tubers. If the school is in session in summer, the growing plant may be had. Then it will be found to be an interesting and profitable exercise to set the children at the problem of determining the root-system of the potato plant. How do the roots look? Does the plant have a tap-root, or do the roots spread laterally? Are the tubers borne on roots? Or on underground stems? Why do you think so? Does the tuber terminate the branch? What relation, in position, do the tuber-bearing branches bear to other parts of the underground system? Do you think that the tuber-bearing branches aid in collecting food from the soil? The top of the plant may be studied in the same spirit,--branching, leaves, flowers, berries. If the growing plant cannot be had, study tubers. Compare as to size, shape, color, character of eyes, whether scabby or smooth. Use them as objects in drawing. Plant tubers in the school-room, in boxes or flower pots. This Leaflet will suggest some interesting observations. How important is the potato crop in the State and nation? The pupil can use his mathematics here. LEAFLET XL. THE HEPATICA.[54] BY ANNA BOTSFORD COMSTOCK. [54] Home Nature-Study Course, Vol. IV, No. 30, March, 1903. [Illustration] As children are always especially interested in the wild flowers in spring, I have thought best to study a few of the woodland blossoms. The wonderful processes of plant life are as well shown in these as in any. The hepatica is among the first which greets us in the spring, and we will study this first. There are several ways of getting acquainted with a plant: one is to go-a-visiting, and another is to invite the plant to our own home, either as guest on the window-sill, or as a tenant of the garden. When we visit the hepatica in its own haunts it is usually with the longing for spring in our hearts that awakens with the first warm sunshine and which is really one of the subtlest as well as greatest charms of living in a climate that has a snowy winter. As we thread our way into the sodden woods, avoiding the streams and puddles that are little glacial rivers and lakes from fast disappearing snow-drifts still heaped on the north sides of things, we look eagerly for signs of returning life. The eye slowly differentiates from the various shades of brown in the floor of the forest a bit of pale blue or pink purple that at first seems as if it were an optical delusion; but as we look again to make sure, lo! it is the hepatica. There it is, rising from its mass of purple brown leaves, leaves that are always beautiful in shape and color and suggest patterns for sculpture like the acanthus or for rich tapestries like the palm-leaf in the Orient. There the brave little flower stands with its face to the sun and its back to the snow-drift and looks out on a gray brown world and nods at it and calls it "good." It is when the hepatica is our guest that we have a better opportunity for studying its form and features. Take up a hepatica root in the fall and pot it and place it in a cool cellar until March 1. Then give it light, warmth, and moisture on your table and see how gladly it will blossom and tell its secrets. Or perhaps if we are not sufficiently forehanded to get the root in the fall we can get it during a thaw in March when we go foraging for spring feelings in winter woods. [Illustration: _Fig. 275. Hepatica, harbinger of spring._] When finally a bud has uncuddled and lifted itself into a flower, it will tell us the story of leaves in different disguises, and we may be able to notice whether the pollen ripens and is all distributed when the flower begins to fade and fall. We may note also the number of seeds and examine one of them with a lens. It is what the botanists call an akene, which simply means just one seed with a tight envelope about it. We have a careless habit of forgetting all about plants after their blossoms fade unless their fruits or seed are good to eat or good to look at. This is as inconsistent as it would be to lose all interest in the farm before the fields were planted. After the flower is gone the plant must mature its seeds and somehow must sow them. We will study the hepatica through the summer and autumn, for we must know what is happening to it every month. QUESTIONS CONCERNING THE HEPATICA TO BE ANSWERED DURING MARCH AND APRIL. 1. In what situations are the hepaticas found? 2. How does the hepatica prepare for the winter and store up energy for blossoming early in the spring? 3. How early do you find blossom buds down in the center of the plant? Did you ever look for these buds in the fall? 4. Do the flowers come out of the crown bud? 5. Are the leaves that come up late in the spring as fuzzy when they first appear as those that come up early? 6. Make out as complete a life-history of the hepatica as you can,--how it sows itself, where it grows, how long it lives, with what plant it keeps company. LEAFLET XLI. JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT.[55] BY ANNA BOTSFORD COMSTOCK. [55] Home Nature-Study Course, Vol. IV, No. 31, April, 1903. "Jack-in-the-Pulpit preaches to-day Under the green trees, just over the way. Squirrel and song sparrow high on their perch Hear the sweet lily bells ringing to church. Come, hear what his reverence rises to say, In his low, painted pulpit this calm Sabbath day, Fair is the canopy over him seen, Penciled by nature's hand, black, brown, and green." _J. G. Whittier._ [Illustration: _Fig. 276. Jack-in-the-Pulpit._] [Illustration] At one time or another, perhaps all of us are given to the belief that all flowers blossom for our especial enjoyment. It is hard to think back for a thousand years and imagine hepaticas blooming on our New York hills; yet no doubt, they blossomed then in far greater numbers than they do to-day. Many of our native plants played their part in sustaining the lives of the native Americans, and that little preacher, Jack-in-the-pulpit, was a turnip long before he was a preacher. Indian turnip was his name in the days of our ancestors because the Indians boiled his bulb-like root and the ripe berries, thus making them a less peppery and a more palatable food. The St. Nicholas Magazine was for so many years the organ through which Jack preached so many sermons to children all over our land that he is even to-day one of the best loved of the woodland flowers. Whittier, in his "Child Life," and Lucy Larcom have both celebrated Jack-in-the-pulpit in song, and these verses should be given to the children when they are studying the habits of this interesting plant. Jack-in-the-pulpit is a wild cousin of the over-civilized calla lily. It is interesting to study the way the flowers resemble each other, and this you and the children will be able to study for yourselves. It will teach you that the showy parts of a blossom may be merely a protection, and an advertisement for the true flower hidden within. QUESTIONS CONCERNING JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT. 1. Where do you find this plant, in dry or in wet locations? 2. What is the shape of the root? Is it pleasant to the taste? 3. How do the leaves look when they first appear above the ground? 4. How far are the leaves developed when the flowers appear? 5. Does the tip of the hood fold over at first? 6. Do you see a resemblance to the calla lily when you bend the tip of the hood backward? Compare or contrast the two plants. 7. How many leaves has Jack-in-the-pulpit? Are they simple or compound? 8. What are the colors of the "pulpits" in your locality? LEAFLET XLII. INDIAN CORN.[56] BY ANNA BOTSFORD COMSTOCK. [56] Home Nature-Study Course, Vol. IV, No. 32, May, 1903. _"Hail! Ha-wen-ni-yu! Listen with open ears to the words of thy people. Continue to listen. We thank our mother earth which sustains us. We thank the winds which have banished disease. We thank He-no for rain. We thank the moon and stars which give us light when the sun has gone to rest. We thank the sun for warmth and light by day. Keep us from evil ways that the sun may never hide his face from us for shame and leave us in darkness. We thank thee, oh, mighty Ha-wen-ni-yu that we still live. We thank thee that thou hast made our corn to grow. Thou art our creator and our good ruler, thou canst do no evil. Everything thou doest is for our happiness."_ [Illustration] Thus prayed the Iroquois Indians when the corn had ripened on the hills and valleys of New York State long before it was a state, and even before Columbus had turned his ambitious prows westward in quest of the Indies. Had he found the Indies with their wealth of fabrics and spices he would have found there nothing so valuable to the world as has proved this golden treasure of ripened corn. The origin of Indian corn, or maize, is shrouded in mystery. There is a plant which grows on the tablelands of Mexico which is possibly the original species, but so long had maize been cultivated by the American Indians that it was thoroughly domesticated when America was discovered. In those early days of American colonization it is doubtful, says Professor John Fiske, if our forefathers could have remained here had it not been for Indian corn. No plowing nor even clearing was necessary for the successful raising of this grain. The trees were girdled, thus killing their tops to let in the sunlight; the rich earth was scratched a little with a primitive tool and the seed put in and covered; and the plants that grew therefrom took care of themselves. If the pioneers had been obliged to depend alone upon the wheat and rye of Europe which would only grow with good tillage they might have starved before they had gained a foothold on our forest-covered shores. While maize has never been a popular grain in European countries outside of the southermost parts, yet on the great continents of Africa and Asia it was welcomed from the first, and is now largely grown. It has ripened for so many centuries on the slopes of the Himalayas that if you were to ask one of the natives to-day how long it had grown there he would answer you "always." It is fitting that a grain which is so peculiarly adapted to be the aid and support of a great civilization should grow upon a plant of such dignity and beauty as is the maize. The perfect proportions of the slender stalk to the long gracefully curving leaves; the plumed tassels swaying and bowing to every breeze and sending their pollen showers to the waiting skeins of silk hidden below; the ripened ear with its exact rows of shining yellow grains wrapped in silken husks; all these make the corn plant as delightful to the eye as it is intrinsically important to the welfare of nations. No more wonderful lesson in plant growth can we find for our study than this lesson of the Indian corn. [Illustration: _Fig. 277. Parts of corn kernel._] LESSON ON INDIAN CORN FOR SPRING AND SUMMER. Secure a kernel of corn and cut it in halves (Fig. 277) and with the naked eye you will be able to see there the young plant pressed close to its stored up food, which, though largely composed of starch, also has in it proteids and oil. You will see that this food is dry and thus cannot be used by the young plant, for plants, whether young or old, must take their nourishment in a fluid condition. Soak the seed and see how soon the young plant passes on the moisture to soften the food so that it may imbibe it and grow. Fill a tumbler with earth and plant a grain of corn next to the glass so that you may be able to see how it grows. CORN STALKS, LEAVES AND ROOTS. 1. Which appears first, root parts or leaf? 2. How does the leaf look when it first comes up? 3. How old is the corn when the blossom stalks begin to show above the leaves? 4. Does the stalk break more easily at the joints than elsewhere? Measure the distances between the joints in a stalk of young corn and two weeks later measure these distances again, and compare your figures. From these measurements tell whether the plant grows only at the top, or has it several growing places? 5. Are the joints nearer each other at the bottom or at the top? 6. Where do the bases of the leaves clasp the stalks? 7. Tell why this arrangement gives strength to the stalk. 8. Do you see a little growth at the base of the leaf that prevents the rain from flowing down between the stalk and the clasping leaf? This is called the rain-guard. How might it damage the plant if the water should get in between the leaf and stem? 9. What is the structure of the leaf and direction of the ribs? 10. How does this structure keep the long leaf from being torn to pieces by the wind? 11. Note the ruffled edge of the leaf. Lay such a leaf flat on a table and bend it this way and that, and note how this fullness allows it to bend without breaking the edges. What advantage is this to the plant? 12. Study the roots of a corn plant. How far do they extend into the ground? Describe them. 13. Study the brace roots that come off the stalk an inch or more above the ground. Of what utility are these to the plant? 14. Bend down a stalk of growing corn and place a stone on it near its base so as to hold it down, and note how it acts. Does it commence to lift itself up straight from the joint, or from a place between the joints? 15. Cut off the water supply from a plant, or watch the corn during a drought and tell how the leaves behave. 16. Do they offer as much surface to the air for evaporation when they are curled? Is this the way the plant protects itself by retaining this moisture during a dry time? 17. Do the stalks or leaves grow after the ears begin to form? 18. Do you find "suckers" growing; if so what is the variety? FLOWERS. There are two kinds of flowers on the corn: the tassels bearing the pollen, and the ears bearing the ovules which develop into seeds. Study first the tassel. Observe the flowerets through a lens if you have one and note that the pollen sacs open a little at one side instead of at the tip so that the wind is needed in order to shake out the pollen. It is estimated that on each corn plant there may be developed eighteen million pollen grains and two thousand ovules. The pollen-tube must penetrate the whole length of each thread of corn-silk in order to reach the ovules. 19. What agency carries the pollen grains to the ear? 20. What would happen to a field of corn if the farmer cut off all the tassels as soon as they were formed? 21. Find a tassel before it appears and study it. Secure an ear when only an inch or two long and study it. These should be studied as flower parts. 22. How early can you find the ear? Look at every joint and tell how many ears you find on a young stalk. 23. In studying the ear, take first the husk. Does it resemble the leaf in structure? What is the difference between the outer and the inner husks? 24. Do you believe that the husk is a modified leaf; if so why? In the young ear does each thread of silk extend out to the end of the ear; if so why? 25. Is there a thread of silk for each kernel in the ear? 26. Study corn when it is in the "milk." Is the taste sweet? 27. Does this sweet taste continue as the kernel matures? 28. How is the stalk modified to fit the ear? ENEMIES. The corn has many difficulties to contend with: there are heavy winds, too much or too little rain, hail, and, worst of all, frosts which not only kill it when it is first planted, but also hurt it before it is matured. The corn has living enemies also, such as wire-worms and cut-worms. Our forefathers were much troubled with the mischief which crows did in pulling corn. However, many of our observing farmers to-day say that only in rare instances do the crows injure corn much. The work done by cut-worms is often attributed to crows. 29. Please note in your locality what difficulties the corn has to contend with. If possible make a special study of the damage said to be done by crows. Give the results. LEAFLET XLIII. THE RIPENED CORN.[57] BY ANNA BOTSFORD COMSTOCK. [57] Home Nature-Study Course, Vol. V, No. 1, October, 1903. [Illustration] Every boy and girl living on a farm in New York State twenty-five years or more ago, has in memory a picture like this: a stubbly hill-side field beset with russet shocks of corn and constellations of orange pumpkins, whence might be seen wide valleys filled with purple haze, and far hills bedecked with autumn tapestries woven about emerald patches of new wheat. To such a field, after the laggard sun had changed the hoar frost to dew, would they hasten of an October morning, to begin the corn-husking. The enthusiastic youngster, who had an eye to artistic unity in the situation, invariably selected a pumpkin for his seat, scorning his more sordid fellows who had brought milking-stools from the barn, when nature had placed so many golden thrones at their disposal. Too soon a discovery was made about this that applies as well to other thrones,--it proved an uneasy seat, and was abandoned for a sofa constructed of corn-stalks. Here, leaning back with a full sense of luxury, listening to the rustle of the dry leaves and husks and the monotonous song of the cricket, enlivened now and then by the lazy call of the crow from the hemlocks on the hill, the sweet note of the belated meadow-lark from the valley, or the excited bark of the dog as he chased a squirrel along the fence, the busy husker passed the autumn day. On either side of him were evidences of his labor. On the right stood great disheveled stooks of corn stalks bereft of their pockets of gold; on the left lay in a heap the shining yellow ears, ready to be measured in the waiting bushel-basket; in front was always a little pile of noble ears with some of the husks still attached,--the seed corn. Proud was the boy when he had learned to select successfully "the ear of good length, cylindrical rather than pointed, the cob firm and well filled from butt to tip with grains uniformly large, of good color and in regular rows that showed no space between." Now-a-days, we challenge this ideal of the "perfect ear." [Illustration: _Fig. 278. The Harvest of the Corn._] As "chore time" approached, came the wagon afield to gather the harvest of ears and take them to the cribs, where their gold gleaming between the boards gave comfortable assurance of peace and plenty. But the seed corn was stored in a way learned by our forefathers from the American Indians; the ears were braided together by their husks, by the skilled farmer, who could make a braid two or three feet long, strong enough to hold the weight of the ears that hung a heavy fringe along each side; this braid when completed was tied with a bit of soft, tow twine, long saved for the purpose, and then was hung on hooks on the granary walls. There, until spring, waited the elect of the cornfield, holding in perfect kernels all the future corn wealth of that farm. From the first day's husking a bushel of ears was reserved from the crib and was spread on a chamber floor to dry quickly; later this was taken to the mill and ground into samp, one of the prized luxuries of the autumn bill of fare. Other corn was ground into finer meal for the delicious Johnny-cake and the Indian bread, the latter reaching fullest perfection when baked in a brick oven. To the tenants of the farm barns the corn meant even more than to those in the farm house. In August the cattle in dry pastures cast longing eyes and expressive voices toward the pale, green leaves and waving tassels of the sowed-corn, and great was their joy the first day they tasted this delicacy; in November, they munched the dry leaves of the planted crop, leaving in the barn-yard an angular patterned carpet of bare, hard stalks. In winter the corn meal, in proper proportions, made for them a food that kept them warm despite the cold winds that clutched at them, through crevices, with fingers of drifted snow. And no less dependent on this important crop were the denizens of the fold, of the sty, and of the chicken-yard. The old-time harvesting and husking are passing from the New York farm of to-day. The granary is no longer frescoed with braids of model ears, for the seed corn is now bought by the bushel from the seedsmen. The corn harvester has dissolved the partnership between corn and pumpkin and fells the stalks by the acre, doing away with the old-time stooks or shocks. Corn-stalks now become silage and are fed in a green condition throughout the winter. How often do we lose something of picturesqueness when we gain the advantages of modern improvements! Let us be thankful, however, that the corn harvester and the silo make efficient use of the great fields of corn. Although there is but one species of corn recognized (_Zea Mays_), there have been an endless number of varieties developed from it. Seven hundred and seventy of these were sufficiently distinct to be recognized when the Department of Agriculture published its account of varieties. The importance of the corn crop to this country and to others is almost incalculable. In 1902, the United States produced more than two and a half billion bushels and the export price was $.60 per bushel. When the corn crop fails every man, rich or poor, in America, suffers from it, and every business is affected by it. Though the man working in the cornfield may think only of his own crop, yet he is the man that is helping maintain the prosperity of our country. He is working for us all. QUESTIONS ON THE RIPENED CORN. 1. Is the corn crop in your vicinity good this year? 2. What affected it, beneficially or otherwise? 3. How many ears of corn are there usually on a mature stalk? 4. Are they on the same side of the stalk, or how are they disposed? 5. How many kinds of corn do you know? 6. Describe an average ear of each in the following particulars: shape and color of kernel; number of rows of kernels on the cob; number of kernels in a row; length of cob. Are the rows in distinct pairs? Do any of the rows disappear near the tip; if so, how many? 7. Study a cob with corn on it. Are the kernel-sockets of adjacent rows opposite each other or alternate? 8. Cut a kernel of pop-corn and a kernel of field corn across and compare the texture of the two. What has this texture to do with causing the kernel to "pop?" 9. How many foods do you know made from the grain of the corn? 10. How many products do you know made from stalks of the corn? 11. Do you know of any part of the corn that is used in constructing battleships? 12. What is the corn crop of New York State worth in dollars a year? (See U. S. Census Bulletin, No. 179.) 13. How many bushels of shelled corn are usually produced on an acre of well cultivated land? 14. Could the corn plant itself without the agency of man? If you are able to draw, please make a sketch of a kernel of sweet corn and a kernel of field corn. Break an ear of corn in two and sketch the broken end, showing shape of the cob and its relation to the kernels. NOTE ON THE NEW CORN BREEDING.[58] [58] Extracted from an article by L. H. Bailey in Country Life in America, July, 1903. The particular materials that give the corn kernel most of its value are the oil, the protein and the starch. For the production of corn oil--for which the demand is large--a corn that has a high oil content is, of course, particularly valuable; while for the production of starch or for the feeding of bacon hogs, a relatively higher percentage of other materials is desirable. It is apparent, therefore, that races of corn should be bred for a particular content, depending on the disposition to be made of the grain. Equal economic results cannot be attained, however, in increasing the content of any of the three leading ingredients, since a pound of gluten is worth one cent, a pound of starch one and one-half cents, and a pound of oil five cents. The amounts of these ingredients in the corn kernel are amenable to increase or diminution by means of selection,--by choosing for seed the kernels of ears that are rich or poor in one or the other of these materials. Fortunately, the oil and starch and protein of the corn kernel occupy rather distinct zones. Next the outside hull is a dark and horny layer that is very rich in protein; in the center is the large germ, very rich in oil; between the two is a white layer of starch. It is found that the kernels on any ear are remarkably uniform in their content; the dissection of a few kernels, therefore, enables the breeder to determine the ears that are rich in any one of the substances. Experiment stations in the corn-growing States are already making great headway in this new breeding of corn, and one private concern in Illinois is taking it up as a commercial enterprise. All this recalls the remarkable breeding experiments of the Vilmorins in France, whereby the sugar-content of the beet was raised several points. It is impossible to overestimate the value of any concerted corn-breeding work of this general type. The grain alone of the corn crop is worth about one billion dollars annually. It is possible to increase this efficiency several percentages; the coming generation will see it accomplished. An interesting cognate inquiry to this direct breeding work is the study of the commercial grades of grains. It is a most singular fact that the dealer's "grades" are of a very different kind from the farmer's "varieties." In the great markets, for example, corn is sold as "No. 1 yellow," "No. 2 yellow," "No. 3 yellow," and the like. Any yellow corn may be thrown into these grades. What constitutes a grade is essentially a judgment on the part of every dealer. The result is that the grain is likely to be condemned or criticised when it reaches its destination. Complaints having come to the government, the United States Department of Agriculture has undertaken to determine how far the grades of grain can be reduced to indisputable instrumental measurement. The result is likely to be a closer defining of what a grade is; and, this point once determined, the producer will make an effort to grow such grain as will grade to No. 1, and thereby attain to the extra price. Eventually, the efficiency points of the grower and the commercial grades of the dealer ought nearly or quite to coincide. There should come a time when corn is sold on its intrinsic merits, as, for example, on its starch content. This corn would not then be graded 1, 2 and 3, on its starch content, because that content would be assured in the entire product; but the grade 1 would mean prime physical condition, and the lower grades inferior physical condition. Eventually, something like varietal names may be attached to those kinds of corn that, for example, grade fifteen per cent protein. The name would be something like a guarantee of the approximate content, as it now is in a commercial fertilizer. The first thing that strikes one in all this new work is its strong contrast with the old ideals. The "points" of the plants are those of "performance" and "efficiency." It brings into sharp relief the accustomed ideals as to what are the "good points" in any plant, illustrating the fact that these points are for the most part only fanciful, are founded on a priori judgments, and are more often correlated with mere "looks" than with efficiency. An excellent example may be taken from corn. In "scaling" any variety of corn it is customary to assume that the perfect ear is one nearly or quite uniformly cylindrical throughout its length, and having the tip and butt well covered with kernels. Now, this ideal is clearly one of perfectness and completeness of mere form. We have no knowledge that such form has any correlation with productiveness in ears, hardiness, drought-resisting qualities, protein or starch content,--and yet these attributes are the ones that make corn worth growing at all. We only know that such ears may bear more kernels. An illustration also may be taken from string beans. The ideal pod is considered to be one of which the tip-projection is very short and only slightly curved. This, apparently, is a question of comeliness, although a short tip may be associated in the popular mind with the absence of "string" in the pod; but it is a question whether this character has any direct relation to the efficiency of the bean-pod. We are also undergoing much the same challenging of ideas respecting the "points" of animals. Now, animals and plants are bred to the ideals expressed in these arbitrary points by choosing for parents the individuals that score the highest. When it becomes necessary to recast our "scales of points," the whole course of evolution of domestic plants and animals is likely to be changed. We are to breed not so much for merely new and striking characters, that will enable us to name, describe and sell a "novelty," as to improve the performance along accustomed lines. It may be worth while to produce a "new variety" of potato by raising new plants from the seed-bolls; but it is much more to the point to augment the mealiness of some existing variety or to intensify its blight-resisting qualities. We are not to start with a variety, but with a plant. LEAFLET XLIV. THE USES OF FOOD STORED IN SEEDS.[59] BY ANNA BOTSFORD COMSTOCK. [59] Home Nature-Study Course, Vol. V, No. 4, January, 1904. "A mystery passing strange, Is the seed in its wondrous change; Forest and flower in its husk concealed, And the golden wealth of the harvest field." --LUCY LARCOM. [Illustration] As is the case with our own babies, the first necessity of the infant plant is food close at hand to sustain this tiny speck of life until it shall be large and strong enough to provide for itself. If we study any seed whatever we shall find some such motherly provision for the plant baby or germ. Sometimes the germ is a mere speck with a large amount of food packed around it, as is the case with the nutmeg; sometimes the baby is larger and its food is packed in a part adjacent to it, as is the case with the corn (Fig. 279); and sometimes the mother stuffs the baby itself so that it has enough to last it until its own little roots and leaves bring it mature food, as is the case with the squash seed. In any case this "lunch put up by the mother," to use Uncle John's words, is so close at hand that as soon as favorable conditions occur the little plant may eat and grow, and establish itself in the soil. Nature is remarkable for her skill in doing up compact packages, and in no other place is this skill better shown than in storing food in seeds for the young plants. Not only is it concentrated, but it is protected and of such chemical composition that it is able to remain fresh and good for many years awaiting the favorable moment when it may nourish the starting germ. People often wonder why, when a forest is cleared of one species of trees, another species grows in its place. This often may have resulted from the seeds lying many years dormant awaiting the opportunity. This preservation of the food in the seed is largely due to the protecting shell that keeps out the enemies of all sorts, especially mould. And yet, however strong this box may be, as it is in the hard-shelled hickory nut, it falls apart like magic when the germ within begins to expand. Brain rather than brawn is the cause of man's supremacy in this world. Of all the beings that inhabit the earth he knows best how to use for his own advantage all things that exist. His progress from savagery to civilization is marked by his growing power to domesticate animals and plants. Very early in his history man learned the value to himself of the seeds of the cereals. He discovered that they may be kept a long time without injury; that they contain a great amount of nutrition for their bulk; that they are easily prepared for food; that, when planted, they give largest return. Thus, we see, the advantages the plant mother had developed for her young, man has turned to his own use. That the food put up for the young plant is so protected and constituted as to endure unhurt for a long time gives the cereal grains their keeping quality. That it is concentrated and well packed renders it convenient for man to transport. That the "box" is easily separated from the "lunch" makes the preparation of food by crushing and sifting an easy matter for man. That every mother plant, to insure the continuation of the species, develops many seeds, so that in the great struggle for existence at least some shall survive, makes the cereals profitable for man to plant, and harvest the increase. Think once, how few ears of corn it requires to plant an acre. [Illustration: _Fig. 279. Section of kernel of corn, showing the embryo, and the food supply at one side of it (at the right)._] Because of all these things there has grown up between domestic plants and man a partnership. Man relieves the plant of the responsibility of scattering its seeds, and in return takes for himself that proportion of the seeds which would have died in the struggle for existence had the plant remained uncultivated. This partnership is fair to both parties. Different plants store food materials in different proportions in their seeds; the most important of these food substances are starch, oil, protein, and mineral matter. All of these materials are necessary to man as food. In the cereals the seeds contain a large proportion of starch, but in the nuts, like the butternuts and walnuts, there is a predominance of oil. Let us for a moment examine a kernel of corn and a kernel of wheat and see how the food is arranged. Fig. 279 is a kernel of corn cut in two lengthwise; at the lower left-hand corner are the root parts and leaf parts of the young plant (the embryo); above the embryo is the loose starch material. Now we have the baby corn plant lying at one side, and its food packed about it. However, this food is in the form of starch, and must be changed to sugar before the young plant can partake of it and grow. There lies a connecting part between the germ and its food, the scutellum. This is so constituted that when soaked with water it ferments the starch and changes it to sugar for the young plant's use. The germ itself is also a very nutritious food for man; hence the seed is eaten, "baby and all." In the corn, those kernels with the largest germs have the largest food value, and, therefore, to-day corn breeders are developing kernels with very large embryos. If we examine the microscopic structure of the food part of a grain of wheat (Fig. 280), we find that there are two outer layers, _a_ and _b_. Next there is a row of cells _d_ that divides these outer layers from the flour cells within. This is the aleurone layer. At _e_ are the flour cells which constitute the central portion of the wheat kernel. They contain starch, and also gluten, and some oil, and some mineral substances. In grinding to make white flour, the miller tries to leave the aleurone layer of cells _d_ with the outer layers _a_ and _b_, for if it is mixed with the flour the latter spoils much sooner, and it is also darker in color. In the seed is a ferment that helps digest the food for the young plant. [Illustration: _Fig. 280. Section of grain of wheat._] In order to think more intelligently about our use of food, let us find out, if we can, which parts of the food stored up by the plant for its sustenance are used by us both for ourselves and our livestock. The intelligent farmer gives his stock a carefully balanced ration, _i. e._, food that is well proportioned for the growth and product of the animal. If he wishes his cows to give more milk he may give them more proteids in their food, and less starch and fat. If he wishes to fatten them he may give them a greater amount of starch and fat and less of the proteids. In order to know what these proteids and starch and fat mean, both to us and to the plant, we have to know a little chemistry. The following table may aid us in this: Nutritive substances which {Proteids (casein, gluten, legumen, contain nitrogen. { etc., albuminoids, gelatine, { white of egg, etc.). Nutritive substances which {The carbohydrates (sugar and do not contain nitrogen. { starch). Fats (oils, butter). Mineral substances. {Lime, phosphorus, sulfur, etc. The substances mentioned in the above table are all needful to sustain the life of man and beast. If we compare the body to a steam engine, then we can see that its whole framework is built out of the proteids, mineral matter and water. The starch and sugar and fats constitute the fuel used to heat the boiler and make the engine move. Strictly speaking the proteids are also used somewhat as fuel, as well as for framework. It is easily seen from this that in order to be healthy we should try to give ourselves food containing a proper amount of building material to repair the breakage and wear and tear in the engine, and also give ourselves enough fuel to make the boiler do its greatest possible work. For if we do not have sufficient building material we break down, and if we do not have sufficient fuel we lack energy. Food thus properly proportioned is called a "well balanced ration." A well balanced ration per day for the average human being is as follows: Proteids, - - - - - - .40 lbs. Starch, - - - - - - - 1.00 " Fats, - - - - - - - - .40 " Mineral matter, - - - .10 " ----------- 1.90 lbs. The above is the amount of nutriment necessary, and in addition to this there should be sufficient bulk to keep the digestive organs healthy. We are just now entering upon the era of intelligence in relation to our food. It seems strange that this intelligence should first be applied to our domestic animals rather than to man. As soon as the farmer discovered that to make his animals pay better he must give them the right proportions of building material and fuel for energy, he demanded that the agricultural chemists give him directions for mixing and preparing their food. But how few of the cooks in our land understand in the slightest degree this necessity for the proper proportions to our food! When they do we may look forward to entering upon an era of serene good health, when we shall have strength to bear and ability to do. In answering the following list of questions you may be obliged to consult with the miller, or feed-dealer, but it is to be hoped that you will gain a clear conception of the parts of the seed used in making foods from cereals. 1. What is graham flour? How does it differ from white wheat flour? 2. What is whole wheat flour? 3. What is bran? 4. What is cracked wheat? 5. What are shorts, middlings, or canaille? 6. Which of the above are considered the more nutritious and why? 7. What part of the corn kernel is hominy? 8. What is corn meal? 9. Is corn bran considered good food? 10. What is gluten meal? 11. What is germ meal? 12. Why is corn fattening to cattle? 13. How much of the oat grain is contained in oat meal? 14. What is a cotyledon? 15. Show by sketch or describe the cotyledon in the chestnut, the walnut or hickory nut, and the bean. 16. Describe or show by sketch the position of the germinal portion in each of these. If you cannot find the germ in these, soak them in water for several days and then observe. The following publications may be had from the Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C., on application: Circular No. 46, Revised--The Functions and Uses of Food. By C. F. Langworthy. Circular No. 43, Revised--Food-Nutrients-Food Economy. The Cost of Food as Related to its Nutritive Value. By R. D. Milner. A PROBLEM IN FEEDING. As our knowledge increases, we give greater attention to the economical and efficient use of all feeds for live-stock. We cannot afford to feed even the corn stalks carelessly, either for the immediate concern of the pocket-book or for the good of the animal. The results of many experiments in feeding lead to the conclusion that a suitable daily ration for a cow giving milk and weighing 1,000 pounds should contain 24 pounds of dry matter, of which 2.5 pounds is digestible protein; .4 pounds digestible fat; and 12.5 pounds digestible carbohydrates. In such a ration, the ratio of digestible protein to digestible carbohydrates in the ration will be as 1 is to 5.4. In computing this ratio the amount of fat, multiplied by 2.4, is added to the carbohydrates. The fiber and the nitrogen-free extract constitute the carbohydrates. Individual animals vary so much in digestive capacity and in other respects that the foregoing standards may be frequently widely departed from to advantage. Thus many animals will profitably use more than 24 pounds of dry matter in a day and the ratio of protein to carbohydrates may vary from 1:5 to 1:6.5 without materially affecting the amount or character of the product. Standards are useful as guides. The art of feeding and the skill of the feeder consist in determining in how far the standard should be conformed to or departed from in each individual case. Suppose a farmer has corn silage and timothy hay, and may purchase cotton seed meal, wheat bran and buckwheat middlings, how may they be combined so that the ration shall contain 24 pounds dry matter, and the ratio of protein to the carbohydrates shall be approximately 1:5.4? The following table gives the data: Water. Protein. Fiber. Nitrogen-free Fat. extract. In 100 pounds of silage[60]. 79.1 1.2 4.3 7.4 .6 Timothy hay 13.2 3.4 16.8 28.4 1.2 Cotton seed meal 8.2 31.3 1.3 10.9 11.9 Wheat bran 11.9 13.6 1.8 43.1 3.2 Buckwheat middlings 13.2 22. [61] 33.4 5.4 [60] Silage is often put up when the corn is more mature, and then the water content is less than here given. [61] Included with nitrogen-free extract. LEAFLET XLV. THE LIFE HISTORY OF A BEET.[62] BY MARY ROGERS MILLER. [62] Home Nature-Study Course, Vol. IV, No. 29, February, 1903. [Illustration] If you are fond of a dish of "greens" made of young beet leaves in early summer, you must see to it that there are beets in the garden. What shall be planted? Seeds. Certainly; but where do the seeds come from? Most of us buy them from a seedsman, it is true; but somebody must grow them. They are not manufactured articles. If the beet plant produces seeds it must first have flowers. Have you ever seen the beet in blossom? When do the flowers come and how do they look? Study the picture in Leaflet LII. Read the history beneath the picture. Better still, get a plump red beet from the cellar, and plant it in a can, a box, or a flower-pot. If no beets are to be had, a turnip, a carrot, or a parsnip will do as well. It seems that "plants" come from beet roots as well as from beet seed. The root you plant in the flower-pot grew last summer from a seed. When may we expect the plant to produce seeds of its own, thus multiplying according to its nature? If you keep a beet plant long enough it will answer this question. Beet seeds are rather slow in germinating. For this reason it is common to soak them in warm water several hours or a day before planting in the garden. These facts are interesting in themselves; and instead of being discouraged should we not try to find out some reason why the beet seed should take more time than the corn or the bean? From a comparative study of a beet seedling and of a plant which comes from a beet root throughout a season, one may learn the whole life history of a beet. This story is not written down in books. Every stage of growth noted in the two plants should be regarded as typical of the life of an individual, for each plant must pass through all these stages in its development from seed to seed again. The seedling beet pushes out roots and begins early to take food from the soil. One may even see the root-hairs through which the liquids enter the plant. Inquire if the plant growing from a beet root has put out new roots. Have not its old ones dried long ago in the cellar? It is a good idea to have more than one plant, so that investigation of a matter like this may go on without disturbing all. Where, if not from the soil through roots, does the food come from which nourishes those thick-ribbed leaves? From the stored-up material in the root, does it not? Is this not the plant's way of providing for the second half of its life, after a long resting period in the "beet" stage? When the "plant" or top has grown quite large, how does the old beet look? We may read in the botany that certain plants are biennials, taking two seasons to pass through all the phases from seed to seed; but we shall not know the joy of gaining knowledge from original sources nor experience the mental training that comes with this "finding out" process until we have actually planted the beets or other things and watched them grow. The following questions relate to the study of a beet plant. Any other available plant may be reported on. The important thing is that a minute study be made of some particular plant. What plant are you making this special study of this month? What care do you give it? What conditions of temperature and moisture do you find most beneficial to its growth? What other plants are related to it? (Mention a wild and a cultivated plant.) What leads you to think them related? (Make this clear and definite.) How do the plants which come from beet roots differ from those which come from the seed? Of what utility to the plant is the fleshy root of beet, turnip, or carrot? When is this root made use of by the plant? What becomes of the old beet as the plant grows larger and stronger? What is the natural length of life of an individual beet plant? Through how many changes of form does it pass? Which of these are "resting" stages? Give the events in the life history of a beet in chronological order by seasons, beginning with a seed in the spring of 1903, and ending with the first crop of ripened seed. LEAFLET XLVI. PRUNING.[63] BY MARY ROGERS MILLER. [63] Home Nature-Study Course, Vol. IV, No. 20, February, 1902. [Illustration] You should know how the trees in your school yard have been pruned. Who did the work, nature or a man with a saw? Some people hold to the idea that pruning is unnatural, and therefore should not be practiced. Let us see if this is true. Have you ever gone into the deep woods after a storm? Who has been there, tearing and wrenching at the big limbs, twisting the small branches until the ground is strewn with wreckage? Nature has been pruning a few trees and she works with a fury which is awe-inspiring. But the trees are much the worse for their encounter with the forces they must obey without question. Their branches are broken; mere stubs are left. With the melting snow and the April rains germs of decay are likely to enter at every break in the bark. In a few years the trunk may be weakened and the monarch of the woods lie prone upon the forest floor. We may learn the lesson of how not to prune by looking at this great pine tree torn by the storm (Fig. 281). "But why do we prune?" one asks. Let the horticulturist answer. In a Farmers' Reading-Course lesson on The Care of Trees, Professor Craig says: "Fruit trees must be pruned. If a tree in an open field is allowed to go unpruned, the crown soon becomes a dense mass of twigs and interlacing branches. Such a tree may produce as large a number of apples as a well-pruned, open-headed tree, but will there be the same percentage of merchantable fruit? The chief effort of every plant under natural conditions is expended in ensuring its own reproduction. This is chiefly effected by means of seeds. A small apple may contain as many seeds as a large one and even more. The orchardist wants big fruits, and if they are nearly seedless so much the better." [Illustration: _Fig. 281. A pine tree pruned by the storm._] In a tree top there is a sharp struggle for existence. But few of the twigs which started from last year's buds will reach any considerable size. One needs only to count the dead and the dormant buds on a branch, and the weak, stubby, or decayed side shoots to appreciate this fact. If part of the branches are cut out, this struggle is reduced and energy is saved. By judicious pruning the tree may be shaped to suit the needs of the owner. If a low tree is desired to make fruit-gathering easy pruning keeps the head down. An open, spreading habit may be encouraged by cutting out such branches as tend to grow close to the main trunk. A careful orchardist has an ideal in his mind and knows how to prune to bring the tree up to his standard. He knows the habits of trees of different varieties. He will not prune all alike. He must prune some every year, or the trees will not carry out his plans. The pruner should not only know why he prunes, but how the work should be done. He should be able to tell why he removes one limb and leaves another. When I look at the trees in parks and along the streets I wonder at the careless pruning. Judging from the way they are treated one would think that a tree could be produced in "a year or two or three at most." Pruning should not be confined to fruit trees. It may be practiced with profit on all kinds of plants from shade trees to house plants. Pinching off the terminal bud of a young geranium makes the plant branch. Cutting the lower limbs of a young elm makes the tree more stately. Nature may do this, but broken branches leave wounds which the tree cannot heal. Small branches may be cut close with a sharp knife or pruning shears. The tree readily heals these places. It is little short of a crime to break or tear limbs from trees. The injury done to the trees is bad enough; but does not such heedless treatment of living things also have a baneful influence on the mutilator? For larger branches, if these must come off, no tool is better than a sharp saw. The cut should be smooth and clean. No ragged edges of bark should be left. The branch should all be cut off, and care should be taken not to tear the bark about the wound. If a stub six or eight inches long, or even one inch, be left, the tree is likely to suffer. The branch started years ago from a bud on the side of the main trunk, then but a twig itself. The fibers of the branch are continuous with those of the trunk. In the air are the germs of decay. These take hold of the bare stub and soon make their way to the center of the tree itself. Try as it may, the tree cannot quickly heal a wound so far from the main paths traveled by the sap in the trunk. [Illustration: _Fig. 282. Close cutting results in prompt healing._] The two illustrations (Figs. 282, 283) show the right and the wrong way to remove a limb. When the branch is cut close, new growth takes place all around the cut surface and in a few years the wound is healed. [Illustration: _Fig. 283. The long stub does not heal._] Bad pruning is worse than no pruning. Do you not think that nature students should use their influence to protect the trees in the school grounds, in the door yards, and along the streets? Trees have insect and fungous enemies enough without having to contend against carelessness and neglect. QUESTIONS ON PRUNING. 1. Describe the results of some of the natural forces you have seen pruning trees. Observe willows after a storm. 2. Are all sorts of trees affected alike by wind, ice, and snow? 3. From your observations which kinds suffer most? Give your opinion as to why. 4. Nature does not always prune in this boisterous fashion. Silent forces are at work pruning out the weak buds and shoots, giving the strong ones a better chance. Select a very young tree, or a shrub like the lilac. Examine the tips of the branches. You will find healthy buds on last season's growth. See if you can find any dormant buds. Are there any weak-looking or dead twigs? 5. Compare the number of strong healthy shoots with the number which the plant started to make. How many of each? 6. Mention several good effects which may result from pruning. 7. What are some of the bad results of over-pruning? Of insufficient pruning? 8. Consult some orchard-owner concerning this subject. When does he prune to increase the production of fruit? When to increase the growth of the woody part of the tree? 9. If the lower branches of a tree are not removed, what is the effect on the shape of the tree? 10. For what kinds of trees is this form desirable? 11. What is your opinion as to the shearing of evergreens into fantastic shapes? 12. If a tree has a tendency to grow crooked, how should one prune to correct the habit? 13. Would you prune an elm tree just as you would an apple tree? Why? 14. Why does pinching off the terminal bud of a geranium produce a more bushy plant? 15. Discuss in full the reasons for cutting a limb off smoothly and close to the main trunk or larger branch. Look at every tree you pass to see whether it has been pruned well. Has it been able to cover its wounds by the healing process? 16. Is it correct to suppose that "anybody" can prune a tree? 17. The cut surfaces made by pruning large limbs from trees are often covered with thick paint, tar, or Bordeaux mixture. What is the purpose of this? 18. Why is it better to prune a little every year than a great deal once in five years? 19. When is the best time to prune shade trees? Why? 20. Does a tree carry the bases of its branches upward as it grows higher, or does the base of every branch remain at the level from which it started originally? Observe many trees in different situations before making up your mind on this point. LEAFLET XLVII. A STUDY OF A TREE.[64] BY ANNA BOTSFORD COMSTOCK. [64] Home Nature-Study Course, Vol. V, No. 2, November, 1903. THE SUGAR MAPLE. The maple puts her corals on in May, While loitering frosts about the lowlands cling, To be in tune with what the robins sing, Plastering new log-huts 'mid her branches gray; But when the autumn southward turns away, Then in her veins burns most the blood of Spring, And every leaf, intensely blossoming, Makes the year's sunset pale the set of day. --LOWELL. [Illustration] Like a friend is a tree, in that it needs to be known season after season and year after year in order to be truly appreciated. A person who has not had an intimate, friendly acquaintance with some special tree has missed something from life. Yet even those of us who love a tree because we find its shade a comfort in summer and its bare branches etched against the sky a delight in winter, may have very little understanding of the wonderful life-processes which have made this tree a thing of beauty. If we would become aware of the life of our tree we must study it carefully. We should best begin by writing in a blank book week after week what happens to our tree for a year. If we keep such a diary, letting the tree dictate what we write, we shall then know more of the life of our tree. In selecting a tree for this lesson I have chosen the sugar maple, for several reasons. It is everywhere common; it is beautiful; it is most useful; and it has been unanimously chosen as the representative tree of the Empire State. Let each of us choose some maple tree in our immediate vicinity that shall be the subject for our lesson now, and again in the winter, and again in the spring. Our first thought in this study is that a tree is a living being, in a measure like ourselves, and that it has been confronted with many difficult problems which it must have solved successfully, since it is alive. It has found breathing space and food; it has won room for its roots in the earth and for its branches in the light; and it has matured its seeds and planted them for a new generation. [Illustration: _Fig. 284. Sugar maple._] [Illustration: _Fig. 285. A sugar maple grown in an open field._] BRIEF PHYSIOLOGY OF THE TREE. The tree lives by breathing and by getting its daily food. It breathes through the numerous pores in its leaves, and green bark, and roots. The leaves are often called the lungs of the tree, but the young bark also has many openings into which the air penetrates, and the roots get air that is present in the soil. So the tree really breathes all over its active surface, and by this process takes in oxygen from the air. It gives off carbon dioxid as we do when we breathe. [Illustration: _Fig. 286. Silver maple._] While the leaves act as partial lungs they have two other most important functions. First, they must manufacture the food for the entire tree. "Starch factories" is the name that Uncle John gives to the leaves when he talks to children, and it is a good name. The leaf is the factory; the green pulp in the leaf cells is part of the machinery; the machinery is set in motion by sun-shine power instead of steam or water power; the raw materials are taken from the air and from the sap sent up from the roots; the first product is usually starch. Thus, it is well when we begin the study of our tree to notice that the leaves are so arranged as to gain all sunlight possible, for without sunlight the starch factories would be obliged to "shut down." It has been estimated that on a mature maple of vigorous growth there is exposed to the sun nearly a half acre of leaf surface. Our tree appears to us in an unfamiliar light when we think of it as a starch factory covering half an acre. Plants are the original starch factories. The manufactories that we build appropriate the starch that plants make from the raw materials. Starch is plant-food in a convenient form for storage; but as it cannot be assimilated by plants in this form it must be changed to sugar before it can be transported and used in building up plant tissues. Hence the leaves have to perform the office of a stomach in order to digest the food they have made for the use of the tree; they change the starch to sugar, and they take from the sap nitrogen, sulfur, phosphorus, and other substances which the roots have appropriated from the soil, and to these they add portions of the starch, and thus make the proteids which form another part of the diet of the tree. It is interesting to know that while these starch factories can operate only in the sunlight, the leaves can digest the food, transport it, and build up tissues in the dark. [Illustration: _Fig. 287. The bole of a sugar maple grown in a wood._] The autumn leaf, which is so beautiful, has completed its work. The green material which colors the pulp in the leaf cells is withdrawn, leaving there material which is useless, so far as the growing of the tree is concerned, but which glows gold and red, thereby making glad the eye that loves the varying tints in autumn foliage. It is a mistake to believe that the frost makes these brilliant colors: they are caused by the natural old age and death of the leaf, and where is there to be found old age and death more beautiful? When the leaf turns yellow or red it is making ready to depart from the tree; a thin corky layer is being developed between its petiole and the twig, and when this is finally accomplished the leaf drops from its own weight, from the touch of the lightest breeze, or from a frost on a cold night. OBSERVATIONS ON THE MAPLES. We want you to know the maples from actual observation. Discover the characteristic forms of the tree, the character of bark, fruits, and leaves. Verify the pictures in this lesson. Though the fruit of the sugar maple matures in midsummer, yet you may perhaps find beneath your tree some of the keys or seeds now partially planted. If the tree stands alone you may perchance see how well she has strewn its seeds, and how many of its progeny have been placed in positions where they can grow successfully. [Illustration: _Fig. 288. Leaves and fruits of Norway maple._] We have in New York State seven species of maple common in our forests. Two of these are dwarf species rarely attaining thirty-five feet in height, more often found as mere bushes. These two are the mountain maple and the striped maple or moosewood. This latter is sometimes called goose-foot maple, because its leaf is shaped somewhat like the foot of a goose. Of the maples that attain to the dignity of tall trees we have four species: the sugar maple, the silver or white maple, the red or swamp maple, and the box elder. The leaf of the box elder does not look like the leaf of a maple at all; it has a compound leaf of three or five leaflets, but the flowers and fruits are those of the maples. There is also a variety of sugar maple that is called black maple. We have planted in our parks the sycamore and Norway maples introduced from Europe, and also ornamental species from Japan. Our native species are easily distinguished from these and from each other; just a little observation as to the shape of the leaves, the form of the trees, and the character of the bark enables a person to tell all these species at a glance. I hope that you will become familiar with the seven native species. Such knowledge is not only of practical use, but gives real zest and pleasure. When a person walks in the morning he should be able to call his tree acquaintances as well as his human acquaintances by name. [Illustration: _Fig. 289. Leaves and fruits of striped maple._] QUESTIONS ON THE MAPLES. 1. How many species of maple trees do you know and what are they? 2. How do you distinguish the red maple and the silver maple from the sugar maple? 3. What is the shape of the one tree you have chosen to study? 4. What is there in its shape to tell you of its history, _i.e._, did it grow in the open or in the forest? Was it ever shaded on either side; if so, what was the effect? How have the prevailing winds affected its shape? 5. How old do you think the tree is? 6. Was the tree injured by storm or insects during the past season; if so, how? 7. Study the leaves on this tree and note any differences in shape and color. 8. What is the use of the skeleton of the leaf? [Illustration: _Fig. 290. Leaves of mountain maple, sugar maple, red maple._] 9. Is there always a bud in the axil where the leaf stalk joins the twig? 10. How are the leaves arranged on the twig? 11. What is the color of the tree this autumn? 12. When did the leaves begin to fall? Place in your note book the date when the tree finally becomes bare. 13. Have you found any seeds from your tree? If so, describe them. 14. How are they dispersed and planted? 15. Are both seeds of the pair filled out? 16. How high is your tree? 17. How large an area of shade does it produce? If it stands alone, measure the ground covered by its shadow from morning until evening. 18. How has its shadow affected the plants beneath it? Are the same plants growing there that grow in the open field? 19. Make a sketch of the tree you are studying, showing its outline. 20. Make a sketch of the leaf of the sugar maple. LEAFLET XLVIII. THE MAPLE IN FEBRUARY.[65] BY ANNA BOTSFORD COMSTOCK. [65] Home Nature-Study Course, Vol. V, No. 5, February, 1904. SAP. Strong as the sea and silent as the grave, it ebbs and flows unseen: Flooding the earth,--a fragrant tidal wave, with mists of deepening green, --JOHN B. TABB. [Illustration] "Tapping the sugar bush" are magical words to the country boy and girl. The winter which was at first so welcome with its miracle of snow, and its attendant joys of sleighing and skating, begins to pall by the last of February. Too many days the clouds hang low and the swirling flakes make out-of-door pursuits difficult. Then there comes a day when the south wind blows blandly and the snow settles into hard, marble-like drifts, and here and there a knoll appears bare, and soggy, and brown. It is then that there comes just a suggestion of spring in the air; and the bare trees show a flush of living red through their grayness and every spray grows heavy with swelling buds. Well do we older folk remember that in our own childhood after a few such days the father would say, "We will get the sap buckets down from the stable loft and wash them, for we can tap the sugar bush soon if this weather holds." In those days the buckets were made of staves, and were by no means so easily washed as are the metal buckets of to-day. Still do we recall the sickish smell of musty sap that greeted our nostrils when we poured the boiling water in to cleanse those old, brown buckets. During the long winter evenings we had all had something to do with the fashioning of the sap spiles made from selected stems of sumac; after some older one had removed half of the small branch lengthwise with a draw-shave we younger ones had cleared out the pith, thinking thirstily meanwhile of the sweet liquid which would sometime flow there. With buckets and spiles ready when the momentous day came, the large, iron caldron kettle was loaded on a stoneboat together with the sap cask and log chain, the axe and various other utensils, and as many children as could find standing room; and then the oxen were hitched on and the procession started across the rough pasture to the woods where it eventually arrived after numerous stops for reloading almost everything but the kettle. When we came to the boiling-place we lifted the kettle into place and flanked it with two great logs, against which the fire was to be kindled. Meanwhile the oxen and stoneboat had returned to the house for a load of buckets; and the oxen blinking with bowed heads or with noses lifted aloft to keep the underbrush from striking their faces "geed and hawed" up hill and down dale through the woods, stopping here and there while the man with the auger bored holes in certain trees near other holes which had bled sweet juices in years gone by. When the auger was withdrawn the sap followed it and enthusiastic young tongues met it half way though they received more chips than sweetness therefrom. Then the spiles were driven in tightly with a wooden mallet. [Illustration: _Fig. 291. Sugar making in New York._] The next day after "tapping," those of us large enough to wear the neck-yoke donned this badge of servitude and with its help brought pails of sap to the kettle, and the "boiling" began. As the evening shades gathered, how delicious was the odor of the sap steam permeating the woods farther than the shafts of fire-light pierced the gloom! How weird and delightful was this night experience in the woods! and how cheerfully we swallowed the smoke which the contrary wind seemed ever to turn toward us! We poked the fire to send the sparks upward and now and then we added more sap from the barrel and removed the scum from the boiling liquid with a skimmer which was thrust into the cleft end of a stick to provide it with a sufficiently long handle. As the evening wore on we drew closer to each other as we told the stories of the Indians and the bears and panthers that had roamed these woods when our father was a little boy; and there came to each of us a disquieting suspicion that perhaps they were not all gone yet, for everything seemed possible in those night-shrouded woods; and our hearts suddenly jumped into our throats when nearby there sounded the tremulous, blood-curdling cry of the screech owl. It was the most fun to gather the sap in the warmer mornings, when on the mounds the red squaw-berries were glistening through a frosty veil; then we looked critically at the tracks in the snow to see what visitors had come sniffing around our buckets. We felt nothing but scorn for him who could not translate correctly those hieroglyphics on the film of soft snow that made white again the soiled drifts. Rabbit, skunk, squirrel, mouse, muskrat, fox: we knew them all by their tracks. After about three days of gathering and boiling the sap, came the "syruping down." During all that afternoon we added no more sap, and we watched carefully the tawny steaming mass in the kettle; and when it threatened to boil over we threw in a thin slice of fat pork which seemed to have some mysterious, calming influence. The odor grew more and more delicious, and finally the syrup was pronounced sufficiently thick. The kettle was swung off the logs and the syrup dripped through a cloth strainer into the carrying pail. Oh! the blackness of the material left on that strainer! but it was "clean woods-dirt" and never destroyed our faith in the maple sugar any more than did the belief that our friends were made of "dirt" destroy our friendship for them. Now the old stave bucket and the sumac spile are gone, and in their place a patent galvanized spile not only conducts the sap but holds in place a tin bucket carefully covered. The old caldron kettle is broken or lies rusting in the shed. In its place are evaporating vats placed over furnaces with chimneys, built in the new-fangled sugar houses. The maple molasses of to-day seems to us a pale and anæmic liquid and lacks just that delicious flavor of the rich, dark nectar which we, with the help of cinders and smoke and various other things, brewed of yore in the open woods. While sugar-making interests us chiefly as one of our own industries, yet we must not forget that it is based upon the life processes of the maple tree, and in studying about it we may be able to learn important facts about the tree which we have chosen for our study. QUESTIONS ON THE MAPLE TREE. 1. How does the maple tree look in winter? Describe it or sketch it. 2. Are the buds on the twigs opposite or alternate? 3. Are the tips of the twigs the same color as the bark on the larger limbs and trunk? 4. If you can draw, make a pencil sketch, natural size, of three inches square of bark of the maple tree trunk. 5. How does the bark on the trunk differ from that on the branches? 6. How does the bark on the trunk of a maple tree differ from that on the trunk of a soft maple or an elm? 7. What work for the tree do the trunk and branches perform? 8. Is the tree tapped on all sides? If not, why? 9. How deep must the spiles be driven successfully to draw off the sap? 10. Would you tap a tree directly above or at the same spot tapped last year; or would you place two spiles one above the other? Give reasons. 11. Why does the sap flow more freely on warm days after cold nights? 12. Is the sap of which we make sugar going up or down? 13. How does the sugar come to be in the sap? 14. Why is the sugar made during the "first run" better than that which is made later? Why cannot you make sugar in the summer? 15. Does it injure trees to tap them? 16. Do the holes made in earlier years become farther apart as the tree grows? 17. What other trees besides the sugar maple give sweet sap? 18. What animals, birds, and insects are to be seen in the woods during sugar-making time? 19. Have you ever seen the tracks of animals on the snow in the woods? If so, make pictures of them and tell what animals made them. LEAFLET XLIX. THE RED SQUIRREL OR CHICKAREE.[66] BY ANNA BOTSFORD COMSTOCK. [66] Home Nature-Study Course, Vol. V, No. 2, November, 1903. "All day long the red squirrels came and went, and afforded me much entertainment by their manoeuvres. One would approach at first warily through the shrub-oaks, running over the snow crust by fits and starts like a leaf blown by the wind, now a few paces this way, with wonderful speed and waste of energy, making inconceivable haste with his "trotters" as if it were for a wager, and now as many paces that way, but never getting on more than half a rod at a time; and then suddenly pausing with a ludicrous expression and a gratuitous somerset, as if all the eyes in the universe were fixed on him,--for all the motions of a squirrel, even in the most solitary recesses of the forest, imply spectators as much as those of a dancing girl,--wasting more time in delay and circumspection than would have sufficed to walk the whole distance,--I never saw one walk,--and then suddenly, before you could say Jack Robinson, he would be in the top of a young pitch-pine, winding up his clock and chiding all imaginary spectators, soliloquizing and talking to all the universe at the same time,--for no reason that I could ever detect, or he himself was aware of, I suspect."--THOREAU. [Illustration] From contact with civilization some wild animals flourish while others are soon exterminated by association with man. To this latter class belongs the black squirrel. Within my own memory this beautiful creature was almost as common in the rural districts of New York State as was the red squirrel; but now it is seen no more except in most retired places; while the red squirrel, pugnacious and companionable, defiant and shy, climbs on our very roofs and sits there scolding us for daring to come within his range of vision. One reason for the disappearance of the black squirrel is, undoubtedly, the fact that its meat is a delicious food. The red squirrel is also good food at certain times of the year, but because of its lesser size, and its greater agility and cunning, it has succeeded in living not merely despite of man, but because of man, for now he rifles corn cribs and grain bins and waxes opulent by levying tribute on man's own savings. Although the red squirrel is familiar to us all, yet, I think, there are few who really know its habits, which are as interesting as are those of bear or lion. Note, for example, the way he peeps at us from the far side of the tree, and the way he uses his tail as a balance and a help in steering as he leaps. This same tail he uses in the winter as a boa by wrapping it around himself as he lies curled up in his snug house. His vocal exercises are most entertaining also; he is the only singer I know who can carry two parts at a time. Notice some time this autumn when the hickory nuts are ripe that the happy red squirrel is singing you a duet all by himself,--a high, shrill chatter, with a low chuckling accompaniment. We usually regard nuts as the main food of squirrels, but this is not necessarily so; for they are fond of the seeds of pines and hemlocks, and also hang around our orchards for apple-seeds. In fact, their diet is varied. The red squirrel is a great thief and keeps his keen eye on chipmunks and mice, hoping to find where they store their food so that he can steal it if he can do so without danger to his precious self. QUESTIONS ON THE RED SQUIRREL. We want you to make some original observations on the red squirrel. 1. In summer, what is the color of the red squirrel on the upper parts? Beneath? 2. What is the color along the side where the two colors join? 3. Do these colors change in winter? 4. Tell how and where the squirrel makes its nest. 5. Does it carry nuts in its teeth or in its cheeks? 6. Has it cheek pockets like the chipmunk? 7. Does the red squirrel store food for winter use? If so, where? 8. Does it spend its time sleeping in winter like the chipmunk, or does it go out often to get food? 9. Name all the kinds of food which you know it eats. 10. Did you ever see a red squirrel disturb birds' nests? 11. How does a squirrel get at the meat of a hard-shelled nut like a black walnut, or a hickory nut? (Answer this by a sketch, if you can draw.) 12. Do the squirrels of your neighborhood have certain paths in tree-tops which they follow? 13. How many emotions does the squirrel express with his voice? 14. What kind of tracks does the red squirrel make in the snow? (Show this by a sketch if possible.) LEAFLET L. THE IMPROVEMENT OF COUNTRY SCHOOL GROUNDS.[67] BY JOHN W. SPENCER. [67] Supplement to Junior Naturalist Monthly, February, 1902. [Illustration] MY DEAR TEACHER: Despite all that is said and done the average school ground is far short of its possibilities in an artistic way. Of this you are well aware, and no doubt you have often wished that you might remedy this defect. Your hours are full of arduous work. Perhaps, however, you can interest your children to help you to clean and to improve the grounds, without much extra care or work on your part. This illustration of a schoolhouse (Fig. 292) is taken from Bulletin 160, published by the College of Agriculture of Cornell University. The title of the bulletin is "Hints on Rural School Grounds." I wish you would send for the bulletin. It will be mailed you free if you request it. The picture is not an imaginary sketch, but a faithful representation of what stood in a prosperous rural community less than five years ago. To one familiar with country school buildings it will not be considered as a solitary "awful example," but rather as a type of many that are scattered over the State. I hope it is not your misfortune to be teaching in such a house, even though it is my desire to reach every teacher who is that luckless. However, to make my talk more real let us "make believe," as children say, that you are the priestess in a similar temple of learning. Together we will plan how we can make the most of very uncongenial surroundings. [Illustration: _Fig. 292. A country school property._] It would be safe to wager a red apple that the inside of the building is every bit as dilapidated as the outside. A community that tolerates such a building would not be likely to have anything but the rudest furniture and most of that on crutches. It would be something out of the usual if the box stove is not short a leg or two, with brick-bats being used as substitutes. You will be fortunate if the stove door has two good hinges and if the wood is not green. At the last school meeting, did the patrons instruct the trustees not to pay more than six dollars per week for your services? Was the proposition that the district raise five dollars, to which the State would add five more for the purchase of books for a library, unanimously voted down and the poor man who introduced the resolution expected to apologize for his temerity? The leading man in the district each Sunday during summer drives two miles to salt his young stock, inspect fences, and see how the yearlings are prospering; but he never thinks of visiting the school to see how his children are progressing. Yet the people of this district are not bad. They are counted good citizens by the bar and judge, when they are drawn on juries. The public buildings at the county-seat are models of their kind and these gentlemen do not remonstrate as to the expense. Perhaps it has not occurred to them that school buildings and grounds should have as high a standard as those of the county. A correct public ideal is everything. It is not a hopeless undertaking to advance such an ideal in the community of which we are speaking. I suggest to you as teacher in this school to undertake some improvements in the grounds. I consider the above sketch to be a zero case. If improvements can be developed here, it is reasonable to suppose that the same can be repeated where conditions are primarily better. The possibilities are sufficient to warrant the undertaking. The victory will add to your strength. The lives of the children will be better filled for the part they may do, and you will have started a public improvement. [Illustration: _Fig. 293. "The girls organized themselves into a tug-of-war team."_] I should not appeal to the parents for help. You have a fountain of power in the children. It is necessary only to inspire and guide them. This is no theory of mine. It is a result that has been worked out in many instances. The beautiful city of Rochester is proud of its schools. The development of the town made the construction of new school buildings necessary to such an extent that little money remained for the improvement of the grounds. Some of them were located in the breadwinners' districts. The grounds were as the contractor left them; your imagination can picture their condition. The interiors were well nigh perfect. The exterior was sometimes a Sahara of mud and builders' rubbish. The principal of one of the schools--a woman, by the way,--knowing the force in children, set about to apply it to the improvement of the surroundings. Her method was first to inspire, and then to direct. Her success was ample. Both boys and girls participated. The girls organized themselves into a tug-of-war team (Fig. 293). By fastening ropes to sticks and beams, these things were hauled out of sight. The boys leveled the hummocks and brought fertile soil from some distance. This principal confined her improvements to small areas--so small that the children wanted to do more when they were through. From the time school opened until the rigors of winter stopped the juvenile improvements, only part of the space from the front of the building to the street was graded. Some of the boys brought chaff from a haymow, which was raked in as lawn grass seed. The following spring quite as many weeds appeared as grass, but the children gave the weeds the personification of robbers and made their career short. The promoters had a just pride in what they had accomplished; and that meagre bit of lawn meant vastly more to them than had it been made by a high-salaried landscape gardener. I am acquainted with another instance, where the patrons are largely Polish Jews. I am credibly informed that the average head of a family does not have a gross annual income to exceed three hundred and fifty dollars. This necessitates that the mother go out for work and that the children leave school as soon as the law allows to take up work. Yet with all these unfavorable circumstances the pupils have a pride in their school grounds that is glorious to see. In the fall of 1901 prizes were offered for the greatest improvement of school grounds made by children. Nothing daunted, the principal entered his grounds in competition with those in the more wealthy part of the city. The committee of awards gave him the third prize. To judge from the mere physical side, the decision was no doubt just; but when judged on the score of getting the greatest results from the least material, the principal and his school may have deserved the first prize, plus a reward. The chances are that your fuel is wood, and perhaps not very dry at that. It is in a pile in the open. Sometimes the sticks are scattered over half the lot. This you can prevent by properly appealing to the pride of your pupils. You will find that they wish to be more tidy than is the school over in Whippoorwill Hollow or in some other district that is considered to be a little more in the back country than your own. About the time you hear the first spring notes of the bluebird and the robin, prepare public opinion in your little school community for a spring furnishing. You can devise many ways to inspire them. Tell them about Col. George R. Waring and his white brigade and what they did to make New York City cleaner than it had been for many decades before. After the Spanish war, when Cuba became a responsibility upon the United States, the question arose as to what could be done to make filthy Havana cleaner and freer from yellow fever. No one was thought by the Federal government so competent to solve the problem as Colonel Waring. He went, spared not himself, and did his duty, did it so fearlessly that he died the victim of the filth he had fought so valiantly. He had done much during previous years to commend his memory to posterity; but probably nothing will stand out so prominently as his great ability to correct municipal untidiness. Ask your pupils to be Warings in their own neighborhoods. By this time the ground will be bare of snow and it will be soft. Ask some of the pupils to bring rakes, and have them gather up the rubbish. You can all play gypsies when you gather about the bonfire. This will be a favorable time to sow grass seed; for I have no doubt the school lot will need it. A lawn mixture of seed would be ideal, but I hardly expect you to pay for it. At this stage of your improvements, I scarcely expect that any of the patrons of your school would do so either. Later some of them may feel differently. Your pupils can at least follow the plan of those spoken of in Rochester--get chaff from a haymow. It will inevitably be a mixture of grass and weeds, but the latter can be pulled out after germinating. It is barely possible that some farmer will give you some clover and timothy, such as he uses in seeding his meadow; and this will be far better. Next, I should put out a hitching-post. When your school commissioner calls it will be appreciated. If that functionary does not publicly compliment your school for even such small improvements, I wish you would report such indifference to me, giving his full address, and I will request him to explain this forgetfulness. Good results in landscape-gardening depend on observing certain principles, the same as with our wardrobe. Many a clever girl will accomplish more in dress with twenty-five dollars than others can do with twice that amount. Among the first and most important efforts is to make a frame or setting for the house by planting around the borders of the place. Sometimes the location will make this inconvenient if not impossible, when, for instance, the building is placed near the street or crowded between other buildings. Even in such cases, however, it is well to keep the idea clearly in mind and to approach it as nearly as circumstances will permit. An illustration of a normal location to which this principle can be applied is shown in Fig. 294. The trees and the higher shrubs are planted first and on the extreme borders of the lot, with shorter shrubs, roses, and the like in front of them. This frame can be given a finish by planting flowers or very low things next the grass. If the area be ample, let the edges be irregular (Fig. 294); but if very limited, straight lines become necessary. [Illustration: _Fig. 294. Showing how the borders may be planted._] The open space within the boundaries should be a mat of green carpeting, for nothing can be more beautiful than sward. Fight all influences to bedeck it with beds of flowers in forms of stars and moons and other celestial and terrestrial designs. The demands for such capers may be great, but hold out against them boldly. Certain small shrubs, ferns, and flowers may be planted along the walls of the building, particularly in the angles; but I beg of you to leave the green plat unscalloped and unspoiled, only as is necessary for drives and walks. When the buildings are unsightly, cover with vines and plant bushes against them. Fig. 295 illustrates how Fig. 292 may be improved with very little effort. Now I will speak of the actual planting. In the light of unnumbered thousands of Arbor Day trees put out to struggle a few weeks for life and then die, this may seem the most important feature of my article. To the unsuccessful planter, let me suggest that he select shrubs and trees which take care of themselves under adverse conditions. We have a number of such. If they were imported from Japan and sold at fancy prices, they would be greatly appreciated. The common sumac is one of them. For a shrub I know of nothing of its class so sure to bear the ordeal of transplanting or to make more vigorous growth under adverse conditions. It can be pruned to suit, and nothing can rival its blaze of color in late autumn; yet as a farmer, I know the experience of fighting against its existence in fence corners, about stone piles, and on steep hillsides. I do this even though I am fond of the shrub and admire it. It encroaches on my vineyard and injures the crop. Grapes will help pay taxes and sumac will not. In my cherry orchard it is a weed. In my back yard and on the borders of my lawn it is an ornamental shrub. The same can be observed of people. When in their proper sphere they are helpful factors in a community; when out of it they are nuisances. [Illustration: _Fig. 295. How the grounds in Fig. 292 may be improved._] If you ask me to mention a tree most likely to live when planted by unskilled hands, I should name the willow. I mean the most common kind to be found in the northern States--the kind that stands beside the roadside watering-trough. The impression is common that willows will thrive only in wet places. It is true that a willow is very comfortable in places where many other trees will suffer from wet feet; yet it will give good results elsewhere. It is reasonable to suppose that poor soil goes with a poor school building, and a refined tree would probably find life hard in such a place. I should certainly plant a willow in such cases. It will thrive where a goat can, and where a sheep cannot. For city places, the Carolina poplar is to be recommended. If the soil is good enough, plant maples, elms, or other trees. A judicious planting of Virginia creeper helps the appearance of buildings both good and bad. I should surely plant it about the main building and the outbuildings and fences, if the patrons of the school did not object. The probabilities are that when the vines have begun to cover some of the deformities of the place, some finicky resident of the district will cut them out on the plea that they promote decay of the weather-beaten clap-boards; but do not be discouraged by such a possibility. Vines, too, usually interfere with the painting of a building. Although they may be taken down and put back after the painters are through, the first effect is not regained unless the process of putting back has been done with unusual care. Do not make the mistake of planting too much. A small lawn can be overdressed as is sometimes the case with women. Lilac, Japan quince, syringa, hydrangea, and like common shrubs, could be planted if the opportunities of space seem to warrant. I hope it will be your taste to allow the limbs of the trees to start low and those of the shrubs to begin as near the ground as possible. I am aware that among country people it is the practice to tolerate only the higher limbs. I can give a reason for this only on the supposition that they must do something in pruning, and the lower limbs are the most convenient to reach. I know a man who came into possession of a place having a fine lot of evergreens with the lower branches at the ground. By way of proclaiming a change of ownership he cut away the lower branches, leaving a bare trunk of about five feet. Before he touched them they were beautiful green cones and when passing the place I always turned my face in their direction to enjoy the beauty. When he was through they were standing on one leg, and a wooden leg at that. I have never felt kindly toward the man since. In the matter of planting I know of no better method than that of the experienced orchardist. As a rule he buys his trees of a nurseryman. They are often dug in the fall, and are planted the following spring. During the interval they are stored in specially constructed cellars, and at no time are the roots permitted to become dry. When packed for shipment damp moss is placed about the roots. When the orchardist removes them from the packing box he "heels" them in, which is a kind of probationary planting in shallow furrows where they stand until ready to be set out permanently. When that time comes the trees are taken from the trench and the roots plunged in a tub of thin mud or doused with water and covered with a blanket. An orchardist counts a tree lost if the roots have been allowed to remain in the sun until the small rootlets have so dried that they have a gray appearance. In taking the young tree from the nursery row only a fraction of the original roots go with the tree, and these are badly bruised at the point of cleavage. These ragged ends should be dressed smoothly by means of a slanting cut with a knife. All mutilated roots should be removed. You must bear in mind that the roots you find with the trees are capable of performing but a small part of what was done by all the roots when growing in their native place. The hole in which the tree is set should be large enough to accommodate the roots without cramping them out of their natural positions. It is important that the earth used for filling should be fertile, and it is doubly important that it should be fine--even superfine. Clods, even small clods like marbles, will not snuggle up to the bark of the root as closely as is absolutely necessary. Set the tree about an inch deeper than you think it originally stood, so that when planted and the earth settles, it will really be about the same depth. All the earth should not be dumped in at once and then the surface pressed firm with the feet. A close examination will show that the soil has "bridged" in places, leaving many roots in tiny caverns. It is important that fine soil should be snuggled close to each little rootlet, not for warmth but for moisture. Fill the hole by installments of one-third at each filling. Sprinkle the fine earth about the roots. Then dash in a third of a pail of water. This will give the roots much needed moisture and, best of all, will wash the earth about each root fiber. I urge the adoption of this careful method for all trees and shrubs, not excepting the sumac and willow. Even wallows will show their gratitude for such considerate treatment, even though they are able to survive rougher usage. They will pay for it when the drought and neglect of summer come. The most common mistake made in the selection of trees is in taking those that are too large. For the conditions that we have under consideration, I suggest that a tree no larger than a broom-handle be chosen. I know that the common feeling is, "we shall have to wait too long for our shade." Unless the larger tree is in the hands of an expert, the smaller will be the more desirable at the end of five years. I much prefer, moreover, the selection of a tree or shrub growing in the sunshine, rather than one from the shade. I have one final request to make, which to the novice will be the most difficult of all and one which he is quite likely to fail in performing because of lack of moral courage. I mean the cutting back of the top of the tree or shrub after planting. Before the removal of the tree, the roots probably found pasturage in a cart load of soil. After planting, the root pasturage is not more than half a bushel of soil. What follows when the forces of plant growth begin? A demand for soil products, with a very much restricted means of supply. The top must be cut back to match the shortened root system. Thousand of trees die every year because this principle is not duly observed and the failure is often attributed to the nurseryman. The amount necessary to cut back differs with different trees and shrubs. No hard and fast rules can be given. With willows and sumacs one-third to one-half of everything bearing leaf buds can be cut away. With a maple having a diameter of one and a half inches at the butt, I should suggest that about one-third of the branch area be left to grow. In this article I have had in mind the improvement of school grounds where all the conditions are at zero--where the building would be a discredit to any owner, where the patrons are totally indifferent, and where the only resource is to awaken a public spirit on the part of the children. With better school buildings, more ample grounds, and a small number of patrons favorable to improvement, the foregoing ideas need not be followed closely. However, they do contain principles and some details that deserve careful consideration, even in landscape planting of the highest form. The first step should be the development of local pride. Something may be accomplished among the parents; but it is a problem as to what extent that may be done. To the true teacher the pupils may be counted upon as the mainstay in such an undertaking. To such a teacher I should say, Do not for a moment believe that the improvements seen about the school grounds will be all the good that is wrought. Fifty years from now there will be a few gray-haired men and women who take more interest in the appearance of their "front-door-yard," and give their children encouragement in having a posy bed "all their own," and who extend sympathy and service to the better appearance of the school grounds, because of your altruism when you taught district school. We have some aids that may be helpful to you and to which you are welcome. Bulletin 160, spoken of at the beginning, specifically treats of this work, and Bulletin 121, on "Planting of Shrubbery," has been very popular. We have published a number of articles on children's gardening, all of which will be sent you free if you request it. If you have specific problems we shall be glad to have you write and we will help you all we can by correspondence. The most efficient help we can give you is through the organizing of your pupils into Junior Naturalist clubs. We give these clubs especial instruction in gardening and the improvement of home and school grounds. Children receive great inspiration from large numbers doing the same thing, while we can give instruction to ten thousand as easily as to one child. Many hundreds of teachers and thousands of children find the study of nature a beam of sunshine in the schoolroom and a great aid in the English period without being a burden to the teacher. PART II. CHILDREN'S LEAFLETS. DESIGNED TO OPEN THE EYES OF THE YOUNG. Most of these leaflets were published as companions to the Teachers' Leaflets and Lessons,--the teachers' lessons written in one vein and the children's in another. Even though the subject-matter may be largely duplicated in the two, it seems worth while to keep these separate as showing a simple method of presentation and as suggesting a means of procedure to those who would reach small children. THE CHILD'S REALM. BY L. H. BAILEY. A little child sat on the sloping strand Gazing at the flow and the free, Thrusting its feet in the golden sand, Playing with the waves and the sea. I snatch'd a weed that toss'd on the flood And parted its tangled skeins; I trac'd the course of the fertile blood That lay in its meshèd veins; I told how the stars are garner'd in space, How the moon on its course is roll'd, How the earth is hung in its ceaseless place As it whirls in its orbit old:-- The little child paus'd with its busy hands And gaz'd for a moment at me, Then dropp'd again to its golden sands And play'd with the waves and the sea. LEAFLET LI. A SNOW STORM.[68] BY ALICE G. McCLOSKEY. (Compare Leaflet VII.) A chill no coat however stout, Of homespun stuff could quite shut out, * * * * * The coming of the snow storm told. --WHITTIER. [68] Junior Naturalist Monthly, December, 1903. [Illustration] "Surely, it is going to snow," says Grandfather, as he puts an armful of wood into the old box beside the fire; and a happy feeling comes over you, and you like Grandfather a little better because he has promised you a snow storm. "What a wise old Grandfather he is!" you think. He always seems to know what is going to happen out-of-doors and you wonder how he learned it all. Perhaps I can tell you why Grandfather is so wise. When he was a boy he lived on a farm and was in the outdoor world summer and winter. There he learned to know Nature day by day. This is why he can consult her now as to wind and weather, and why he nearly always understands what she tells him. He is a good observer. If you hope ever to be as weather-wise as Grandfather, you must begin right away to see and to think. The next time you hear him say, "It is going to snow," put on your fur cap and mittens and go out-of-doors. Is the air clear, crisp, and cold--the kind you like to be out in? Or is it a keen cold that makes you long for the fire-place? Can you see the sun? If so, how does it look? In what direction is the wind? How cold does the thermometer tell you it is? All the time that you are learning these things the storm will be coming nearer. Then on your dark coat sleeve something soft and white and glistening falls--a snowflake. You touch the bright thing and it disappears. Where did it come from and whither did it go? Others follow faster and faster, jostling each other as they whirl through the air. Look at them closely. Are the crystals large and flowery or small and clear? Put your head back and let them come down on your face. Is their touch soft or do they hurt as they fall? Perhaps by this time you are very cold and think that supper must be nearly ready. You go into the house, and you find the gray kitten snoozing comfortably on the hearthrug. You snuggle down beside her "to warm your frozen bones a bit," and still the storm and outdoor world are near; for is it not splendid music that the wind is making as it roars down the old chimney or sways the tall pine trees? SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY. Answer as many of the following questions as you can from your own observations: 1. How did the sky look before it began to snow? During the storm? After the storm? It is always a good thing to look up at the sky. 2. In what direction did the old weather-cock tell you the wind was blowing as the storm came on? Did the wind change during the storm? If so, did the snow change in any way? 3. Look at snow crystals through a tripod lens if you have one. How many points do they have? 4. After supper go to the window, raise the shade, and look out on the stormy night. Tell Uncle John all that you see. 5. On your way to school the next day after a snow storm, have the following in mind to write to us about: (a) The tracks in the snow. How many do you find? Did Rover make them? the gray kitten? a snow bird? an old crow? a rabbit? a squirrel? (b) The way the trees and small plants receive the snow. Some hold it, others cast it off: why? (c) Notice the snow drifts. Where are they highest? Why does the snow pile up in some places and not in others? Is the drift deepest close to buildings or a little way from them? Are the drifts deepest close to the trees, or is there a space between the tree and the drift? LEAFLET LII. A PLANT AT SCHOOL.[69] BY L. H. BAILEY. [69] Junior Naturalist Monthly, February, 1903. [Illustration] I dropped a seed into the earth. It grew, and the plant was mine. It was a wonderful thing, this plant of mine. I did not know its name, and the plant did not bloom. All I know is that I planted something apparently as lifeless as a grain of sand and that there came forth a green and living thing unlike the seed, unlike the soil in which it stood, unlike the air into which it grew. No one could tell me why it grew, nor how. It had secrets all its own, secrets that baffle the wisest men; yet this plant was my friend. It faded when I withheld the light, it wilted when I neglected to give it water, it flourished when I supplied its simple needs. One week I went away on a vacation, and when I returned the plant was dead; and I missed it. Although my little plant had died so soon, it had taught me a lesson; and the lesson was that it is worth while to have a plant. I wish that every Junior Naturalist would have a plant. It matters little what the plant is. Just drop the seed, keep the earth warm and moist, watch the plant "come up," see it grow. Measure its height at a given time every day. Keep a record of how many times you water it. Make a note of every new leaf that appears. See whether it leans towards the light. If it dies, tell why. Four weeks from the time when you plant the seed, send Uncle John your notes. A sheet of foolscap paper contains about twenty-eight lines, one line for the notes of each day, and space enough at the top to write your name, date of sowing, kind of seed, and nature of the soil. Open the sheet and on each line at the left side write all the dates for four weeks ahead; then fill in these lines across the two pages day by day as the plant grows. For the first few days there will not be much to write, but you can say whether you watered the earth or not, and where you kept the pot or box. It will be good practice to get into the habit of taking notes. I suppose that the record of the first few days will run something as follows: MYRON JOHNSON, name of school, age ----. ----, Teacher. _Feb. 2._ Monday. Planted six cabbage seeds in loose soil from the chip yard. I put the earth in a small old tin cup, and pressed it down firmly. I made it just nicely moist, not wet. I planted the seeds about equal distances apart and about one-fourth inch deep, and pressed the earth over them. [Illustration: _Fig. 297. An egg-shell farm. The plants, from left to right, are: cabbage, field corn, pop-corn, wheat, buckwheat._] _Feb. 2._ Did not water to-day, for the soil seemed to be moist enough. _Feb. 3._ Watered at 10:30 A. M. Teacher told me to be careful not to make the soil too wet. _Feb. 4._ Watered at noon. _Feb. 5._ Put the cup nearer the stove so that the seeds would come up more quickly. _Feb. 6._ The earth is cracking in two or three places. Watered at noon. _Feb. 7._ Went to the schoolhouse and found some of the plants coming up. _Feb. 9._ Four of the plants are up. (Here tell how they look, or make a few marks to show.) When your month's record is all complete, send the sheet, or a copy of it, to Uncle John, and this will be your club dues. See how many things you can find out in these four weeks. [Illustration: _Fig. 298. A window plant that is easy to grow. It is a common garden beet. The end of the beet was cut off so that it could be got into the tin can. A very red beet will produce handsome red-ribbed leaves. In all cases, be sure that the crown or top of the plant has not been cut off too close, or the leaves may not start readily. The beet starts into growth quickly and the growing plant will stand much abuse. It makes a very comely plant for the school-room window. Try carrot, turnip, and parsnip in the same way._] Before the four weeks are past write to Uncle John and he will tell you what next to do. By that time your plants will need transplanting, and he will tell you how to do it. Perhaps you can set some of the plants outdoors later on and see them grow all summer; whether you can or not will depend on the kinds of plants that you grow. If you want to grow asters or cabbages next summer, you can start some of them in February and March. Quick-germinating seeds, fit for starting in the schoolroom, are wheat, oats, buckwheat, corn, bean, pumpkin and squash, radish, cabbage, turnip. Perhaps some of these require a warmer place than others in which to germinate. If you find out which they are, let Uncle John know. You can grow the plants in egg-shells, wooden boxes (as cigar boxes), tin cans, flower pots. If you use tin cans it is well to punch two or three holes in the bottom so that the extra water will drain out. Set the can or box in a saucer, plate, or dripping-pan so that the water will not soil the desk or table. It is best not to put it in a sunny window until after the plants are up, for the soil is likely to "bake" or to become hard on top; or if you do put it in such a place, throw a newspaper over it to prevent the earth from drying out. SUGGESTIONS FOR PLANT STUDY.[70] [70] Alice G. McCloskey, Junior Naturalist Monthly, January, 1904. Last year hundreds of children sent us records of their plants. This kind of work is most satisfactory to Uncle John. Following is a record which we received in March, from a girl in the fourth grade: Feb. 16--Monday. I planted seven cabbage seeds in an eggshell. I did not water it. Feb. 17--Did not see anything. Feb. 18--Saw a little brown thing. Feb. 19--Saw a little seed lying on top. Feb. 20--Saw little sprout. Feb. 21--Holiday. Feb. 22--Holiday. Feb. 23--Holiday. Feb. 24--Saw two little sprouts. Feb. 25--The egg-shell was full of sprouts. Feb. 26--The plant was coming up and the earth was very wet, so I did not water it. Feb. 27--Saw six sprouts. Feb. 28--Holiday. March 1--Holiday. March 2--Turned the plant around, so it would look toward the light. March 2--That afternoon I planted the cabbage in a tin can with tissue paper around it, because the cabbage outgrew the eggshell some time ago. March 3--I put the plant out of the window. March 4--I did not look at it. March 5--One of the sprouts began to droop. March 6--I dug the dirt up around it. Then it was put in the air out of the window. March 7--Holiday. March 8--Holiday. March 9--I put it out of the window. March 10--It was put out of the window. It was brought in at the close of school. March 11--Dug the dirt out from the plant and patted it down. March 12--Watered. March 13--Put out of the window. March 14--Holiday. March 15--Holiday. March 16--Watered and put out of the window. HELEN. Was not this a good record for a little girl to make? I wish that she had told something about the soil in which she planted the seeds. This is always important. In winter you may have some difficulty in getting soil, but in the village a florist will let you have some, and in the country you may be able to get it in the cellar of a grocery store or from your own cellar. Perhaps you can find some in the potato bin. When there is a "thaw," get some soil, even if it is very wet; you can dry it near the stove. Perhaps your schoolhouse will be too cold over Sunday in mid-winter to allow you to grow plants. If so, plant the seeds at home. When you have planted your seeds, unless you take them up every day, you cannot see how the little plants are behaving down under the soil. I want to tell you how you can know some things that the plants are doing without disturbing them. [Illustration: _Fig. 299. Radish seeds germinating between blotting-paper and the side of a tumbler._] Choose an ordinary glass (Fig. 299), roll up a piece of blotting paper so that it is a trifle smaller than the glass, and place it inside. Between the blotting paper and the glass, put a few radish seeds or any kind of seed such as you planted in the soil. Keep the blotting paper moist and watch what happens. In four or five days the plants should be "up." Here are some things to think about as you watch them: 1. Note any change in the seeds when they have been moist for a few hours. 2. What happens to the outer coat of the seed? 3. In what direction does the little root grow? The stem? 4. Notice the woolly growth on the root? Does this growth extend to the tip of the root? 5. When the little plant has begun to grow, turn it around so that the root is horizontal. Does it remain in that position? 6. How soon do the leaves appear? It may interest some of the Junior Naturalists to see the effect of much water on seeds. Suppose you experiment a little along this line. Choose three glasses. In one put seeds into water, in another put them into very wet or muddy soil, and in the third plant the seeds in moist soil, such as seeds are ordinarily planted in. Tell us the results of the three experiments. A THIRD-GRADE RECORD. Following is a facsimile reproduction of a spontaneous and unpruned record made by a child in the third grade. The child grew beans in a tumbler against blotting paper, as shown in Fig. 299. I hope that this will illustrate to both teacher and children the value of simple note-taking. [Illustration] [Illustration] [Illustration] [Illustration] [Illustration] [Illustration] [Illustration] [Illustration: _Fig. 300. The bean plants that were grown by the third-grade child._] LEAFLET LIII. AN APPLE TWIG AND AN APPLE.[71] BY L. H. BAILEY. (Compare Leaflet XXXI.) [71] Junior Naturalist Monthly, January, 1903. [Illustration] Yesterday I went over into the old apple orchard. It was a clear November day. The trees were bare. The wind had carried the leaves into heaps in the hollows and along the fences. Here and there a cold-blue wild aster still bloomed. A chipmunk chittered into a stone pile. I noticed many frost-bitten apples still clinging to the limbs. There were decayed ones on the ground. There were several small piles of fruit that the owner had neglected, lying under the trees, and they were now worthless. I thought that there had been much loss of fruit, and I wondered why. If the fruit-grower had not made a profit from the trees, perhaps the reason was partly his own fault. Not all the apples still clinging to the tree were frost-bitten and decayed. I saw many very small apples, no larger than the end of my finger, standing stiff on their stems. Plainly these were apples that had died when they were young. I wondered why. [Illustration: _Fig 301. This is the branch that tried and failed._] I took a branch home and photographed it. You have the engraving in Fig. 301. Note that there are three dead young apples at the tip of one branch. Each apple came from a single flower. These flowers grew in a cluster. There were three other flowers in this cluster, for I could see the scars where they fell off. But why did these three fruits die? The whole branch on which they grew looked to be only half alive. I believe that it did not have vigor enough to cause the fruit to grow and ripen. If this were not the cause, then some insect or disease killed the young apples, for apples, as well as people, may have disease. [Illustration: _Fig. 302. These are the flowers that make the apples. How many clusters are there?_] Beneath the three dead apples, is still another dead one. Notice how shrivelled and dried it is, and how the snows and rains have beaten away the little leaves from its tip. The three uppermost apples grew in 1902; but this apple grew in some previous year. If I could show you the branch itself, I could make you see in just what year this little apple was borne, and just what this branch has tried to do every year since. This branch has tried its best to bear apples, but the fruit-grower has not given it food enough, or has not kept the enemies and diseases away. The lesson that I got from my walk was this: if the apples were not good and abundant it was not the fault of the trees, for they had done their part. In the cellar at home we have apples. I like to go into the cellar at night with a lantern and pick apples from this box and that--plump and big and round--and eat them where I stand. They are crisp and cool, and the flesh snaps when I bite it and the juice is as fresh as the water from a spring. There are many kinds of them, each kind known by its own name, and some are red and some are green, some are round and some are long, some are good and some are poor. [Illustration: _Fig. 303. The apples are usually borne one in a place, although the flowers are in clusters. Why?_] Over and over, these apples in the cellar have been sorted, until only the good ones are supposed to remain. Yet now and then I find a decayed heart or a hollow place. The last one I picked up was fair and handsome on the outside, but a black place and a little "sawdust" in the blossom end made me suspicious of it. I cut it open. Here is what I found (Fig. 306). Someone else had found the apple before I had. Last summer a little moth had laid an egg on the growing apple, a worm had come from the egg and had eaten and eaten into the apple, burrowing through the core, until at last it was full grown, as shown in the picture. Now it is preparing to escape. It has eaten a hole through the side of the apple, but has plugged up the hole until it is fully ready to leave. When it leaves it will crawl into a crack or crevice somewhere, and next spring change into a pupa and finally come forth a small, dun-gray moth. This moth will lay the eggs and then die; and thus will be completed the eventful life of the codlin-moth, from egg to worm and pupa and moth. But in doing all this the insect has spoiled the apple. The insect acts as if the apple belonged to him; but I think the apple belongs to me. I wonder which is correct? [Illustration: _Fig. 304. The Baldwin apple. How many kinds of apples do you know?_] [Illustration: _Fig. 305. The same Baldwin apple cut in two._] Some of these apples are sound and solid on the inside, but they have hard blackish spots on the outside (Fig. 307). This is a disease--the apple-scab. This scab is caused by minute plants and these plants also claim the apple as their own. There are ways by means of which the apple-grower is able to destroy the codlin-moth and the apple-scab; and thereby he secures fair and sound apples. Insects and diseases and men are all fighting to own the apple. TEN THINGS TO LEARN FROM AN APPLE. When you write your dues to Uncle John on the apple, answer as many of the following questions as you can. You can get the answers from an apple itself. He does not want you to ask anyone for the answers: 1. How much of the apple is occupied by the core? 2. How many parts or compartments are there in the core? 3. How many seeds are there in each part? 4. Which way do the seeds point? 5. Are the seeds attached or joined to any part of the core? Explain. 6. What do you see in the blossom end of the apple? 7. What do you see in the opposite end? [Illustration: _Fig. 306. This is an apple in which a worm made its home._] 8. Is there any connection between the blossom end and the core? 9. Find a wormy apple and see if you can make out where the worm left the apple. Perhaps you can make a drawing. To do this, cut the apple in two. Press the cut surface on a piece of paper. When the apple is removed you can trace out the marks. [Illustration: _Fig. 307. These are the apples on which other plants are living.--The apple-scab._] 10. When you hold an apple in your hand, see which way it looks to be bigger--lengthwise or crosswise. Then cut it in two lengthwise, measure it each way, and see which diameter is the greater. [Illustration: _Fig. 308. Here is where city boys and girls buy their apples._] LEAFLET LIV. TWIGS IN LATE WINTER.[72] BY ALICE G. McCLOSKEY. [72] Junior Naturalist Monthly, February, 1904. [Illustration] Along a country road, through a drifted field, over a rail fence, and into the woods I went, gathering twigs here and there as I passed. A February thaw had come and these first messengers of spring, reaching out from shrub and tree, were beginning to show signs of life. Many young people do not believe that spring is near until they hear a robin or a bluebird. The bare little twigs tell us first. Look at them as you go on your way to school. Are they the same color in February that they were in the short December days? When I reached home with my bundle of twigs, it was "fun" to sit by the window and study the strange little things. They were so different one from another, and so interesting in every way, that I decided to ask our boys and girls to gather some winter twigs and tell us about them. Select your twigs from the butternut, willow, hickory, horsechestnut, apple, plum, plane-tree, maple, or any other tree that you come across. Here are some suggestions that will help you in your study: 1. How many colors do you find in one twig? Count the tints and shades. I found eight colors on a small maple branch (Fig. 309). [Illustration: _Fig. 309. Red or swamp maple._] 2. Notice the differences in several twigs as they lie on the table. What makes them look so different: size, shape, color, arrangement of buds, the size or shape of the buds? 3. On how many twigs are the buds opposite each other? Note the opposite buds on the horsechestnut (Fig. 310). On how many are they alternate? Are the buds opposite on the butternut (Fig. 311)? 4. Which twigs bear the buds singly? 5. When you find two or more buds growing together on a stem, is there any difference in the size of the buds? 6. On how many of the twigs can you see a scar left by the leaf when it dropped off (Fig. 310 and Fig. 311 _a, a_)? Compare the leaf scars on different twigs. Notice the strange scar on the butternut (Fig. 311). It looks like the face of an old sheep. [Illustration: _Fig. 310. Horsechestnut._] [Illustration: _Fig. 311. Butternut._] 7. Do you see any cocoons on your twig? 8. You all know the rings on an apple twig that tell how much it grew each year. Do you find rings on other twigs? Do you see them on any of these pictures? 9. What do you suppose makes these rings? Do you think there was once a large terminal bud where these rings are? LEAFLET LV. PRUNING.[73] BY ALICE G. McCLOSKEY. (Compare Leaflet XLVI.) [73] Extended from Junior Naturalist Monthly, February, 1901. [Illustration] First snow, then sleet, and then a down-pour of rain--it stormed all day. At night-fall it grew colder. The wind blew fiercely. The twigs and branches fell on the white crust which covered the earth. Nature was pruning the trees. Have you ever seen your father go into the orchard and prune his trees? Why did he do it? Compare the work done by nature and that which your father does. Which seems to be the more careful pruner? Let us experiment a little. It will please Uncle John. He always wants his boys and girls to find out things for themselves. Select a branch of lilac or some other shrub. Mark it so that you will always know it. Count the buds on the branch. Watch them through the spring and the summer. Note the number that become branches. You will then know that nature prunes the trees. If you think a minute, you will see that pruning is necessary in the plant world. Suppose a branch has thirty buds, and that every bud should produce thirty branches, each of which in turn should produce thirty more,--do you think there would be any room left in the world for boys and girls? Would a tree be able to hold so many branches? You certainly have noticed decayed holes in trees. Did you ever wonder why they were there? I suppose that most persons never wonder about it at all; or if they do give it any passing thought, they say it is only "natural" for trees to have rotten spots. But these rotten spots mean that once the tree was injured. Perhaps the injury was the work of a careless or thoughtless man who pruned the tree. Very few persons seem really to know how to remove the limbs of a tree so that the wound will heal readily. As you go and come, observe how the trees have been pruned. Do you see long "stubs" left, where limbs have been cut? Yes; and that is the wrong way to cut them. They should be cut close to the main branch or trunk, for then the wounds will heal over better (Fig. 312). If we abused our cows and horses, as we sometimes abuse our shade trees, what would become of the animals? [Illustration: _Fig. 312. The wrong way and the right way to remove a limb._] Did you ever see trees that were mutilated to allow of the stringing of telephone and telegraph wires? Who owns the shade trees along a street or public highway? LEAFLET LVI. THE HEPATICA.[74] BY ALICE G. McCLOSKEY. (Compare Leaflet XL.) [74] Junior Naturalist Monthly, March, 1903. [Illustration] Something new and pleasant happened in my life this year. In February, while the wood was snow-covered and the roadsides piled high with drifts, I saw hepaticas in bloom. Oh, no! I did not find them out of doors. I had all the fun of watching them from my warm chimney-corner. Then when winds blew fiercely I often went to the window where they grew and buried my head in the sweet blossoms. What do you suppose they told me? If some winter day you feel their soft touch on your face, and smell their woodsy fragrance, you will hear the message. Perhaps you want to know how the hepaticas found their way into my window-box. Last fall as I walked through a leafy wood I gathered a few plants, roots and all, that I had known and loved in spring and summer days. Among them were hepaticas. These I laid away in the cellar until the first of February. Then I planted them in a corner of the window-box that I had left for them. Since the little woods plants have come to live with me I have learned to know them well. Perhaps the most important lesson they have taught me is this: The blossoms may be the least interesting part of a plant. Will you find out what hepaticas have to tell as the seasons pass? Even before you hear the first robin, go into the woods, find one of the hepaticas, and mark it for your own. You will know it by the old brown leaves. Then watch it day by day. The following questions will help you to learn its life story: 1. Where do hepaticas grow, in sunny or shady places? During which seasons do they get the most sunlight? 2. Watch the first sign of life in the plant. Do the new leaves or the flowers come first? 3. Look at the hepatica blossom a long time. How many different parts can you see in it? Whether you know the names of these parts now does not matter. I want you to see them. 4. Notice the three small, green, leaf-like parts that are around the flower bud. As the flower opens see whether they are a part of it, or whether they are a little way from it on the stem. 5. Observe the stem closely. Is it short or long? Hairy or smooth? 6. As the new leaves appear find out whether they are fuzzy on the inside as well as on the outside. Notice how they are rolled up and watch them unroll. 7. In how many different colors do you find hepaticas? 8. Do some smell sweeter than others? If so, does color seem to have anything to do with it? 9. Look at a hepatica plant at night or very late in the afternoon. Also watch it early in the morning and in cloudy weather. Then look at it in bright sunshine. Do you see any change in the flowers? I think you will discover something of much interest. 10. Seed-time among hepaticas is very interesting. Notice what becomes of the three small, leaf-like parts that were underneath the flower. How many seeds are there? 11. How long do you think the leaves of hepatica remain on the plant? Do you suppose they remain green all winter? 12. What becomes of the hepatica plant after it blossoms? Did you ever see one in summer? Describe. LEAFLET LVII. JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT.[75] BY ALICE G. McCLOSKEY. (Compare Leaflet XLI.) [75] Junior Naturalist Monthly, April, 1903. [Illustration] They call him Jack-in-the-Pulpit, he stands up so stiff and so queer On the edge of the swamp, and waits for the flower-folk to come and hear The text and the sermon, and all the grave things that he has to say; But the blossoms they laugh and they dance, they are wilder than ever to-day; And as nobody stops to listen, so never a word has he said; But there in his pulpit he stands, and holds his umbrella over his head, And we have not a doubt in our minds, Jack, you are wisely listening, To the organ-chant of the winds, Jack, and the tunes that the sweet birds sing! LUCY LARCOM. "It is Indian turnip," said I. "No," said Grandmother, "it's memory root. If you taste it once you will never forget it." And what Grandmother said to me so long ago, I say to every boy and girl, "If you taste it once you will never forget it." But of all the names for this strange little wood plant, I like Jack-in-the-pulpit best. Though never a word has it said in our lifelong acquaintance, it has been a helpful little "country preacher" to me. As we go into the woods this year, let us make up our minds that we will know more than we ever have known before of its interesting life. Where do you find the Jack-in-the-pulpit? In what kind of soil does it grow? How does it first come up? What is the shape of the root? One is enough for the whole class to study and it should be planted again. We do not want the Jack-in-the-pulpit to disappear from our woods. Does the little hood fold over at first? The hood or "umbrella" is not the flower. You will find the flowers on the little central stalk that you call "Jack." See whether the blossoms are alike. Look at the blossoms on several plants. Place a stick by the side of one of these plants so that you will know it later in the year when the Jack-in-the-pulpit has disappeared. Notice whether there are insects in the lower part of the flower stalk. If so, can they get out? When the blossom has gone, look for the seeds. What color are they in June? In August? Have you any house plant that you think is related to Jack-in-the-pulpit? [Illustration: _Fig. 313. Tubers of Jack-in-the-pulpit, or Indian turnip._] LEAFLET LVIII. THE DANDELION.[76] BY ALICE G. McCLOSKEY and L. H. BAILEY. [76] Supplement to Junior Naturalist Monthly, May, 1904. [Illustration] The first warmth of spring brought the dandelions out of the banks and knolls. They were the first proofs that winter was really going, and we began to listen for the blackbirds and swallows. We loved the bright flowers, for they were so many reflections of the warming sun. They soon became more familiar, and invaded the yards. Then they overran the lawns, and we began to despise them. We hated them because we had made up our minds not to have them, not because they were unlovable. In spite of every effort, we could not get rid of them. Then if we must have them, we decided to love them. Where once were weeds are now golden coins scattered in the sun, and bees revelling in color; and we are happy! L. H. BAILEY. SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY. I. Ask your teacher to let you go out of doors for ten minutes to look at dandelions. In your note books write answers to the following questions: 1. At what time of day are you looking for the dandelions? Is the sun shining, or is the sky overcast? Make up your mind to notice whether dandelions behave the same at all hours of the day and in all kinds of weather. 2. How many dandelions can you count as you stand on the school-ground? The little yellow heads can be seen a long distance. 3. Where do they prefer to grow,--on the hillsides, along the roadsides, in the marshes, or in your garden? II. Gather a basket full of blossoming dandelions, roots and all, take them to school, and ask the teacher to let you have a dandelion lesson. Here are some suggestions that will help you: 1. Each pupil should have a plant, root and all. Describe the plant. Is it tall or short? How many leaves are there? How many blossoms? 2. Hold the plant up so that you can see it well. How many distinct colors do you find? How many tints and shades of these colors? 3. Look carefully at the blossom. How many parts has it? How much can you find out about the way in which the yellow head is made up? III. Mark a dandelion plant in your garden. Watch it every day. Keep a record of all that happens in its life. Later in the year send Uncle John a little history or account of the plant you have watched. [Illustration: _Fig. 314. Blow the dandelion balloon!_] DANDELION. Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way, Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold, First pledge of blithesome May, Which children pluck, and, full of pride uphold, High-hearted buccaneers, o'erjoyed that they An Eldorado in the grass have found, Which not the earth's ample round May match in wealth, thou art more dear to me Than all the prouder summer-blooms may be. --LOWELL. LEAFLET LIX. MAPLE TREES IN AUTUMN.[77] BY ALICE G. McCLOSKEY. (Compare Leaflets XLVII and XLVIII.) The hills are bright with maples yet, But down the level land The beech leaves rustle in the wind, As dry and brown as sand. The clouds in bars of rusty red Along the hill-tops glow, And in the still sharp air the frost Is like a dream of snow.--ALICE CARY. [77] Junior Naturalist Monthly, November, 1903. [Illustration] The hills are bright with maples about the time Jack Frost appears, and many people say that he makes the leaves turn red and yellow. Wise folk tell us, however, that Jack Frost is not the artist; that leaves change to autumn tints when their work is completed. Boys and girls may not know that leaves "work;" yet all through the long summer days when you have been playing in the shade of some old maple, the leaves over your head have been very busy. Uncle John says that each leaf is a "starch factory," and this is true. Starch is necessary for plant food and it is manufactured in the leaves. The green leaves and stems are the machinery, which is run by sunlight. Look at a large branch of maple and see how the leaves are arranged to catch every sunbeam. The more light the green parts of the tree get, the more plant food can be made and the sturdier and handsomer the tree. But the story of the way in which the plant food is made is a long one and not easy for young people to understand. This can come later when you have become familiar with the many interesting things that you learn by watching the tree and by studying with the microscope. If I should to go into your school-room and should ask how many boys and girls know a sugar maple, I suppose every hand would be raised. But if I should ask: "When does the sugar maple blossom?" "What do the blossoms look like?" "When do the winged seeds fall?" I wonder how many could give me satisfactory answers to my questions! Choose some fine old maple for study. The one that stands near the door will be best, since you can see it every day. Write in a note book all that you can find out about it as the weeks go by. SUGGESTIONS FOR FALL STUDY. 1. Notice how the leaves turn to the sunlight. 2. Try to find two leaves exactly alike in color, form, size, length of stem, etc. If you succeed send them to Uncle John. 3. How many different tints can you find in a single leaf? 4. As you look at two sugar maple trees, do they seem to be colored alike? 5. Are all sugar maples that you know the same shape? 6. How are the leaves arranged on the branch? 7. Can you find any winged seeds near the tree? If so, plant one in a box of earth and see whether it will grow. 8. If you find any plants growing beneath the maple tree, describe them or tell what they are. 9. Do you know any other kinds of maples? How do you distinguish them? [Illustration: _Child's drawing of a maple leaf. Fifth grade. (Reduced.)_] LEAFLET LX. A CORN STALK.[78] BY ALICE G. McCLOSKEY. (Compare Leaflets XLII and XLIII.) [78] Junior Naturalist Monthly, May, 1903. [Illustration] "Tom," said I to a young friend who stood by the window tossing a ten-cent piece into the air, "what plant is used for part of the design on that coin?" The boy did not answer right away. I do not believe he had ever looked at it closely; yet this is one of the prettiest of our silver pieces. After a few minutes he said, "It is corn, isn't it?" Hearing a note of surprise in his voice, I told him something about corn-raising in this country. We then decided that it is a good thing to represent corn on one of the United States coins, since it is a source of much of our wealth. But aside from its value, Indian corn should interest us because it is a wonderful plant. Boys and girls do not know much more about it than does any old black crow. You have watched the farmer plant corn and you like to eat it. Jim Crow has watched the farmer plant corn and he likes to eat it, too. The time has come, however, when you can get ahead of him if you care to; and to get ahead of crows on the corn question is worth the while. Let me tell you how to do it. 1. Secure a kernel of corn, cut it in halves, and note the food inside it. This food was stored in the seed by the parent plant. Uncle John would say that it is the "lunch" that the mother puts up for her children. What must happen before the food can be used by the little plant? 2. Place some moist soil in a tumbler, and put a kernel of corn in it near the side so that you can watch it grow. How soon does the root appear? The leaves? How many leaves come up at one time? 3. Ask your father to give you a small piece of ground in the garden. Plant a few kernels of corn so that you will have some plants of your own to study this summer. Other people's plants are never so interesting as our own. 4. As your corn plants push their way up into the light and air, watch them every day. Notice how the new leaves are protected by the next older ones. 5. Is the stem hollow or solid? In which way would it be stronger? 6. Notice the joints. Are they the same distance apart throughout the length of the stem? Does the distance between the joints always remain the same? Measure them some day; then in a week measure them again. 7. Where does the stalk break most easily? 8. Where does the leaf clasp the stalk? 9. Notice how strong the leaf is. In what direction do the ribs extend? If these long narrow leaves were not strong what would happen to them as they wave back and forth in the wind? 10. Have you ever noticed the ruffled edges of the leaves? As you bend them you will see that the edges do not tear. 11. There are two kinds of blossoms on a corn plant. The ear bears one kind, the tassel the other. If you were to cut all the tassels from the plants in your garden, the kernels would not grow on the ears. Later on you will learn why. 12. Watch the ear closely as it grows. 13. Follow a thread of silk to the place where it is attached. Notice whether there is one silk for each kernel. 14. When the corn is in the milk stage it is preparing to store up food for the young plants. How does it taste at this time? 15. Look closely at the base of the corn stalk and you will see roots extending obliquely into the soil. These are the brace roots. Of what use do you think they are to the corn stalk? LEAFLET LXI. IN THE CORN FIELDS.[79] BY ALICE G. McCLOSKEY. (Compare Leaflets XLII and XLIII.) [79] Junior Naturalist Monthly, October, 1903. [Illustration] "Caw caw!" said Jim Crow as he flew over our heads. "Was he jeering at us?" we wondered, the children and I. Perhaps he was inquisitive to know what business we had in the open country and in the fields of corn. Perhaps he was not concerned with us at all. Very likely crows are less concerned with us than we think they are. Jim Crow flew on out of sight, but we stayed among the ripening corn. The ears were filling out. The ends of the silk were turning brown. We saw many things that we had planned to look for in vacation: the tall stem, the brace roots, the long strong leaves and the way the ribs extend in them, the ruffled edges of the leaves, the two kinds of blossoms, and where each silken thread is attached. The whole story was before us. [Illustration: _Fig. 315. Over the fields in corn-harvest time._] But this is the harvest time and we are ready to learn a new lesson from the corn fields. As we watch them now let us answer the following questions: 1. How is the corn cut? 2. How many ears do you find on a stalk? 3. Are the ears on the same side of the stalk or on opposite sides? 4. Take into the school room as many kinds of corn as you can find and describe each as follows: a--The shape and color of the kernel. b--Number of rows of kernels. c--The number of kernels in each row. 5. Perhaps the girls will pop some corn and bring it to the Junior Naturalist Club meeting. Let them try to pop field corn. Cut kernels in two of field corn and pop-corn, and report whether they differ. Why does pop-corn pop? 6. Make a list of the foods for which corn is used. 7. Why are pumpkins planted among corn? 8. Why not make for your school room some decorations from ears of corn? [Illustration] LEAFLET LXII. THE ALFALFA PLANT.[80] BY L. H. BAILEY and JOHN W. SPENCER. (Compare Leaflet XXXIV.) [80] Junior Naturalist Monthly, October, 1904. [Illustration] All the things that the farmer sells are produced by plants and animals. The animals live on the plants. It is important that we know what some of these plants are. Some plants are grown for human food. Such are potato, wheat, apple, lettuce. Some are grown only to feed to animals. Such are grasses and clover,--plants that are made into hay. Hay is the most important crop in New York State. In fact, New York leads all the States in the value of the hay and forage. This value is more than 66 millions of dollars. [Illustration: _Fig. 316. Sprig of the alfalfa plant._] Hay is important in New York also because there are so many dairy cattle in the State. There are more than one and one-half millions of dairy cattle in New York. In the value of the milk and butter and cheese, New York also leads all other States. There are also great numbers of beef cattle, horses, mules, and sheep. All these millions of animals must be supplied with hay in our long cold winters. Hay is made in New York State from grasses and clover. Suppose we could find some plant that would yield twice as much hay as clover yields, and yet be as nutritious,--you can readily see how valuable such a plant would be to the State. It would be better than a gift of millions of dollars. Such a plant is alfalfa. Now that you know something about alfalfa in a general way, I want you to know how the plant looks and how it grows. It is not yet very well known even among farmers, but its cultivation is increasing every year. You will probably know where there are fields of it. Sometimes it grows along roadsides as a weed. Last spring Uncle John offered to send a small packet of alfalfa seeds to any Junior Naturalist who wrote for it. He sent about 5,000 packets. But if you do not know the plant or cannot find it, _write at once to Uncle John and he will send you some by mail from the University farm_. Let us see how many school children in New York State will know what alfalfa is between now and Thanksgiving time. When writing to Uncle John about alfalfa, try to answer as many of the following questions as possible from your own observation: 1. Does the plant remind you of any other plant that you ever saw? Of what? 2. How does it grow,--straight up or spreading out on the ground? 3. How many stalks come from one root? 4. What are the leaves like? Mark out the shape with a pencil. 5. What are the flowers like? Do you know any other flowers of similar shape? What is the color? 6. If possible, dig around a plant and describe how the root looks. Does it branch into many fibres, as grass roots or corn roots do? UNCLE JOHN'S LETTER ABOUT THE ALFALFA GARDENS. _My Dear Boys and Girls:_ Do you know much about the alfalfa plant? Do you remember that last spring we promised to send a packet of seed to each of you who asked for it? Did you send your name asking that you be served? We received the names of several thousand children asking for seed and I am wondering whether you are one of them. If so, did you sow the seed? Will you write me a letter telling me what became of it? [Illustration: _Fig. 317. What leaf is this? Is it enlarged?_] [Illustration: _Fig. 318. Leaf of alfalfa. What significance have the spots?_] [Illustration: _Fig. 319. Flowers of the alfalfa. Are they natural size?_] [Illustration: _Fig. 320. Alfalfa pods. How much enlarged?_] I am very fond of children's letters. Each year I receive more than thirty thousand of them. I sometimes wonder whether there is another man who is honored by so many letters from young people, for I count it an honor to be so remembered. As large as that number is, I cannot spare one letter. I always want a few more. All your letters are read and I take great pains to answer all questions. If, by any oversight, you have been missed I am sorry. I know what it costs a boy or girl to write a letter. I never open one without feeling that the writer is a friend of mine, otherwise he would not have expended so much hard work to write it. School has now begun and of course you are very busy, and so is your teacher. One of the best opportunities to write letters is in school. Please ask your teacher whether you may not write me during your language period. You may say that she may make authors of all of you if she can, but I will do all I can to help you become good letter writers. Ask her whether a letter to me may not be a substitute for a composition. [Illustration: _Fig. 321. Crown of the alfalfa plant, showing how root and top start off._] In your letter you may tell me your experience with alfalfa. Tell me your failures as well as your successes. Even though you received your seeds and did not sow them, tell me that. I shall never find fault with you for telling me the truth. If you sowed the seed and the plants did not do well, tell me that also. The plants may look very small and uninteresting to you this year, but next year they may surprise you. In some parts of the United States the alfalfa crop is of great value and the loss of it would bring distress to many farmers. I am wondering whether the crop, as raised in all parts of our country, is not worth more money than all the gold found in the Klondike, taking the two year by year. I do not know how that may be. I am wondering. Men by the thousand have gone to the gold mines and endured many hardships and later returned with less money than those who had remained at home and took care of their alfalfa. It may be that a mine of wealth lies very near you, and to get it you may have to ask alfalfa to find it and bring it to you. Gold cannot be found in all places in a gold country and alfalfa may not feel comfortable and grow in all parts of a good farming country. What we asked of you last spring was that you become alfalfa prospectors and later tell us what you found. JOHN W. SPENCER. LEAFLET LXIII. THE RED SQUIRREL.[81] BY ALICE G. McCLOSKEY. (Compare Leaflet XLIX.) _The squirrel came running down a slanting bough, and as he stopped twirling a nut, called out rather impudently, "Look here! just get a snug-fitting fur coat and a pair of fur gloves like mine and you may laugh at a northeast storm."_--THOREAU. [81] Junior Naturalist Monthly, November, 1903. [Illustration] For a cheery companion give me the red squirrel! I enter the woods and there the little fellow is, ready to welcome me. "What a fine day it is for gathering nuts!" he seems to say, and straightway, as I listen to his merry chatter, I think it is a fine day for any sport that includes him and the brown November woods. Young naturalists may think it is a difficult thing to become acquainted with red squirrels, but you will often find them willing to be sociable if you show them a little kindness. I have many times watched two or three squirrels playing about a friend as she sat in her garden. They seemed to find her nearly as interesting as the old pine tree near by. They are inquisitive animals. "How did you tame them?" I asked. "I fed them occasionally," she replied. "At first I put some nuts on the grass several feet away from me. Then I gradually placed a tempting meal nearer and nearer until the little fellows seemed to lose all fear of me." If we care to, you and I, we can learn a great deal about red squirrels before another year has passed. If you live on a farm you should know the habits of all the wild creatures about you. You can then be just to them, and decide whether or not you can afford to let them continue to be tenants on your farm. You will find that all of them have interesting lives. THE RED SQUIRREL. A. B. C. Just a tawny glimmer, A dash of red and gray,-- Is it a flitting shadow, Or a sunbeam gone astray? [Illustration: _Fig. 322. In the haunts of the red squirrel._] It glances up a tree trunk, And from some branch, I know A little spy in ambush Is measuring his foe. I hear his mocking chuckle; In wrath he waxes bold, And stays his pressing business To scold and scold and scold. QUESTIONS ABOUT THE RED SQUIRREL. 1. What is the color of the red squirrel? Is he really red? Is his entire coat of one color? Does he wear different colors in winter and summer? 2. Did you ever see a red squirrel's nest? If so, describe it. 3. Does the red squirrel hibernate; that is, does he sleep all winter as the chipmunk does? 4. What does a red squirrel eat? Did you ever see him getting the winged seeds out of a pitch pine cone? 5. Do you believe a squirrel ever planted an oak? Give a reason. 6. If you live in the country, you have seen red squirrels running on the rail fences. Why do they like rail fences? Do you see them so often on other kinds of fences? 7. Notice the tracks made in the snow in winter woods. Try to find whether the red squirrel's is among them. 8. If you know any other kinds of squirrels, tell how they differ from the red squirrel. LEAFLET LXIV. ROBIN.[82] BY L. H. BAILEY. [82] Introduction printed in Junior Naturalist Monthly, March, 1901. [Illustration] The drifts along the fences are settling. The brooks are brimming full. The open fields are bare. A warm knoll here and there is tinged with green. A smell of earth is in the air. A shadow darts through the apple tree: it is the robin! Robin! You and I were lovers when yet my years were few. We roamed the fields and hills together. We explored the brook that ran up into the great dark woods and away over the edge of the world. We knew the old squirrel who lived in the maple tree. We heard the first frog peep. We knew the minnows that lay under the mossy log. We knew how the cowslips bloomed in the lushy swale. We heard the first soft roll of thunder in the liquid April sky. Robin! The fields are yonder! You are my better self. I care not for the birds of paradise; for whether here or there, I shall listen for your carol in the apple tree. * * * * * Our lesson on robin shall be a lesson out of doors. We shall leave the books behind. We shall see the bird. We shall watch him and make up our minds what he is doing and why. We shall know robin better; and robin lives in the fields. Perhaps you think you know robin. Suppose that one of your friends never saw a robin; do you think you could close your eyes and describe him so that your friend would know how the bird looks? Then tell me where robin builds its nest, and of what materials; and how many eggs are laid and their color; and how long the mother bird sits; and how long the fledglings remain in the nest. You can readily find a family of robins in some near-by tree, or perhaps even on the porch; and you can learn all these things without ever disturbing the birds. I want you to watch a bird build its nest. You may think that you know how robin builds, but can you really tell me just how the bird carries the mud, and where it finds the other materials, and how long the building operation continues? Do both birds take part in the building? Then I want to know whether you can tell the difference between father robin and mother robin. Did you ever notice whether robins that come first in the spring have brighter breasts than those that come later? And can you explain? Tell me, too, what robin does with his year. You know when he comes in spring and when he builds and when the speckled young ones fly. But where is he in summer and fall and winter? And what is he about all this time? Does he build another nest and rear another family, or does he go vacationing? And does he gather the same kind of food in spring and summer? Does he gather cherries for his family or for himself? Did you ever see robin in winter in New York? What can you tell me about the song of robin? Does he sing all the year? Or does he have a different note for summer? Not one of you can tell how many different notes and calls robin has. I sometimes think that robin knows several languages. I have seen many more springs than you have seen: and yet I always wait for robin on the lawn. I often wonder whether the same robins come back to my lawn. They seem to go to business at once. They hop with the most confident air, and day after day pull strings out of the ground. You know what these strings are: but do you know how robin finds them? Is it by smell, or sight, or feeling, or hearing? Do you suppose he is listening when he cocks his head to one side and then to the other? Or is he merely making motions? And I wonder whether birds and animals usually make motions just for the sake of making them? I have asked you many questions, and not one of you can answer. Perhaps I cannot answer. You ask, "What's the use?" If you can see robin, and learn why, you can also learn other things. But I like robin just because he is robin. There is one thing more. You will read about robin redbreast. Who is he? Find out for me whether robin redbreast of Europe and of English poetry is the same as our American bird. LEAFLET LXV. CROWS.[83] BY ALICE G. McCLOSKEY. (Compare Leaflet XXIV.) [83] Junior Naturalist Monthly, February, 1904. [Illustration] At a wigwam in the Adirondack Mountains a tame crow lives with a family of Indians. These Indians make baskets of birch bark and other things that they find out of doors, and sell them to visitors who spend their summer in the mountains. The little crow helps in the business. He makes himself so interesting to the passers-by that they stop to watch him. The Indians then have an opportunity to show their baskets, and very often sell them. But we need not go to the Adirondacks to find a crow that earns his living. Mr. F. E. L. Beal, who has studied crows a long time, speaks of them as valuable farm hands; and Neltje Blanchan says that they are as much entitled to a share of the corn as the horse that plows it. This may surprise boys and girls who have heard crows spoken of as thieves and rascals. Let us look into their story so that we can find out for ourselves whether to the farmer the crow is a friend or an enemy. _How Jim Crow does harm:_-- 1. By killing toads, frogs, small snakes, and salamanders ("lizards"). Why are these little creatures first rate farm hands? 2. By pulling up sprouting corn. Some farmers prevent this by tarring the corn. 3. By stealing eggs, small chickens, and tiny birds. It is said that the crow is rarely guilty of these wrongs. What do you know about it? _How Jim Crow does good:_-- 4. By eating large numbers of insects: grasshoppers, caterpillars (including army worms and cut worms), June bugs, and other insects. So many insects does he devour that he earns more than he destroys. A half bushel of corn scattered on a field is said to be sufficient in many cases to prevent Jim Crow from pulling the growing corn. _To study crows:_-- Watch the crows to find out just what they do. Do you ever see them flying in large numbers? If so, at what time of day do they fly? Where are they going? Notice how they use their wings. Do they come from the same direction each morning? Would it not be a great experience to make up a party and visit the place from which they come? What do you think you would find there? [Illustration: _Fig. 323. Who's afraid!_] When you see crows feeding in a field try to learn what they are eating. You can often find crows' tracks in the snow. There the prints of their feet and wings may be seen. What do you think interested the crows in the snow-covered field? Determine whether the caw is always the same. Is it sometimes short, sometimes long? Can you associate these differences with the actions of the birds? I wish you would read John Hay's poem, "The Crows at Washington." LEAFLET LXVI. A FRIENDLY LITTLE CHICKADEE.[84] BY ALICE G. MCCLOSKEY. (Compare Leaflet XXIV.) This scrap of valor just for play Fronts the north wind in waistcoat gray. --EMERSON. [84] Junior Naturalist Monthly, December, 1903. [Illustration] One cold December day a chickadee found himself alone in a wood. He looked very much like other chickadees, a small, gray bird, wearing, as someone has said, "a black hood with white side pieces and a black vest." He was like others of his kin, too, in that he was a skillful acrobat. He could stand right side up on a twig or cling to it upside down--one position seemed as easy as the other. But I am not sure that this little chickadee was like his fellows in one respect. I have wondered whether they are all as friendly as he. I shall tell of something that he did, and leave it to young naturalists to find out whether other chickadees will show as friendly a spirit. It happened on the cold December day when the chickadee was alone in the "snow-choked wood" that a Senior Naturalist wandered along that way. Whether or no the little bird knew that the tall man was there I cannot say. At any rate, he called out "phoe-be," the plaintive little pipe of two notes, clearer and sweeter than the real phoebe bird can make. The tall man answered the call, whistling two notes as plaintive and sweet as the chickadee's own. Again and again the whistle was repeated and every time it was answered. Nearer and nearer came the fluffy midget, until finally he alighted on a tree directly over the tall man's head. And then a remarkable thing happened! You will scarcely believe it, yet it is true. Knowing how near the chickadee was, the tall man whistled "phoe-be" very softly, and the little bird flew down and rested on his arm. How pleased the Senior Naturalist must have felt when he had gained the confidence of this wild bird! I wish that our boys and girls would try to do the same thing and tell Uncle John whether the experiment is successful. STUDY OF A CHICKADEE IN WINTER. 1. Keep a sharp lookout for chickadees. Can you tell one when you see it? They are often with nuthatches and downy woodpeckers. If you tie a piece of suet in a tree near your house these winter birds may visit you. 2. Listen to the notes of all the winter birds. Some day you will hear one say "Chick-a-dee-dee-dee-dee." Then he may sing "phoe-be," and you will try to imitate the notes. He may answer you. Tell us how near you can get to one of these friendly little birds. 3. Watch a chickadee searching for his breakfast on a twig. What kind of a bill has he? What do you think he is finding to eat? 4. If I lived on a farm I should have suet hung in my orchard to encourage the chickadees to stay there. Can you tell why? 5. Do you see chickadees in summer? Where are they then? 6. If I were to ask you to find a deserted chickadee's nest, where would you look? LEAFLET LXVII. THE FAMILY OF WOODPECKERS.[85] BY ALICE G. MCCLOSKEY. (Compare Leaflet XXIV.) [85] Junior Naturalist Monthly, January, March, April, and May, 1903. I. THE RED-HEADED WOODPECKER. [Illustration] The story goes that, once upon a time, a naturalist found a great many grasshoppers wedged into an old fencepost. They were alive but could not get away. Bye and bye their jailor appeared. He was neither somber nor ugly, as you might suppose, but a merry red-headed woodpecker. With never a thought of cruelty in his little red head, he had used the fencepost as a cold-storage place, and had filled it with a good supply of food. Now I am sure our boys and girls will ask, "Is this story true?" I cannot say. The best way to decide whether it may be true is to study the habits of a red-headed woodpecker. Do you think that we shall find him capable of so clever a trick? The red-head is not uncommon. Keep on the lookout for him. His head, neck, throat, and upper breast are red; the rest of his body is blue-black and white. He is a handsome fellow, a bright bit of color in wood, garden, orchard, or field. Let us see what we can learn about him. SUGGESTIONS. 1. Try to get a nearer view of any bird that you see sitting on a telegraph pole or fencepost. It may be a red-headed woodpecker. 2. Is this little fellow as good a drummer as his relatives? 3. His mate likes his music. If she comes near, the better to hear him drum, notice whether she has a red head. 4. Do you find beech-nuts or other food stored in decayed trees? Under a bit of raised bark? In cracks in bark? In gate posts? If so, a red-head may be about. 5. These woodpeckers eat more grasshoppers than any of the others. Find out whether they eat them on the ground. 6. Have you ever seen one fly into the air after a passing insect? [Illustration: _Fig. 324. The red-headed woodpecker._] 7. Do red-headed woodpeckers ever visit your chicken yard? Watch them closely and find out why they are there. 8. Do you see them later in the year eating fruit on your farm? 9. It has been found that they eat ants, wasps, beetles, bugs, grasshoppers, crickets, moths, spiders, and caterpillars. If you find them doing harm on your farm will you not compare it with the good they do? 10. What plants do they visit? 11. Where is red-head's nest? II. DOWNY WOODPECKER.--A LITTLE ORCHARD INSPECTOR.[86] [86] Junior Naturalist Monthly, January, 1903. Rap! rap! rap! the little inspector has come to look at our apple trees. "You are welcome, downy woodpecker," say we every one. "Stay as long as you like. We want to look at you closely so that we shall know you every time we see you." A bird about three inches shorter than a robin, black above, white below, white along the middle of the back, and the male red on the nape of the neck: this is the way downy looks. A hardworking, useful, sociable tenant of the farm: this is what downy is. Let us see how this little woodpecker is useful. If you live on a farm, you have probably heard of borers--grubs that get into trees and injure them. Your father does not like these grubs, but downy does. He seems to like any kind of grub. Watch him on a tree sometimes when he is looking for one. He knows where to find it, although neither you nor I might suspect that an insect is living beneath the smooth bark. Then he bores into the tree, and spears the grub with his long tongue. His tongue is a remarkable weapon. He can stretch it two inches beyond the tip of his bill, and it is barbed on both sides. [Illustration: _Fig. 325. Cocoons of the codlin-moth as they were found attached to a piece of loose bark, natural size._] Downy does not stop work, you must remember, when borers are not plenty. Beetles nibble no more plants after his eyes light on them. They are trespassers, and as judge, jury, and executioner, he proves his right to be considered a most useful farm hand. Ants, too, provide him with a good meal occasionally. Among the helpful deeds of the downy woodpecker, we must not forget to mention that he destroys great numbers of the larvæ or worms of the codlin-moth in winter, when these worms have tucked themselves away in the crevices of the bark, all wrapped in their cocoons. (Figs 325, 326.) Perhaps your father has shown you these little cocoons along the body and in the crotches of the apple tree. If not, you can find them yourself. Open some of them and see whether the worm is still there. If he is not, downy has probably taken him. I suppose you know that the larvæ of the codlin-moth are the worms you find in apples. See Leaflet LIII. You must not confound the downy woodpecker with that other woodpecker, the sap-sucker, that often drills rings of holes in the trunks of apple trees. The sapsucker has yellow on his under parts. I shall tell you about him some other time. [Illustration: _Fig. 326. Pupæ of the codlin-moth in cocoons, enlarged._] You have learned that insects and apple-scab and yourselves all try to see who shall own the apple fruit. Now you know that birds, and insects that feed on leaves and in the wood, are also concerned in this quarrel about the apple. A FEW THINGS TO OBSERVE. 1. Does the downy woodpecker travel down a tree head first or does he hop backward? 2. Try some day to see his feet. You will find that two of his toes are turned forward and two backward. Are there other birds that have this arrangement of toes? [Illustration: _Fig. 327. The downy woodpecker._] 3. Notice that he braces himself with his tail as he works. 4. Do you ever see the downy woodpecker eat seeds of plants that the farmers do not like to have on their land? 5. Hang a bone or piece of unsalted suet out of doors for the woodpeckers. They will enjoy an unexpected feast. 6. Where does downy make his nest? III. THE SAPSUCKER.[87] [87] Junior Naturalist Monthly, March, 1903. If you are walking through an orchard or wood and see a jolly little woodpecker with red on its head, do not say at once that it is a downy woodpecker. Look again. Has it yellow on the underparts, black on the breast, a red throat, and red on the crown instead of on the nape? Then it is a sapsucker, a new arrival. (Fig. 328.) It is larger than the downy. The female has no red on the throat. And to think that such a merry little fellow has such a bad reputation among farmer-folk! You will be surprised to find how unkindly woodpeckers are treated throughout the country, because of the misdeeds of the sapsucker. Even the downy has suffered much abuse. This is unfortunate, for I am sure downy woodpeckers have done much more good than sapsuckers have done harm. I wish that all Junior Naturalists would try to find out whether even the sapsucker deserves all that has been said against him. He does harm by boring holes in trees, but how much? Let us learn. As woodpeckers are not shy, it is not difficult to get near them. I have stood within a few feet of a sapsucker, and he did not mind a bit. He kept on boring holes in a tree without a thought that any one might object. 1. How many trees can you find that have holes bored by the sapsucker? 2. How are the holes arranged; here and there on the trunk, or in rings around it? Have you ever found a complete ring of holes? 3. Keep a record of the months in which you find the sapsucker. 4. Notice how the sap runs down into the holes that have been newly made by a sapsucker. 5. It is said that this woodpecker eats the inner bark of the tree as well as the sap. What can you find out about this? [Illustration: _Fig. 328. The sapsucker. Compare this picture with that of the downy woodpecker in Fig. 327._] 6. Do you ever find insects near the holes made by the sapsucker? Do you think he eats them? 7. Find out where the sapsucker has his nest. IV. THE FLICKER.[88] [88] Junior Naturalist Monthly, May, 1903. Three woodpeckers have been introduced to you in these leaflets: the red-head, the hard working downy (Fig. 327), the sapsucker (Fig. 328). There is one more that we ought to add to the list for summer study, since he is very likely to cross our path,--the flicker (Fig. 329). [Illustration: _Fig. 329. The flicker._] This woodpecker has a great many names, probably because he lives in a great many States. The most common are: flicker, highhole, yellow-hammer, and golden-winged woodpecker. I like the name flicker best of all. He is a good-sized bird, about two inches longer than a robin. His colors are: brownish with black spots above, whitish spotted with black underneath, a black crescent on the breast, and a scarlet crescent on the back of the neck. When he flies you will notice two things: the rich golden color of the inside of his wings, and the white patch on the back just above the tail. Now, since he is a woodpecker, you will probably expect to find the flicker in trees; but you are quite as likely to find him on the ground. About half of his food consists of ants, and these he finds afield. He also eats other insects, as well as a good deal of plant food. I hope that you will see a flicker this year and hear him call out, "a-wick-a-wick-a-wick-a-wick-a-wick-a." Possibly some of you may find a nest that these birds have dug out in an old apple tree. They do not always make new nests, however, but live in the deserted homes of other woodpeckers. QUESTIONS. 1. Has the flicker a straight bill like the downy woodpecker? 2. Have you seen the flicker's mate? If so, in what way does she differ from him in color or marking? 3. Where does the flicker build its nest? What color are the eggs? 4. Try to watch a flicker feeding its young. Describe. 5. Do you know the call of the flicker? Can you imitate it, or write it so that Uncle John can recognize it? 6. Do flickers remain all winter? If not, when do they come? When do they leave? LEAFLET LXVIII. DESERTED BIRDS'-NESTS.[89] BY ALICE G. MCCLOSKEY. [89] Junior Naturalist Monthly, February, 1901. [Illustration] There is a wagon trail which I like to follow; it is always a pleasant walk. There is no foot path; so I do not think many people pass that way. Perhaps this is why many little wild creatures of the field and wood like to live there. I do not know any other place where the birds sing so sweetly, where the wild flowers grow so thick, and where the insects are so numerous. By the side of this road I found the little vireo's nest which you see in the picture. It was about five feet from the ground, and hung near the end of a long branch. It was interesting to find out what it was made of,--grasses, strips of bark, hair, pine needles, plant fibres, and bits of paper. On the outside were lichens and spiders' webs. The pieces of paper were dropped along the way, I think, by the leader in a cross-country run. Even the little vireos have an interest in the outdoor sports of the college men. [Illustration: _Fig. 330. The vireo's nest._] One of the most interesting bird homes is the oriole's nest. Uncle John will like to know whether you find one. The young orioles must have happy times in their cradle, which hangs between the earth and the sky. Winter is the best time of year to hunt for birds' nests. It is hard to find them in the spring and the summer. The parent birds intend it shall be. If you succeed in getting a nest, take it into the school room so that the other members of your club can study it with you. SUGGESTIONS. Where did you find the nest? What is its size and shape? Name it, if you can. Was it built on the horizontal crotch of the branch, or on an upright crotch? How was it fastened to the branch? Notice the materials of which it is made. [Illustration: _Fig. 331. The hanging nest of the oriole. A cord is woven into the nest._] In the oriole's nest you will see that there is a difference in the way in which the upper and lower parts are made. What is it? How deep is the oriole's nest which you find? Compare the material on the outside with that on the inside. How is the nest fastened to the twigs? Where does a catbird build its nest? Robin? Bluebird? Swallow? Hen? Turkey? [Illustration: _What?_] LEAFLET LXIX. THE POULTRY YARD: SOME THANKSGIVING LESSONS.[90] BY ALICE G. MCCLOSKEY and JAMES E. RICE. [90] Extended from Junior Naturalist Monthly, November, 1902. [Illustration] A rosy-cheeked girl, a freckled-faced boy and a little bald-headed baby were the only young persons at the Thanksgiving dinner. The baby was not old enough to be invited, but we were so thankful to have her with us that we could not resist drawing her chair up to the table. The turkey was a big one and "done to a turn." We old folks thought so, the freckled-faced boy thought so, and the rosy-cheeked girl thought so. The baby, so far as I could judge, thought not at all. She chewed energetically on a spoon and left the discussion of the turkey to her elders. Having known for a long time that children like to chatter, I decided that I would give the little lad and lassie opposite me an opportunity to talk about turkeys, ducks, chickens, and the like. "These," thought I, "are good Thanksgiving topics, and a boy and girl who have lived on a farm all their lives can tell me some interesting things about them." But this world is full of many strange surprises! It was not long before I learned that those little folk could not answer some very simple questions about poultry. They did not even know why a chicken does not fall off the roost when it sleeps. To be sure, they could tell the exact moment when, in the process of carving, the wish-bone would appear: but you will admit that this is very little. I certainly was disappointed. The bald-headed baby cheered things up a bit, however, by crowing lustily. I rejoiced in the fact that apparently she had heard sounds from the barn-yard. Now there are many reasons why children, Junior Naturalists especially, should know something about poultry. It may be that you live on a farm and will want to raise chickens, ducks, and turkeys some day; and the farmer who knows his poultry best will be most successful in raising it. But whether you live in country or city you will like to study these interesting birds. Let us see what we can find out about them in the next three or four weeks. November, the month of Thanksgiving, is a good time to begin. TURKEYS. Let us first pay our respects to the king of the poultry yard. We may never know His Royal Highness, the old gobbler, very well, because it is said he will not often permit folks to meet him on his own ground. I am told that a visitor is more sure of a welcome within his domain if he wear sombre garb. Although gaily dressed himself the old fellow objects to bright colors on others. There is one thing that we can do if the gobbler does not let us near him,--we can peek at him through the fence. Then, too, at Thanksgiving time many a slain monarch will hang in a nearby market. Following are a few suggestions that will help us to learn something about turkeys. I hope that you know all these things now, and, therefore, will not need to be asked. If you do, please write Uncle John. How many letters do you think he will get from such persons? In the study of any bird, learn to describe it fully: the size, the shape, the bill, the length of legs, the feet, and the color. Is there more than one color of turkey? Observe the head, face and wattles of the turkey gobbler. Notice the strong, curved beak; the bright, clear, hazel eyes. How many colors does he wear? When the turkey is being prepared for the Thanksgiving dinner, ask mother for the foot. Are there any feathers on it? Has it the same number of toes that you find on a rooster's foot? Is the arrangement of the toes the same? Perhaps you find scales on the legs of the turkey. Do you find them also on hens' legs? On which side of the leg,--front or back--are the scales the larger? When I was a little girl I liked to pull a tendon that I found in the turkey's foot after it had been cut off. It was amusing to see the toes curl up. I did not know then that when birds roost at night this tendon is stretched as they bend their legs. Then the toes grasp the perch and hold the bird on. When it stretches its leg to leave the roost the toes spread out, but not until then Because of this birds can go to sleep without the least fear of falling. What kind of perch do they choose, a wide one or a narrow one? Why? Can you tell which is the hen turkey and which the gobbler? Explain. On which one do you find a hairy tuft on the breast? Did you ever hear of the caruncle on the head of the turkey? Compare this with the comb in domestic fowls. Does it differ in shape? Do ducks and geese have combs? [Illustration: _Fig. 332. A turkey likes to roam through the fields._] What is the color of the turkey's face? Does it change color? Do you notice any difference in color when the turkey is angry? What are the turkey's wattles? Notice the fourth toe. Why is it placed in opposite direction to the others? I wonder whether it enables the fowl to grip the perch; and whether it gives the turkey a wide span for support in running over loose brush. Turkeys and chickens and other animals have habits, as boys and girls do, only that they are not bad habits. Did you ever watch turkeys hunting grasshoppers? And did they go in flocks or alone? How do chickens hunt,--in flocks or alone? Which roams farther from home, turkeys or chickens? Do turkeys lay their eggs in the barn or poultry house, as chickens do? Did you ever see a turkey's nest, and where was it? We have Junior Naturalists in many parts of the world: England, Scotland, Australia, Egypt. Will they have an opportunity to study turkeys? See what you can find out in answer to this question. A TIME-HONORED RACE--GEESE. Geese, as you know, come of a very distinguished race. This is no advantage to them in a social way in the poultry yard, however. There is not a duck nor a turkey nor even a wise rooster, that knows or cares whether in times gone by geese saved a Roman city, or whether they were recognized in ancient Egypt. [Illustration: _Fig. 333. Geese; "a very distinguished race."_] The story of the old gray goose was the one I liked best long ago,--the goose that died before Aunt Nabby had enough feathers to make a bed. How often you and I have listened to mother sing about her! And what an inconsiderate old gray goose we thought she was, to die before the feather bed was finished. Some things for Junior Naturalists to think about come into my mind in connection with Aunt Nabby's goose and others of its kind: Why do goose feathers make the best beds? Do you think an old grandmother goose would give enough feathers in her lifetime to make a good bed? I have heard of one that lived sixty years. Are feathers ever taken from live geese for beds? Compare the feathers of land-fowls and water-fowls. Probably one or more of our Junior Naturalists will have a goose for his Thanksgiving dinner. If so, I wish that the wing feathers might be brought to school. See whether you can find out why the wing feathers of a goose were preferred for making quill pens. Make a pen if you can and write a letter to Uncle John with it. The five outer wing feathers are most useful for writing, and of these the second and third are best. Why? Do you think that the Declaration of Independence was signed with a quill pen? Do goose quills make good holders for artists' brushes? [Illustration: _Fig. 334. A happy family._] What kind of food do geese like best? Is the tongue of a goose similar to that of a turkey or chicken? Is the old gander as cross as the turkey gobbler? Have you ever seen a flock of wild geese flying northward or southward? Which way are they going in the fall? Observe that nearly always they keep their V-shaped ranks unbroken. There is, of course, a leader whose call the flock follows. Whether the leader is some chosen member of the number or whether he takes his position by chance I do not know. What time of day do the wild geese fly? Do you like to hear them honking as they go on their way? I wish you would find out whether our farmyard geese are only these common wild geese tamed. CHICKENS AND DUCKS; AND THE STORY OF TWO MOTHER HENS. One mother hen had her own brood of fluffy little chicks (Fig. 334). When they were old enough they scratched for worms and ate gravel as obediently as any one could desire. How happy they were underneath the hemlocks in the long afternoons! [Illustration: _Fig. 335. Mother hen and baby ducks._] The other mother hen had to take care of ducks (Fig. 335). Pretty as any chicks they were, but troublesome as only little ducks can be with a nervous old hen for their adopted mother. The family in the picture looks very contented. Do you suppose that the photographer told them to look pleasant? When we come to know ducks and chickens better, we shall learn why the little ducks are often such a trial to the hen mother. It may be that when we ask boys and girls to study chickens and ducks they will say that there is nothing new to learn about them. I am not so sure. The freckled-faced boy thought he knew all about them, too. Let us see whether we can suggest some new things to think about, as you look over the fence into the poultry yard, or watch the cook preparing a hen or duck for the Thanksgiving dinner. As I looked at the chickens in a barn-yard the other day, I was interested in the different kinds that I saw: some brown, some white, some black, some speckled; some had feathers on their feet, others had not; some had combs with many points, in others the comb was close to the head; some had long tails, some short tails, some no tails at all to speak of. If I were to name the differences that I noticed you would not get through reading them in time to write your November dues. How many unlike marks or characters can you find in chickens or ducks? Have you ever seen two chickens or two ducks exactly alike? Compare the feet of a hen and a duck. Their bills. Do you think that a duck can scratch for worms? What do ducks eat? What kind of food do hens like best? How do a hen's feathers differ from a duck's? Note the scales on a hen's foot. Snakes have scales on their bodies, too. Some day you may learn a wonderful story that these similar features of hen and snake suggest. Touch a hen's eye lightly with a pencil. Does she cover it with a thin eyelid? A turtle does this. Has a turtle scales also? If so, may be it will come into the wonderful story connected with hens and snakes. Look closely at a hen's ear. Watch chickens as they make their toilet. A farmer told me that among the tail feathers of barn-fowls there is an oil sac that they find useful in cleaning their clothes. I wonder whether this is true? While I was watching some chickens the other day, I saw one jump up into the air several times. She was a skillful little acrobat. What do you think she was trying to catch? Watch the cook as she prepares a chicken or turkey for dinner. Find the crop into which the food passes after it has been swallowed. From the crop it passes on to the gizzard. Look closely at the gizzard. See what strong muscles it has. It needs them to grind the grain and gravel stones together. It is a very good mill, you see. Try to find out whether a duck has a crop and a gizzard. Do not ask any one. Wait until there is to be a duck for dinner some day. Would you suppose from the kind of food ducks eat that they need a crop and a gizzard? Do little chickens have feathers when they are hatched? What is the cover of their bodies called? Are they always of the same color when they are hatched that they are when they are grown up? What kinds of poultry change their color when their feathers grow? Notice the chickens of Black Minorcas (if you know any one who has that kind), then write Uncle John about their color. Did you ever see fowls without feathers? When you go to the fair be sure to look for some "Silkies." Did you ever see fowls whose feathers were all crinkled up toward their head? Look for "Frizzles" when you go to the fair. A LESSON ON EGGS. [Illustration: _Fig. 336. A coop of chickens._] What is the color of the turkey's egg? Do the first-laid turkey's eggs differ in color from those that are laid later? How do these eggs differ in color from the eggs of ducks, geese, and hens? Do eggs from different breeds of hens differ in color? Do eggs from different kinds of poultry differ in shape? Can you not make some drawings of eggs showing how they differ, and send to Uncle John? Not one of you can tell how much a turkey's egg weighs, nor a hen's egg. Do you think that eggs from all kinds of hens weigh the same? And if they do not, do you think that they are worth the same price the dozen? Did you ever look through an egg at a strong light? What did you see? Was there an air space? Was it on the big end or the little end? Leave the eggs in a dry room for a few days. Does the air space increase in size? Boil an egg. Remove the shell carefully over the air space. Do you notice a membrane? Are there two membranes? Boil an egg until it is very hard; does the white of the egg separate in layers? Break the yoke carefully; do you notice layers of light and dark color? Is there a little soft light colored spot in the centre? Write to Uncle John and ask him what this is. SOME QUESTIONS IN GENERAL. How many varieties of fowls can you name? How do they differ in size and color? [Illustration: _Fig. 337. What kind of hens are these?_] Have you ever seen ducks, geese, hens, and turkeys standing on the snow or ice? If so, how did they behave? Which seemed to enjoy it? Why should a duck or goose be able to swim in ice water without apparently suffering from cold? When mother dresses a duck or goose for dinner, ask her to let you see the layers of fat under the skin and inside the body. Write to Uncle John and tell him what the fat in the body is for. Ask him how this fat came in the body; also whether there is such a thing as fat in the food which the ducks eat. Did you ever see hens and ducks out in the rain? Did they all enjoy it? Did you ever see anything wetter than a wet hen? Why do they look so disconsolate? Examine the feathers of different kinds of poultry. How do the feathers of ducks, geese, turkeys and fowls differ? Try wetting the various feathers, then let them dry out. Make drawings of these feathers, showing, if you can, the different colors and shapes. Do turkeys think? Did you ever watch a turkey steal her nest? Where did she go? How long did you watch her before you found the nest? Did she cover up her eggs? With what? Why do they cover the eggs when they leave the nest? Do ducks, geese, turkeys, and hens all cover their eggs? Why do hens differ in this respect from the turkeys? Do all kinds of ducks cover their eggs? Did you ever watch ducklings and little chickens eat? Did you notice any difference in their appetites? Which grow faster, little chickens or little ducks? Do you know that some hens do not pay their board? Sometimes hens eat more than they are worth. It may be the fault of the hen or it may be that she is not provided with the proper kind of food or given the proper care. A hen cannot make eggs unless she has the proper kind of food. Some persons so feed and handle their hens that they are able to produce eggs for six cents the dozen; other persons expend more than a dollar to get the dozen. How does the farmer make his money from fowls (that is, what kind of products does he sell)? You should learn to classify chickens according to the uses for which they are grown. (1) Some kinds of hens excel in egg-laying. These kinds are known as the "egg breeds." One of the leading egg breeds is the Leghorn. (2) Others produce much meat, and are known as the "meat breeds," as the Brahma. (3) Others are fairly good fowls for both eggs and meat, and are called "general-purpose breeds," of which Plymouth Rock and Wyandotte are good examples. (4) Then there are "fancy breeds," grown as pets or curiosities or as game birds. Now, try to find out whether there are any general differences in form and looks to distinguish one class of breeds from another. And find out whether turkeys, geese, and ducks may be similarly classified. HOW FRANK AND HENRY RAISED CHICKENS. Frank and Henry wanted to keep chickens all by themselves. They thought they might sell the eggs and the fowls and get spending money. They knew little about chickens, but then, it did not matter, for chickens will take care of themselves. All there is to do is to give them corn and water every day,--at least, so the boys thought. Both boys had a hard time the first year, but they kept at it. Frank finally made a success. Henry lost money; his hens died or did not lay, and he had to give up. One boy turned out to be a good farmer and the other a poor farmer. You have seen such farmers living side by side. I will tell you why Frank succeeded. 1. He provided warm and pleasant quarters for the chickens, so that the fowls were comfortable and contented. 2. He learned to like the chickens, so that he spent many of his extra hours watching them and caring for them. 3. He learned that something more is required in feeding a hen than merely to satisfy her appetite. Some kinds of food may be best for growing chicks and others for laying hens. 4. He soon found that some hens lay more and larger eggs than others, and he saved eggs from these hens for hatching. Henry said that "eggs are eggs" and that there was "no sense in being so fussy." 5. He learned that eggs and poultry sell best when they really are best and when they are carefully cleaned and neatly packed. Frank had learned the first lessons in good farming. [Illustration: _Fig. 338. At the drinking fountain._] LEAFLET LXX. LITTLE HERMIT BROTHER.[91] BY ANNA BOTSFORD COMSTOCK. [91] Nature-Study Quarterly, June, 1899. [Illustration] In far Thibet exists a class of Buddhist monks who are hermits and who dwell in caves. I was told about these strange people by a Senior Naturalist, who has spent his life going around the world and finding the countries upon it as easily as you Junior Naturalists find the same countries on the globe in the schoolroom. A real naturalist is never contented with maps of places and pictures of things, but always desires to see the places and things themselves. The Senior Naturalist told me that he found Thibet a dreary land inhabited by queer people; and the hermit monks were the queerest of all. Each one dwelt in his solitary cave, ate very little, and worked not at all, but spent his time in thought. Could we read his thoughts we should be none the wiser, since they are only mysterious thoughts about mysterious things. Now it is a surprising fact that we have hermits of similar habits here in America; only our hermits are little people who dress in a white garb and live in cells underground; they also eat little and work not at all, and probably meditate upon mysteries. However, they are equipped with six legs while the monks of Thibet have only two, a difference of little importance since neither hermit travels far from his cave. * * * * * There are in eight or nine counties in New York State places that may surely expect visitors on certain years. The connection between these guests and the hermits of Thibet may not seem very close at first sight; but wait and see. The reason why these New York counties expect company is that they entertained a large number of similar guests in 1882, 1865, 1848, 1831, 1814, in 1797, and probably at intervals of seventeen years long before that; in 1797, however, was the first record made of the appearance of these visitors. Every time they came they probably outstayed their welcome; yet they had the good quality of allowing their hosts sixteen years of rest between visits. In order that the Junior Naturalist may recognize these visitors I will describe their methods of arrival. Sometime in the latter part of May or in early June you may hear a great buzzing in some trees, as if there were a thousand lilliputian buzz saws going at once. If you examine the trees you will find on them many queer-looking insects, with black bodies about an inch long, covered with transparent wings folded like a roof. Naturally you will wonder how such great numbers of large insects could appear one day when they were nowhere to be seen the day before. But if you look at the ground beneath the trees you will find in it many small holes. You will also find clinging to the trees many whitish objects, which at first sight seem like pale, wingless insects, but which on closer examination prove to be merely the cast skins of insects (Fig. 339). These are the cowls and robes which our little American hermits cast off after they come out of their underground cells, and which they must shed before they can free their wings. Our little American hermits we call the seventeen-year locusts. However, this name is a most confusing one, since we also call our grasshoppers locusts, and to them the name truly belongs. These seventeen-year locusts are really cicadas, and they belong to a different order from the locusts. The real locusts have mouth-parts formed for biting, while the cicadas have mouth-parts grown together in the form of a tube, through which they suck juices of plants. So we hope the Junior Naturalists will call our little hermits by their right name, cicadas; and will not permit them to be spoken of as locusts. In order that you may know the mysterious lives of these wonderful insects, I will tell you the story of one of them. THE STORY OF LITTLE HERMIT BROTHER, CICADA SEPTENDECIM. Once a cicada mother made with her ovipositor a little slit or cavity in an oak twig, and in this slit placed in very neat order two rows of eggs. Six weeks later there hatched from one of these eggs a pale, lively little creature, that to the naked eye looked like a tiny white ant. If, however, we could have examined him through a lens we should have found him very different from an ant; for his two front legs were shaped somewhat like lobsters' big claws, and instead of jaws like an ant, he had simply a long beak that was hollow like a tube. After he came out of his egg he ran about the tree and seemed interested for a time in everything he saw. Then, suddenly, he went to the side of a limb and deliberately fell off. To his little eyes the ground below was invisible; so our small cicada showed great faith when he practically jumped off the edge of his world into space. He was such a speck of a creature that the breeze took him and lifted him gently down, as if he were the petal of a flower; and he alighted on the earth unhurt and probably much delighted with his sail through the air. At once he commenced hunting for some little crevice in the earth; and when he found it he went to the bottom of it and with his shovel-like fore-feet began digging downward. I wonder if he stopped to give a last look at sky, sunshine, and the beautiful green world before he bade them good-bye for seventeen long years! If so, he did it hurriedly, for he was intent upon reaching something to eat. This he finally found a short distance below the surface of the ground, in the shape of a juicy rootlet of the great tree above. Into this he inserted his beak and began to take the sap as we take lemonade through a straw. He made a little cell around himself and then he found existence quite blissful. He ate very little and grew very slowly, and there was no perceptible change in him for about a year; then he shed his skin for the first time, and thus, insect-wise, grew larger. After a time he dug another cell near another rootlet deeper in the ground; but he never exerted himself more than was necessary to obtain the little food that he needed. This idle life he found entirely satisfactory, and the days grew into months and the months into years. Only six times in the seventeen years did our hermit change his clothes, and this was each time a necessity, since they had become too small. Judging from what the Senior Naturalist told me, I think this is six times more than a Thibetan hermit changes his clothes in the same length of time. What may be the meditations of a little hermit cicada during all these years we cannot even imagine. If any of the Junior Naturalists ever find out the secret they will be very popular indeed with the scientific men called psychologists. However, if we may judge by actions, the sixteenth summer after our hermit buried himself he began to feel stirring in his bosom aspirations toward a higher life. He surely had no memory of the beautiful world he had abandoned in his babyhood; but he became suddenly possessed with a desire to climb upward, and began digging his way toward the light. It might be a long journey through the hard earth; for during the many years he may have reached the depth of nearly two feet. He is now as industrious as he was shiftless before; and it takes him only a few weeks to climb out of the depths into which he had fallen through nearly seventeen years of inertia. If it should chance that he reaches the surface of the ground before he is ready to enjoy life, he hits upon a device for continuing his way upward without danger to himself. Sometimes his fellows have been known to crawl out of their burrows and seek safety under logs and sticks until the time came to gain their wings. But this is a very dangerous proceeding, since in forests there are many watchful eyes which belong to creatures who are very fond of bits of soft, white meat. So our cicada, still a hermit, may build him a tall cell out of mud above ground. How he builds this "hut," "cone," or "turret" as it is variously called, we do not know; but it is often two inches in height, and he keeps himself in the top of it. Under ordinary circumstances our cicada would not build a hut, but remain in his burrow. Finally there comes a fateful evening when, as soon as the sun has set, he claws his way through the top of his mud turret or out of his burrow and looks about him for further means of gratifying his ambitions to climb. A bush, a tree, the highest thing within his range of vision, attracts his attention and he hurries toward it. It may be he finds himself in company with many of his kind hurrying toward the same goal, but they are of no interest to him as yet. Like the youth in the famous poem, "Excelsior" is his motto and he heeds no invitation to tarry. When he reaches the highest place within his ken he places himself, probably back downward, on some branch or twig, takes a firm hold with all his six pairs of claws, and keeps very still for a time. Then his skeleton nymph-skin breaks open at the back and there pushes out of it a strange creature long and white, except for two black spots upon its back; on he comes until only the tip of his body remains in the old nymph-skin; then he reaches forward and grasps the twig with his soft new legs and pulls himself entirely clear from the old hermit garb. At once his wings begin to grow; at first they are mere pads on his back, but they soon expand until they cover his body and are flat like those of a miller. The many veins in the wings are white and he keeps the wings fluttering in order that they may harden soon. If, in the moonlight of some June evening, a Junior Naturalist should see a tree covered with cicadas at this stage he would think it had suddenly blossomed into beautiful, white, fluttering flowers. [Illustration: _Fig. 339. The cicada is full grown at last, and his empty nymph skin is hanging to a branch._] [Illustration: _Fig. 340. The cicada's drum._] As the night wears on, the color of our hero changes and his wings harden; until when the sun rises we behold him in the glory of a black uniform with facings of orange and with beautiful glassy wings folded roof-like above his body. (Fig. 339.) Great is the change wrought in his appearance during this one marvelous night, and greater still the change wrought in his habits! He is now no longer a hermit; there are thousands of his kind about him, a fact which he realizes with great joy. So happy is he that he feels as if he must burst if he does not find some adequate means for expressing his happiness in this beautiful world of sunshine. Then suddenly he finds in himself the means of expression and bursts into song. Yet, it is not a song exactly, for he is a drummer rather than a singer. On his body just behind each of his hind wings is a kettle drum. The head to this drum is of parchment thrown into folds and may be seen with a lens if you lift his wings and look closely. (Fig. 340.) Instead of drum sticks he uses a pair of strong muscles to throw the membranes into vibration and there is a complex arrangement of cavities and sounding boards around these drum heads so that the noise he gives off is a great one indeed for a fellow of his size. So fond is he of making music that he has no time to eat or to do aught else but to sound fanfares all the sunshiny day. He is not the only musician on the tree; there are many others and they all join in a swelling chorus that has been described as a roar like that made by the "rushing of a strong wind through the trees." If our cicada could talk to one of you Junior Naturalists he would tell you that there was a good reason for all this music. He would explain that only the men of the cicada world possess drums and that the object and reason of all their music is the entertainment of the lady cicadas, who are not only very fond of this drumming, but are good critics of cicada music as well. He would perhaps tell you also that he had his eye on a certain graceful maiden perched on the leaf between him and the sun; but she, on the other hand, seemed to give about equal attention to him and three other drummers situated near by. Excited by the competition and by her indifference, he rattled his drum faster and faster until he rose to the heights of cicada melody and harmony that left his rivals far behind. Then the lady of his choice listened spellbound and pronounced him the greatest of all musicians, and thus he won his bride. However, we may safely predict that their wedded life will be too full of happiness to last. After a few weeks the sunshine, the music, the happiness of wooing and winning will prove too much for our hero and one day he will beat his drum in a last mad ecstacy and fall to earth and die from happy exhaustion. His little wife may survive him only long enough to cut slits in some of the twigs of the home tree and place in them rows of eggs from which shall develop a family of hermits which shall come forth and fill the world with their music seventeen years hence. * * * * * There are many broods of cicadas in the United States, so that they appear in different localities in different years. New York State has five well-marked broods. There are several other species of cicada peculiar to America. One is called _Cicada tredecim_, since it appears every thirteen years. However, this species is limited to the South. The dog-day harvest fly, or lyreman, is the cicada that is best known to us through the northern and middle States. This appears in small numbers every year and is a distinct addition to the summer chorus of insect singers. He is larger and much more dignified in appearance than is his cousin _septendecim_. He wears a black suit embroidered with scrolls of dark olive green and the whole lower surface of his body is covered with white powder. His drums are situated above plates which may be seen on the lower side of the body, one behind each hind leg. He hides in trees and his shrill music is so associated with the heat of summer noons that the sound itself makes one drowsy. The hermit life of the lyreman in underground cells is supposed to last only two years. While the cicadas of which we have spoken are the children of an ancient race which inhabits America, Europe also has her ancient races of cicadas, although they are not the kind which live hermit lives for seventeen years. We have evidence that their music was held in high esteem by the ancient races of men--especially the Greeks. When Homer complimented his orators he compared them with cicadas. Thus it may lend a special interest to the study of the cicada by our Junior Naturalists when they know that his kettle drums have been celebrated instruments of music by poets who wrote three thousand years before America was discovered by Columbus. QUERIES FOR SHARP EYES. 1. When did you first see one of the cicadas? 2. What was it doing when you found it? 3. Did it do anything to attract your notice to it, or did you find it by accident? 4. Where did you find it? 5. See whether you can determine which are the father and which the mother cicadas. 6. Try to find where a mother cicada has laid eggs. 7. If you find where the cicada emerged from the ground, or from a hut, give a brief description of the location, as to kind of soil, etc. 8. Where did you find the most of the cast-off nymph skins? 9. Did you discover animals or birds feeding upon the cicada? LEAFLET LXXI. A HOME FOR FRIENDLY LITTLE NEIGHBORS.[92] BY ALICE G. MCCLOSKEY. (Compare Leaflet XVII.) [92] Junior Naturalist Monthly, October, 1902. [Illustration] Last year when vacation days were over our young people found it hard to leave the acquaintances that they had made during the summer,--the garden-folk, the road-side-folk, and the wood-folk. Let us take them indoors with us this year. It will not be difficult to provide a home for some of the more friendly ones and they will help to make the schoolroom a cheerful place. How pleasant it will be in the long afternoons to hear the cricket's merry tune or see the flutter of a butterfly's wings! The quiet woods and the green fields will then seem nearer and we shall feel a little touch of their mystery and beauty. It is not necessary to have a fine home for the outdoor-folk. They will not object if it is not an up-to-date dwelling. Fig. 341 illustrates a very convenient terrarium, as the home is called. The sides and top are covered with fine wire screening and the front is glass. By raising the cover, which is fastened to one side by means of hinges, new visitors can be admitted easily. Another terrarium is shown in Fig. 126, page 208. This is made from an old berry crate. It does not look quite so well as the other, but, as I said before, the inmates will not mind a bit. The toads will give their high jump as gracefully and the crickets fiddle as merrily as in the finer one. When the terrarium is ready to furnish, you can have some nature-study trips in search of materials for it. Cover the floor with stones and place about three inches of good soil over them. Then you will be ready to select the carpet. Let this be of soft green moss, the prettiest bits that you can find on the forest floor. Leave one corner free for sods on which tall grasses grow, so that there will be a cozy nook for the orchestra (crickets, grasshoppers, katydids, and the like). What a fine concert there will be! Will the most conceited toad in the terrarium ever dare to raise his voice in song again after hearing it? Perhaps next spring we shall know. [Illustration: _Fig. 341. A shower for the little neighbors._] Even before the home is completed, you can gather your small guests about you. Temporary lodgings can be provided without much trouble. Fig. 342 illustrates a good insect cage, and a box containing damp moss and covered with mosquito netting will make fairly comfortable quarters for salamanders ("lizards") and toads. The first visitor that you welcome will probably be a little woolly-bear, a brown and black caterpillar that you see so often in your autumn walks (Fig. 343). He is one of my favorite insect friends, and I really like to have him snuggle up in a furry ball in my hand. You will find woolly-bear a very restless little creature. You never know what he is going to do next. He may spin a cocoon this fall or "he may curl up like a woodchuck," as Uncle John says, and sleep until spring. Then, if all goes well, he will spin his cocoon and come out an Isabella tiger-moth (Fig. 344). No matter how fast woolly-bear may be hurrying along the highway when you meet him, put him into the terrarium, for you will find that he is a most entertaining little fellow. If you have an insect net, sweep it among shrubs and weeds. I am hoping that when you look into it you will find "golden-eyes" or the lace-winged-fly. When you see the pretty little green creature you will wonder that her children can be called aphis-lions, for they are not at all like their mother (Fig. 345); but when you have watched them among the aphids or plant-lice, you will understand how they have earned their name. They have very long jaws and very large appetites. No one knows better than golden-eyes what her children are capable of doing when on a foraging tour. For this reason she places her eggs high on silken stalks (Fig. 345). If she laid them on the leaf close together, the first aphis-lion hatched would not give the other members of his family a chance to open their eyes, nor to know how pleasant it is to live on a green leaf. As it is he walks down the silken stalk and finds himself among the aphids. Then, when he has proved himself the gardener's friend by devouring a great many of the small green insects, he spins a pearly white cocoon and out of this comes a lace-winged-fly with glistening golden eyes. If one of these dainty creatures comes to live in your terrarium, you may notice some day that it has a disagreeable odor. This is a characteristic that many insects possess, and owing to it the birds do not like to eat them. There is another insect out in the garden that ought to be an inmate of every terrarium this fall, the green cabbage-worm. Some Junior gardeners will object to calling this a friendly little neighbor, but you will find that he will teach you many new things, in this way proving himself friendly to you as a naturalist. You must remember that these green caterpillars did not know that you had planted the garden in which they worked destruction. They did not know that you wanted to send the very best cabbage to the State fair. They knew only that when they opened their eyes they were on a green leaf and it was good to eat. Probably you will find the eggs of the cabbage butterfly on the under side of the leaves. Then you can feed the young caterpillars when they hatch. They will, of course, prefer cabbage leaves. If you miss them some day, search in the terrarium for the chrysalids into which they have changed. These chrysalids sometimes imitate the color of the support from which they hang, and you may have difficulty in finding them. For this reason it may be well to keep one of the caterpillars under a lamp chimney, the top of which has been covered with mosquito netting (Fig. 342), so that you may know how the chrysalids look. The cabbage butterflies are familiar to most boys and girls; yet as they come out of the chrysalid state in your terrarium, you will be able to observe them more closely. Notice that the wings are dull white on the upper sides, while on the under side the apex of the fore wings and the entire surface of the hind wings are pale lemon yellow. In the female you will find that there are two black spots besides the tip on each of the fore wings, and in the male there is but one. [Illustration: _Fig. 342. An insect cage._] Now that I have put you in the way to find a few members of the insect world for your terrarium, I am going to ask you to think about some other outdoor-folk that naturalists learn to like. Have you ever turned over stones or broken off pieces of an old stump in the woods or along the bank of a stream? If so, you may have seen salamanders ("lizards") making their escape as quickly as possible. If you can get a few for your terrarium you will learn to like them, for they are harmless and have very interesting ways. Do not catch them by their tails as they try to get away, or you may find that you have captured the tails but lost the salamanders. [Illustration: _Fig. 343. Woolly-bear, natural size._] Let the excursion in search of these little fellows be one of the jolliest of the year. You will find them in moist places and should therefore, carry a box containing damp moss to put them in. I would suggest that you take two boxes along, one for the smaller salamanders, the other for their larger brothers. Why? I will tell you. It happened this summer that a party of little folks went out with me on a salamander hunt. We found three kinds: the _Spotted Salamander_, which is black with yellow spots on each side of the back; the _Red-back Salamander_, which usually has a reddish brown band along the back; and a black one covered with whitish spots. This black one with whitish spots was named "Freckles" by one of our number, a much more attractive name than his own, which is _Pleth'-o-don glu-ti-no'-sus_. We placed the three in a box, and as I closed it the large spotted salamander seemed very well satisfied (no wonder!), while the other two raised their heads in a most appealing way. I was firm, however, and made them prisoners, feeling sure that they would be comfortable in the nice large terrarium. When morning came we opened the box, for we were ready to put our little neighbors into their new home. What was our surprise to find the spotted salamander alone! As to countenance he was well content; as to sides he was much bulged out. Poor little "Freckles" and poor little Red Back! I wish I had listened to your appeal! [Illustration: _Fig. 344. Isabella tiger moths, male and female. The red and black woolly-bear is the larva or caterpillar of this moth. The smaller moth is the male._] SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY. 1. A terrarium is "an inclosed bit of earth on which things may live and grow." Do not think that it is necessary to have one as well made at first as that in the illustration. (Fig. 341.) Uncle John will be well pleased to know that you have made some arrangement for having outdoor-folk live in the schoolroom. Any such home will be a terrarium. 2. Every one can have grasshoppers for study. How many different kinds can you find? Do all have the feelers or antennæ the same length? Observe the growth of the wings in the nymph, as the young grasshopper is called. In the grown-up ones notice that the narrow wing is on the outside and the pretty ones underneath. 3. Every one can also find crickets, and no terrarium will be complete without them. In the warm schoolroom or home they will make music until late in the year. Watch the black cricket make music with his wings. Notice a tiny light speck near the elbow of the cricket's front leg. This is the ear; so you see the little fellows "listen with their elbows." The mother cricket has a spear at the end of her body. With this she makes a hole in the ground in which to place her eggs. She cannot chirp, but the father makes enough music for the family. You will see that the mother seems to enjoy it. Plant fresh grass seed and grain occasionally in the cricket corner of your terrarium. 4. If you do not own an insect net, try to find a lace-winged fly without one. It will not be difficult for young naturalists to see the flies resting on the bushes along the roadside. These insects are valuable to farmers because their children, the aphis-lions, eat so many plant-lice and other insects. [Illustration: _Fig. 345. Golden-eyes or lace-winged fly; eggs, larva or aphis-lion, cocoon, adult._] Look on the under side of the leaves for the cocoon illustrated in Fig. 345. It has the appearance of a small pearl. The first time I found one I did not know what it was. I left it on my desk hoping that something interesting would come out of it. The next morning there was a pretty green insect trying to get out of the window and I wondered how it had come there. While thinking about it my eye fell on the cocoon lying on my desk. I noticed that a lid had been raised on it and suspected at once how golden-eyes had found her way into my room. Who will succeed in getting the eggs, an aphis-lion, a cocoon, or a lace-winged fly? Let us know. 5. The larger the number of butterflies you can bring into the schoolroom, the gayer will be the terrarium world. Gather fresh thistles or other flowers from which they can suck the nectar or give them sweetened water in a dish. Notice their long mouth-parts as they eat. One of the most common of all butterflies is the large brown and black one. This is called the monarch butterfly. Notice that many of these fly together on autumn days. They are going south with the birds. 6. Be sure to keep the moss damp for the salamanders and add occasionally fresh pieces in which they will get food. Perhaps you can teach them to eat raw meat after they have been with you awhile. 7. The terrarium will not be complete without a toad or two. You can feed them flies, other insects, and earthworms, and they may then leave the salamanders alone. You need not be afraid to handle the toads for _they cannot give you warts_. When they have been in the terrarium awhile they will show you how they like to spend the winter. [Illustration: _A terrarium in School No. 23, Buffalo._] LEAFLET LXXII. MOTHS AND BUTTERFLIES.[93] BY ALICE G. MCCLOSKEY. [93] Junior Naturalist Monthly, March, 1902. [Illustration] Of all the insects that interest boys and girls, moths and butterflies seem to hold the first place. I find, however, that young people are not always able to distinguish these insects one from another, and do not know very much of the strange lives they lead. Perhaps you may have found out a few facts about them in books, but this is not _knowing_. To know, one must see some of the wonderful things that they do. When you have watched the whole life-story of a moth or butterfly, you will have a far greater interest in these animals than their handsome wings and graceful flight have ever given you. The most important thing to remember in the study of moths and butterflies is that they appear in four different forms during their lives. These forms are: _The egg._ _The larva._ _The pupa._ _The adult._ THE EGGS. The eggs are laid singly or in clusters. They are usually found on the plant which is the favorite food of the young. Look for the shining masses of the eggs of the tent-caterpillar on apple and wild cherry trees; also for the yellow eggs of potato beetles on potato leaves. THE LARVA. The larva or "worm" hatches from the egg. During this period in its history the insect _eats_ and _grows_. If you doubt that they have good appetites, undertake to feed a few healthy caterpillars this spring. If you doubt that they are particular as to the kind of food they have, find out for yourselves whether the apple tree "worm" will eat milk-weed leaves or whether the milk-weed caterpillar will eat leaves taken from an apple tree. One of the most interesting things to notice in the study of larvæ or caterpillars is that they occasionally appear in bright new coats, and we find the old ones have been cast aside. It is necessity, not pride, that leads them to do this. You see, an insect's skeleton is on the outside of its body; and if it could not be shed once in a while how would there be room for the little creature to grow? [Illustration: _Fig. 346. Chrys'-a-lids of the mourning-cloak butterfly._] THE PUPA. [Illustration: _Fig. 347. Cocoon of the cecropia moth. It is often attached to the twig of a fruit tree._] Of all the forms in which moths and butterflies appear, the pupa is the strangest. Although we speak of this period in the life of the insect as one of rest or sleep, it is the time when the most wonderful changes take place in its body. The queer little objects that you see illustrated in Fig. 346 are the pupæ of the mourning-cloak butterfly. When the caterpillars were about to shed their coats for the last time, they hung themselves head downward from a twig by means of a silk button which they had spun. Then they cast off their skins, leaving the chrysalids or naked pupæ hanging; protected from birds by their spiny form and protected from many enemies, even from young naturalists, by their wood-brown color which so closely resembles the support from which they are suspended. [Illustration: _Fig. 348. The cecropia pupa inside the cocoon. Nearly natural size._] Let us next look at the pupa of a moth. This is often inside a covering which is called a cocoon. If you look on the fruit trees or shade trees about your home you may find a cocoon of the ce-cró-pi-a moth. You will see that it is made of silk. This covering was spun by the giant silkworm as a protection against the storms of winter. How snug the pupa is inside, and how firmly the cocoon is fastened to the twig on which you found it! Figs. 347, 348, 349 show this interesting insect. When you are studying pupæ remember that butterflies do not come out of cocoons. Their chrysalis or pupa is always uncovered. In the case of moths, however, the pupa is either inside a cocoon or protected by being underground or in some well sheltered place. These facts suggest a question. Is there any reason why the one should be better fitted to endure cold and storms than the other? THE ADULT. We now come to the fourth period in the lives of moths and butterflies, a period which has ever had and ever will have an interest for young and old. Since there are many persons, little and big, who cannot distinguish the two groups, butterflies and moths, let us learn the marks by which they may be known. [Illustration: _Fig. 349. Cecropia moth just emerged from the cocoon, on which it hangs. The moth comes from the pupa._] Butterflies have uncovered pupæ. They fly by day. The wings are folded over the back when at rest. The antennæ or feelers have _knobs_ on the ends. (Fig. 350 B.) The body is slender. Moths have pupae either inside cocoons or protected by being underground or in some sheltered place. Many moths fly at night. The antennæ are never knobbed. (Fig. 350 M M.) leave the wings spread when they are at rest. The body is stout. Occasionally you may come across insects that very closely resemble butterflies, yet have some characters that are similar to those of moths. They are the skippers, so named because of their strong and rapid flight. The antennæ have knobs, but these knobs are drawn out and turned back in the form of a hook. (Fig. 350 S.) The body is rather stout. The pupa is covered by a thin cocoon. In some species the wings are held vertically, in others horizontally. SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY. Cocoons and butterfly chrysalids are very hard to find because they so closely resemble the withered leaves that cling to shrubs and trees. [Illustration: _Fig. 350. Antennæ or feelers._] You will probably find cocoons of the ce-cro-pi-a and pro-mé-the-a moths. The former, illustrated by Figs. 347 to 349, is commonly found on fruit trees; the latter swings loosely from a branch of ash, wild cherry, or lilac. The promethea cocoon is enfolded in a leaf which the caterpillar fastened to a twig by means of silk before it spun the cocoon. If you are rewarded for your search by finding some of these winter homes, leave a few of them in a cool place and occasionally dip them in water that they may not become too dry. Look at them carefully from time to time and note any changes that take place. Following are a few suggestions that will help you in the study of cocoons: 1. Observe the covering of the pupa closely. Is it made of other material beside silk? When the woolly-bear, that many of you have cared for all winter, spins his cocoon, he will use some of his own hair as well as silk. [Illustration: _Fig. 351. Luna moth and swallow-tail butterfly._] 2. Open the cocoon. Is the pupa free from it? Are the threads of silk woven in the same direction in all parts of the covering? 3. Out of which end do you think the moth will come? 4. Describe the inside of the cocoon. Do you find anything in it beside the pupa? 5. The cocoons of the Chinese silkworm are soaked in hot water or softened by steam before the thread can be unwound. Put one of the cocoons that you find in hot water and see whether you can unwind the silk. I wish you could secure some cocoons of the real silkworm. Boys and girls often ask us what they shall feed moths and butterflies. Many of the adult insects do not eat at all. Some, however, sip the nectar of flowers or sap of trees. Oftentimes they will drink sweetened water or the juice of fruit. If you have an opportunity, watch one while it eats. Notice the long "tongue" through which it takes its food. This is made of two pieces grooved on the inner side, and when held together they form a tube. When the insect is not eating these mouth-parts are coiled. [Illustration: _Fig. 352. The life-story of an insect, the forest tent caterpillar. m, male moth; f, female; p, pupa; e, egg-ring recently laid; g, hatched egg-ring; c, caterpillar. Moths and caterpillars are natural size, and eggs and pupa are slightly enlarged._] LEAFLET LXXIII. THE PAPER-MAKERS.[94] BY ALICE G. McCLOSKEY. [94] Junior Naturalist Monthly, February and March, 1901. A CASTLE MADE OF PAPER. [Illustration] Many school rooms in the State have a hornet's nest which some boy or girl has brought to show the teacher. It is usually hung on the wall or used as an ornament on top of the bookcase. Let us take it down some day this month and learn something about it. Do you think the nest can be called a castle? Why not? Look inside. Is it not several stories high? Are there not spacious galleries in it? Is it not as well guarded when the wasps are at home as if an army of soldiers stood outside? [Illustration: _Fig. 353. The paper castle._] Let us see how this castle is built. You have heard that wasps were the first paper makers. In the early summer you will see them around wood that has been worn by the weather. They take off loose fibres and by means of their mouth-parts work them into pulp. Can the rain get through this paper? Find out whether it is waterproof. Some of the nests made by vespa (Fig. 353), as the hornets or yellow-jackets are called, are very large. Do you think a wasp could make one alone? No, these are social wasps; that is, a great many live together. There are males, females, and workers. Some day we shall tell you how the wasps form their colony, but for this lesson we want you to study the nest. Notice the envelope which covers the cells. How many layers of paper are there in it? We might call each layer a clapboard. Can you see any difference in the direction of the outside layers on top of the nest and those which are below? [Illustration: _Fig. 354. Interior arrangement of white-faced hornet's nest._] How many stories high is the nest? Note the difference in the size of the stories. Where do you find the smallest? Count the rooms or cells in each. You know, of course, that an egg is placed in each cell. When the larvæ, as the young of the wasps are called, are hatched, they still live in the cells. How do they manage to keep in their cells? You see the nest is really turned upside down. Their little heads must hang where the worker wasps can feed them easily. I wonder whether you can tell me why the young wasps do not fall out? The workers chew all the food which they give the little ones. When in summer you see hornets about your flower beds or feeding on other insects, it may be that they are preparing breakfast for the young. Notice the flowers which they visit. POLISTES, THE PAPER-MAKER. In the previous lesson I spoke of vespa wasps that make homes of paper. You learned that they bite off pieces of weather-worn wood with their jaws and chew it until it is made into pulp. Were you interested in these social wasps? If so, you may like to hear about another member of the same family. [Illustration: _Fig. 355. Home of polistes, the paper-maker._] Hiding in some crevice about your house or the school building there is probably a wasp which naturalists call po-lis´-tes. She has been there ever since the cold weather came. In the spring you may see her tearing off pieces of wood from some unpainted building or weather-worn fence. Let us see what she is going to do. This wasp is the founder of a colony. The first thing she does is to select a place for her home. Then she makes a few cells--only a few, for she has no help. When you find a nest like the one in the picture (Fig. 355), you will see how the comb is fastened to the roof or to a tree or to the under side of a stone. As soon as the cells are completed, the mother lays an egg in each. From these eggs little grubs or larvæ are hatched. They are fed by the mother until they become pupæ. The cells are sealed over while the wasps are in the pupa state. They have to break open the seals before they can come out. All members of the first brood are workers. As soon as they are hatched the mother has nothing to do but to provide eggs. They clean out the cells in which they passed their early days; they make additions to the nests; they take care of the young. Do you remember how the vespa workers prepared food for the larvæ in their colony and what they fed them? The young polistes are cared for in the same way. You may see the workers flying about in your garden this summer, getting the sweets from the various flowers that you have planted. You will know why they are so busy through the long sunny days. You will think of the hungry little wasps waiting for their dinner. You will wonder whether they put their heads out of the cells when the workers feed them. NEST OF POLISTES. 1. Compare the nest of polistes with that of vespa. 2. In what ways do they differ? 3. Where did you find the nest? 4. How was it held in place? 5. How many cells are there in it? 6. Notice the pieces of the seals which still remain on the nest. Tell us whether they are made of the same material as the cells. Of what utility are the seals? LEAFLET LXXIV. SOME CARPENTER ANTS AND THEIR KIN.[95] BY ALICE G. McCLOSKEY. (Compare Leaflet XXI.) [95] Junior Naturalist Monthly, October, 1903. [Illustration] One bright August morning, as we were walking along the edge of a wood, we found an old tree trunk lying on the ground. I am sure it had been there a long time. Large pieces of bark were loose enough to be lifted up; being naturalists, we took advantage of this fact to see whether anything was living underneath. What queer little outdoor folk we found: "thousand-legged worms," sow-bugs, a black beetle that looked as if its back were made of patent-leather, and best of all a colony of ants! These ants were large black ones known as carpenter ants. They had made very comfortable quarters in this old log. How alarmed they were when we so rudely exposed them to the light! One brave ant impressed me more than any other member of the colony. I wish that all of our girls and boys might have seen it. With my knife I commenced to cut down the wall of one of the rooms to see what was inside. The soldier-like ant stood near and, instead of running away, it attacked the large steel blade with its jaws. Was not that a brave thing to do? Are you surprised that I closed the knife and put it into my pocket? During all this time there was great commotion in the colony. The worker ants were scurrying off with the younger members of the family, trying to find a safe place for them. Some of these little brothers and sisters were tiny white legless creatures; some were covered up in what looked like little bags; others were ghost-like things, very white and apparently lifeless. Now before you can understand what is going on in an ant's nest, you must know four things: 1. The white oblong eggs are very small. You will not see them readily. 2. The little legless creatures, or larvæ, hatch from the eggs and are fed by the workers. Mrs. Comstock says that an ant larva looks like a crook-neck squash. 3. The larvæ either spin cocoons or rest awhile without any covering before they become fully grown ants. In their resting form they are called pupæ. Children usually think the little sack-like pupæ are the eggs. 4. The fully grown ants come from the pupæ. [Illustration: _Fig. 356. Making a home for ants._] We want every Junior Naturalist Club to have an ant's nest in the school room and to observe the following: In time of danger do the ants look to their own safety first? Watch the workers feed and clean the young. Try to see an ant help a younger relative out of the pupa skin. Notice how many uses the ants seem to have for their antennæ or feelers. Has it ever seemed to you that ants carry on a conversation when they meet? See how many different kinds of ants you can find out-of-doors, Tell us about their homes. HOW TO MAKE AN ANT'S NEST. In the illustration (Fig. 356) you will see an ant's nest. For this kind of nest you will need a plank, near the outside edge of which is a deep groove. The plank should be painted; can you tell why? In the center use two pieces of glass laid flat and separated by narrow sticks along each side, so that they are about one-eighth of an inch apart. The sticks should not come close together at one corner. This leaves a little doorway for the ants. Cover the top glass with black paper or cloth so that the space between the two pieces of glass may seem a nice, dark, safe room in which ants may live. It will be a good thing to keep a small piece of damp blotting paper in one corner of this room in case the workers want a moist place for the young ones. Fill the groove in the plank with water and the nest is ready. The best ant colony to take indoors is the one that you find under stones in a pasture. With a trowel lift up the ants, pupæ, larvæ, and sand and put the contents carefully into a pint can. When you reach the schoolroom put the contents of the can on the plank and watch what happens. If the ants do not find the room you have made for them, place a few larvae and pupæ within it. They will probably find them. Do not neglect to provide food for the colony. Ants like to eat cracker soaked in sweetened water, bread, cake, berry jams, sugar, bits of raw meat, yolk of hard-boiled egg, and custard. [Illustration: _Junior naturalist museum in the school. District No. 2, Sheridan, N. Y._] LEAFLET LXXV. A GARDEN ALL YOUR OWN.[96] BY JOHN W. SPENCER. [96] Junior Naturalist Monthly, May, 1904. MY DEAR NEPHEWS AND NIECES: [Illustration] Would you like to have a garden this summer--a garden all your very own? If so, you can surely have one. A man up in a balloon could have one if he were to try; a man living down in a coal mine could not, because there would be no sunlight. Plants must have light from the sun, which is the vital source of all light. I consider that anyone who cares for a plant, growing either in a window box or in a tomato can, has a garden. Yes; a plant growing in an eggshell constitutes a garden. A LITTLE GIRL'S GARDEN. Near my desk is a picture of a little girl, holding in her arms a big pumpkin that she raised in a garden all her own. I do not know how many pies could have been made from that pumpkin, but, at any rate, it was a big pumpkin. The seed from which the vine started was planted in an egg-shell in the school-room. When the bright May days came the egg-shell had become too small for the plant or the plant had become too large for the egg-shell, so the little girl planted it in the open ground at her home. She must have been a tiny girl or the soil in her garden must have been very hard, for without help she was unable to spade it and make it fine. She hired her father to do it for her and paid him by carrying his dinner every day for a week to the shop where he worked. When lunch time came, papa and she had a little picnic all by themselves. There is no prettier picture than is made by such strong comradeship between a little girl and her father. MAKE A BARGAIN WITH YOUR TEACHER. I hope your teacher will permit you to have some boxes of earth (I mean _soil_) in the windows of your school-room, in which you may plant flower or vegetable seeds. In early June, just before the close of school, you can divide the plants among yourselves and set them out in the open ground or in window boxes at your home. Ask your teacher whether you may have such a privilege. Promise that if she will grant this favor you will be just as good as the "little girl who had a little curl that hung in the middle of her fore-head," and if at any time you become "horrid" the teacher may give your share of the plants to some one better behaved than yourself. If she is a wise teacher she will consent, but not until she has made a bargain with you that you are to do all the work and to ask nothing from her but advice when you need it. [Illustration: _Fig. 357. Sweet peas._] A PLANT NURSERY. [Illustration: _Fig. 358. A nest of window pots._] Your first garden should be in a shallow box, called a "flat," which you may consider a kind of nursery for the plants. Let this nursery, or cradle, be as long and as wide as a soap box, and not more than three or four inches deep. You can make a "flat," as gardeners do, by sawing a soap box in two. In the bottom of the box make some small auger holes for drainage. Some of you may be so fortunate as to be able to gather from the woods and fields the material for fitting up the flat. Some moss,--say about an inch of it,--should first be laid in the bottom. When moss cannot be found, use stones or pieces of broken pottery to cover the drainage holes. This is to prevent the soil from washing through. The remainder of the flat should be filled with good woods earth. Pack the soil firmly. Fill the flat not even full, but to within half an inch of the top. Those who cannot go to the fields must get the best garden soil to be found. A few children may be unable to get even garden soil. They will be obliged to go to the florist's for soil, as they must do when they fill their window boxes. Because of the frequent waterings required by all plants growing in boxes, it is important to get soil that is not sticky and that will not pack hard. SOWING THE SEED. When the time comes for the sowing of seeds, you had better ask your teacher to look over your shoulder to see that you do it correctly. In sowing, put the seeds in straight rows. These rows may be made by denting the soil with the sharp edge of a stick or ruler. Let the rows extend the entire width of the flat. Into the dent, drop the seeds at regular intervals. If any seeds drop outside of the dent, gently push them into place with a toothpick. Half a dozen rows of one variety of flowers or vegetables having small seeds will give a large number of plants. One flat may accommodate a number of varieties. At the point where one variety stops and another begins, a neat label of wood should be stuck. This affords a good chance for a boy to bring his new jack-knife into use. On the label should be written the name of each variety. This will give an excellent opportunity for one who writes a good vertical hand to make himself useful. Begin at the very top of the label and write towards the lower end; then if the lower part of the label rots off or becomes discolored, you will still have the first and most important part of the name left. The label should never be disturbed, for a careless boy or girl might not put it back into the exact place where it was found, which would be indeed unfortunate. The Smiths and Joneses of that plant community would become so mixed that the Joneses would be called Smiths and the Smiths would be known as Joneses. It would be as bad as changing door-plates. When the seeds have been evenly distributed in rows like houses along a street there comes another very important step,--the covering of the seeds. If seeds are covered too deep they will rot because of too much moisture; if the covering is too thin, the soil will dry so rapidly that the seeds will fail because of insufficient moisture. The size of the seed usually determines the amount of covering necessary. As a broad general rule, the soil covering should be about four times the thickness of the seed. Having been covered, the earth must be thoroughly watered. This must be done gently and carefully. If done with a rush, the water will wash the covering away and many of the seeds will be left bare. Whenever such an accident occurs, the seed may be pushed into the soil with a toothpick. At most times when watering, continue to apply the water until it just begins to drain through the bottom of the flat. This should be practiced even after the seeds have germinated and become growing plants. Keep the flats shaded until the plants begin to push their heads through the soil. After this time strong light should gradually be given them that the plants may not become tall and spindling, or "leggy," as gardeners say. [Illustration: _Fig. 359. Transplanted into a pot._] If the seed boxes are in a sunny or windy place, the soil may dry out too rapidly. This can be prevented by laying a newspaper over the flat when the sun strikes it. As the plantlets grow, care must be taken not to shade them too much. A PLANT KINDERGARTEN. In some plants the first leaves are called the "seed-leaves," and, like children's milk teeth, soon disappear. The next set are the true leaves. After the true leaves appear, if the plants seem crowded and uncomfortable, like three boys trying to sleep in a narrow bed, transplant them into other flats prepared similarly to the one into which the seeds were sown. You may think of this as the promotion of the young plants from the cradle to the kindergarten. Here the plants should be placed about an inch from each other, in squares. Wet the plants thoroughly before taking them up and also the soil into which they are to make their second home. After this is done, the soil should be pressed firmly about the roots, as you snuggle the bedclothes about your neck on a cold winter's night. It is entertaining practice to transplant the plants into pots, if you happen to have any florist's pots of small size. [Illustration: _Fig. 360. A soap box put to use._] This transplanting of plants in the school-room gives a quiet occupation to boys and girls who for a time may not be engaged in study. The disobedient child or the would-be "smart" one might better be denied the privilege. I say "privilege," because the wise teacher will make window gardening a privilege and not required work. After the transplanting has been completed and the plants thoroughly soaked with water, they must be shaded for about twenty-four hours, after which they had better receive the strong light once more, when they will resume their growth. PLANTS NEED WATER. If plants could feel and talk, they would tell of periods when they had endured great suffering because of thirst: suffering as great as that sometimes experienced by travelers in crossing a desert. Often it has been so great as almost to ruin a plant's constitution. I am often asked, "How frequently shall I water plants?" It is as difficult to give a fixed rule for watering as to determine how often a boy should be allowed a drink. During cool cloudy weather, plants do not require as much water as when the sun shines bright and hot on them. I can give no better general direction than this:--water plants when the surface of the soil seems dry and powder-like, when a pinch of it rolled between the thumb and finger does not form a little ball. Under conditions in which the drainage is good, plants should receive water until the surplus begins to trickle out of the holes at the bottom. If you follow these directions carefully, your schoolroom garden should afford a good lot of plants for cultivation at home in the open ground or in boxes. WHAT YOU MAY PLANT. As to the kind of seeds to sow, you must be governed by what you most desire to have in your home garden for summer cultivation. If you are able to have a garden in the open ground, I would have you make a selection of both flowers and vegetables. Do not choose a large variety of either, for children are but little men and women and must shape their tasks to fit their shoulders. It would be better to have a garden the size of a horse blanket and have it in good condition all summer than to have a larger one and allow it to become a wilderness of weeds. In the vegetable line, you can have radishes and lettuce that may be harvested by the Fourth of July. After the first crop has been removed the ground should be spaded and wax beans planted in rows about eighteen inches apart and the beans six inches apart in the rows. These give the juiciest of pods, excellent for pickling. Kings and princes could have none better. This plan gives you two crops from the same ground in one summer. Plant radishes in rows twelve inches apart and about two inches apart in the row. Pull them for the table when the roots are three-quarters of an inch or a little more in diameter. Set lettuce about three inches apart in the row, which is twice or more as thick as the plants should be when full grown. When half grown or more every other plant may be pulled out for table use and the remaining ones will soon fill the vacancies. [Illustration: _Fig. 361. A window-garden of one's own._] In suggesting your selection of flowers, I shall mention but a few. I have chosen the following kinds because they are not too particular or exacting as to care, while some are equally well adapted for cultivation either in the open ground or in window boxes. I hope you will include sweet peas, dahlias, and gladioli in your selection. I have not named them in this list because they are not suitable for planting in flats, but are planted directly in the open ground where they are to spend their lives. Gladioli and most dahlias you will not raise from seeds. The following is a list from which you may make a selection for planting in your school-room, to divide later with your mates for home planting:-- Petunia } Nasturtium } Suitable for planting either in Sweet Alyssum } window boxes or in the open ground. Mignonette } Bachelor's Button } Salvia (Flowering Sage) } Phlox } To be planted in Aster } the open ground. Marigold } Candytuft } [Illustration: _Fig. 362. Plan of the improvement of the school ground, shown in Fig. 365._] MAKE A GARDEN IN A BOX. There is no reason why you cannot have a window-box as attractive as the one shown in Fig. 361. Plants will grow as well for you as for the richest or the greatest man of whom you ever heard. All they require is to be made comfortable. The two things most necessary for their comfort are water as often as they need it, and fertile soil that will not become hard from frequent watering. Plants in boxes need water much oftener than those in the open ground. I once knew of a window-box on a tin roof on the south side of the house that was watered morning, noon, and night. Those plants must have been comfortable, for they made thrifty growth. When you have learned how to make plants comfortable in a flat, you will know what is necessary for their comfort in a window-box. They should have the same kind of earth, but more of it. The box should never be less than eight inches wide and eight inches deep and as long as you can afford to fill with earth and plants. There must be holes in the bottom for drainage, and moss or small stones placed over the holes to prevent the soil from washing away. The plants should be set four to six inches apart in the box. At first, this will seem too great a distance, but after a few weeks of growth, the plants will cover all bare spots. When transplanting either to window-boxes or to the open ground, do it the same way as when changing plants from the cradle flat to the kindergarten flat. I know of a brother and a sister who found enough soil to fill some egg-shells. The shells had small drainage holes in the bottom. In time the plants grew and became too large for the egg-shells. Then the children went in search of more soil. They found enough to fill a few tomato cans. These cans also had drainage holes in the bottom. In each can they set a plant. They then put the cans into a soap box. Then they packed excelsior into all the vacant places in the soapbox. The excelsior helped to hold the moisture. The box stood on a back veranda where the plants had plenty of sunshine. So long as they were comfortable they did their best, which is as much as they could have done if they had been in expensive vases in the grounds of the White House at Washington. CONSIDER YOUR SCHOOL GROUNDS. On the last page of this leaflet are two pictures of a school-house. The first shows how it looked when it had not a friend. The second shows what the friendship of the teacher and the children could do for it. In both cases the building remains the same. Look at one picture and then at the other. See, if you can, what one thing has been done to make the difference--a difference as great as that between a tramp and a gentleman. A few shrubs have been planted by the friends, but the greatest thing they did was to clean up. They took away everything that looked untidy and shabby. At this time of the year you see many beautiful crocuses, tulips, daffodils, and hyacinths. Nothing children can plant will give so much for the labor as these bulbs. Why not have some on the school grounds? When school begins next September, write me for directions how to grow them. [Illustration: _Fig. 363. Product of a child's garden._] [Illustration: _Fig. 364. School premises before improving._] [Illustration: _Fig. 365. School premises after improving._ _Could you not do as much for your school grounds?_] LEAFLET LXXVI. THE GARDENS AND THE SCHOOL GROUNDS.[97] BY JOHN W. SPENCER. [97] Junior Naturalist Monthly, June, 1903. MY DEAR BOYS AND GIRLS: [Illustration] Of course you believe that Columbus discovered America, even though you were not with him. If you had been on the deck of his ship when San Salvador raised its head on the rim of the sea, you would be talking about it every day of your life. As it is, your knowledge comes to you through books, and you think you are fortunate if you are able to answer questions correctly on examination. This leads me to remark that there is much more interest in things that we have helped to "make happen" than in things that we read about and that were "made to happen" by some one else. There is a chance for each of you boys and girls, in a way, to become a Columbus. It is true that, not counting the north and south poles, all the continents are discovered, but there is much pleasure and "fun" in discovering facts. I am now speaking from experience. I think that James Buchanan was President when I learned, in such a way that I could explain to others, the principles of a suction-pump. Some of the suggestions led me to make a squirt gun from a bit of elder stalk. Sometimes when I made a demonstration the water would fly in the faces of my audience. I started a squirt gun factory, but the teacher stopped the enterprise because it made too much litter in the school-room. I have a suggestion that will start you on a voyage of discovery. When you have gone as far as you can I wish you would write me, telling what you have learned. Writers of agricultural books sometimes use the expression, "There is fertility in tillage." Is that true? By fertility is meant the power of the soil to furnish plant-food. Fertile soil is "rich" soil. By tillage is meant frequent stirring of the soil. For example, Billy Boy and his chum each have a flower garden side by side of equal size. Each boy sows seeds from the same bag. The same sunshine and the same rains give vigor to each flower-bed alike. Billy Boy spades the soil deep and makes it fine. His chum stirs the top and leaves clods on the surface. With the end of a sharp stick Billy makes a straight drill for the seed. On the bottom of the drill the soil is fine like meal, and the seed is sown with great care and is covered with the finest soil. If the seed is small he makes the soil covering very thin. The last thing he does is to firm the soil by patting it with either his hand or the flat part of a hoe, and he does it in an affectionate way as if he were patting a dog. His chum makes the drill for the seed in a hasty way, leaving in the bottom little clods of earth as large as hickory nuts. He sows the seed as if he were glad to get rid of it, and he covers it as if he wanted it out of sight as soon as possible. Which of the two boys gave the better tillage to the soil? During the summer you will see how others care for their plants and you will see instances of good tillage and poor tillage. You must observe and write me which of the two had the better success in having the seed come up. The difference between the two ways does not end in sowing and germination of seed, but continues all summer until the end of the season. Billy Boy will care for the soil by combing it with a rake several times a week, with the same care and affection with which the lover of a horse will groom the animal each morning. The chum will think the plants are all like goats, and ought to live with almost any chance. Billy Boy will have no weeds among his plants and his chum will have them in great numbers. The chum may say that weeds shade the plants and thereby protect them from drought. I have known grown-up farmers to say that. Is it true? Go on a voyage of discovery and find out. I hope your garden may be of the Billy Boy kind, receiving plenty of tillage. You will have no trouble to find any number of the other kind of gardens growing to weeds and receiving no tillage. It will please me very much if you will write me, giving as many reasons as you can why tillage makes the soil more fertile (or "rich") and able to produce better plants and flowers. Each letter will be carefully read. AN EXPERIMENT. Perhaps you can answer the questions by watching your garden or some one's else garden; but you can answer them better if you will grow a few "hills" of corn. In the fall I shall have many questions to ask you about corn, and I want you to be able to answer by telling me what you have seen with your own eyes. Those of you who are Junior Naturalists have done well with your dues this year, but we must always do better next year than we did last; so I want you to know many things about Indian corn when you come back to school in the fall. Your teacher has also been asked to study corn, and I am going to study it myself. I am a farmer and I have grown corn all my life. Once I thought that I knew all about it; but frequently some one asks me a question about it that I cannot answer. Now, I hope that you can plant at least ten "hills" of corn, or, if you do not plant it in "hills," you may make two rows, each of them five or ten feet long. I want you to plant part of these hills (or one of the rows) in good rich soil. Perhaps your father will let you plant them in the best part of the garden along with the cabbages or other crops; or, perhaps, your mother will let you plant them at the back part of the flower garden. Then I want you to keep down the weeds and break or cultivate the ground often with a hoe or rake so that the soil is always loose. Then I want you to plant the other part of the corn in a poor or dry piece of ground, where the weeds grow. This part you need not cultivate. I think that before the summer is half over you will learn a very great lesson by looking at these two pieces of corn. Some of you will say that you know beforehand what will happen; but I want you to grow the corn nevertheless. By fall I hope you will be able to write me whether you can tell a rich soil when you see it, and also why you think it is rich. I want everyone of the Junior Gardeners to tell me that much when school opens. * * * * * _To the Teacher:_ We must depend upon your courtesy to help in reporting what has been done by you and your pupils in improvement of school grounds. In addition to this we hope it may be your pleasure to ask all the children who are able to write to tell us in detail, at some language period, what they have done. We are never able to get reports of all this good work. Many teachers feel that nothing but heroic deeds in the planting of school grounds are worthy of mention. This is a mistake. Some grounds may be more improved by attention to simple tidiness than by expensive planting, and they are equally worthy of mention. The attendance at some schools is small and the pupils are young. Small efforts from them are relatively great when compared with what is done by schools with ample facilities. We know a teacher who began her first teaching in the fall of 1902. The pupils were eight in number and most of them were small. The school was in the country. The interior of the building was shabby. The teacher was courageous and resolute. With her small handful of not over-competent pupils, she had school "exercises" and the children sold tickets. By this means enough paper was bought to cover the walls, and the teacher and the children put the paper on. Then they made other sales, for which they received as commission three pictures creditably framed. They were hung on the walls of the school-house. By this time, the tide of civic improvement in that community began to turn towards the improving of the school building and grounds. We are eagerly awaiting reports to know what was done on Arbor Day. Under such conditions, it was no small thing that the teacher and children accomplished. [Illustration: _Fig. 366. Making a school-garden in Massachusetts._] LEAFLET LXXVII. SOMETHING FOR YOUNG FARMERS.[98] BY JOHN W. SPENCER. [98] Supplement to Junior Naturalist Monthly, April, 1902. MY DEAR NEPHEWS AND NIECES: [Illustration] I wish to make farmers of you all. I will try to tell you how to have farms all your own--farms on which you can plant seeds and see the plants grow. Once a little girl in Buffalo, who is one of my Junior Naturalists, asked me whether I would call at her home and see the harvest from seeds she planted on one of her farms the spring before. The principal of the school went with me, for he knew all about the little girl's success, and seemed proud of what she had accomplished. What do you think it was she had raised? It was something that filled her lap and was good to eat. It was a fine pumpkin. It weighed twenty-two pounds. I wish I could have a photograph of her holding the pumpkin, her face glowing with pride and satisfaction. You are surely able to do as much as this little girl did. Perhaps you would prefer some other crop to pumpkins, in which case you have many kinds of seeds from which to choose. Last spring, in school, this little girl with other boys and girls began planting and caring for egg-shell farms. It costs no money and but little trouble to own several such farms. The greatest pleasure and profit is to be found in having them in school, for then you have the opportunity of seeing how others manage their farms, and there is a spur in doing what others are doing. When you have read all about my plan I wish you would ask your teacher whether you cannot have some egg-shell farms in your grade. When your plants are large enough to put permanently in the open ground, you can plant them in a garden or window-box at your home. If it is not convenient to have egg-shell farms at school, ask your parents if you cannot have some at home. Please give me your ears and your attention while I tell you how to get your farms. In April you have eggs at some one of the three meals of the day, and the empty shells can be easily obtained. The end of the shell to be broken is the sharp or "peaked" end. Break away about a quarter or a third of it and pour out the white and the yolk that is inside. This empty shell is to hold the soil of your farm, and you can have as many farms as may be convenient to care for. On each egg-shell you may write your name, for the same reason that people have door plates on the doors of their houses or signs on their places of business. Some very methodical boys and girls write also the names of the kind of seeds sown, and the dates of planting and sprouting. Do not forget to put a hole through the bottom of each one of your farms for drainage. I wish I could be with you when you get your soil; we would go out to the pastures and the woods for a supply. I should be able to tell you much about different soils, and how they have been made. It is an interesting story that I must tell you when we are past the hurry of spring's work. If we could go afield we should find the best soil for your egg-shell farms about the roots of rotted stumps or in rotted leaves. It is necessary that the soil shall not bake hard because of frequent waterings, shall not dry out quickly, and shall have plenty of plant-food. I fancy the most convenient plan will be for all of you who wish soil to form a syndicate by contributing a cent each and go to a florist and buy your soil. Tell the florist you wish it for your use and the probabilities are that he will be so much interested in your plants that you will get more for the same amount of money than I could if I were to go for you. The next difficulty will be to keep your farms right side up. That is easily accomplished by putting some sand or sawdust in a shallow box and making a dent where you wish each farm to stand. If you have your farms in the school-room, Tom, Dick, and Harry can have all their farms in the same box. There will be no trouble in separating them if the owner's name is written on each one. Next comes the planting of seeds and the problem of the amount of earth to put over them. Big seeds require more covering than little seeds. Seeds like peas, beans, and corn may be thrust into the middle of your farm. Small seeds, like those of the petunia, which are almost like dust, require only the gentlest sprinkling of soil. Seeds as large as those of the aster and the balsam should be covered with a layer of earth as thick as a lead pencil. I advise you to plant twice as many seeds as you wish to have grow. Many accidents may happen and if all grow, the surplus plants can be replanted later or thrown away. The earth covering should be sprinkled or sifted over the seeds, and then it must be patted or pressed down firmly. By this means the particles of soil are snuggled close together, and the seed and the soil hold moisture much better than when the particles lie loose and far apart. The next thing to do after planting is to sprinkle water over your farms. Do this as gently as possible, for with all your care some seeds may be uncovered. Look over the ground carefully, and those you find exposed poke into the earth with the point of a pencil or a stick. The soil of your farms must be kept moist at all times. This is a point that will require your continued attention. When your Uncle John attended school, many years ago, there was a passage in his reader that taught him that "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." The attention required to keep plants suitably watered does not fall much short of eternal vigilance. This need not scare you. If you care for your farms you will find it a pleasure to wait on your plants. If you have your egg-shell farms in the school-room, there will be no opportunity to water your plants Saturday or Sunday, when school is not in session. I think if you make your farms soaking wet Friday at the close of school, and then set them back from the window out of the direct rays of the sun, no harm will come from dryness before Monday morning. You must watch to see whether all members of the same family do the same thing precisely alike. After sowing your seeds and watering your farms you will go to them many times to see whether anything has happened. You will not be able to see anything or hear anything, and you will conclude that nothing is going on in the soil. In this you will be mistaken, for some active changes are taking place. They are of a kind that you can neither see nor hear. In days to come, when you are men and women, you will be able to appreciate the fact that some of the most important events come about silently and some of the least important come with a racket. The first leaves that appear on most plants are called the seed-leaves. If your plants are comfortable, but a few days will pass before true leaves develop. You will find the latter very different from the seed-leaves. Before the first or seed-leaves appear it is not important that your farms have the strong sunlight. In fact I always put my egg-shell farms in the shade while the seeds are germinating, but at the first peep of a leaf or stem I put them in the full sunshine. Most of you will no doubt have your farms on the window ledge. Among the first things you will observe is a way all the leaves have of looking out of doors. If you turn your farms around so the leaves are looking in the room, the time will not be long before all of them will be faced out of doors again. Once on a time one of my Junior Naturalists told me that plants take to sunshine as a duck does to water. A duck is never so comfortable as when in water; and I am certain that sunshine is important to the comfort of most plants. Some of my nephews and nieces will understand why light is so necessary to plants, for I have spoken of this before. I hope you will this moment decide to have some egg-shell farms, and sow some seed immediately after getting your soil. Later, when the plants are large enough to plant in the open ground, we will talk of what is best to do with them. In Leaflet LII you will find a picture of an egg-shell farm. LEAFLET LXXVIII. BULBS.[99] BY JOHN W. SPENCER. [99] Nature-Study Quarterly, October, 1899. A BULB GARDEN. [Illustration] "It's rather dark in the earth to-day," Said one little bulb to his brother; "But I thought that I felt a sunbeam ray-- We must strive and grow till we find the way?" And they nestled close to each other. Then they struggled and toiled by day and by night Till two little snowdrops in green and white, Rose out of the darkness and into the light, And softly kissed one another.--_Boston Journal._ To succeed with the cultivation of flowers, the first thing to have in mind is to make the plant comfortable. This condition should be not only the first thought, but also the last thought. If you can do this successfully, the plant will do the rest of the work and your results will be abundant. What plant comfort is, is a question more easily suggested than answered, for it is a very large subject--about as large as the surface of the earth. As a venture we will say that there are as many different kinds of plants as there are people. It is at least safe to say that plants have as many different notions as to their conditions of life as have the people of the different nations and tribes of the world. If you were to have a birthday party and should invite as your guests the children from the four corners of the earth, and by magic could bring them to you in a jiffy, the boys and girls from Greenland would come enfolded in seal-skin, and those from Hawaii would bring only their bathing suits. You would have a busy time keeping them comfortable, for when you opened the door to cool off the little Greenlanders, the little Kanakas would complain of too much draft; and at the table the former would ask if you happened to have some tallow candles for dessert, and the latter would ask for bread-fruit and bananas. Many of our flowering plants have been brought together from such remote quarters as that. We have bulbs from Holland, and pansies from England, and phlox from the dry atmosphere of Texas. [Illustration: _Fig. 367. The Snow-drop._] There is as much difference in the conditions necessary for comfort in these different plants as there is in the requirements of the little Eskimos and little Polynesians. To some extent, plants can change their manner of living, but in the main they are happiest when they can have their own way, just as you and I are. We cannot bring about the foggy, damp weather of Holland and England when we want it; neither can we bring the dry atmosphere of Texas--air so dry that meat will cure hard in the hottest weather without tainting. It so happens, however, that from one Fourth of July to the next we have many kinds of weather, and if one could not find conditions suited to almost any kind of plant it would be strange. If we cannot make the weather accommodate itself to the best comfort of the plant, we must set the plant so as to accommodate itself to the weather. Pansies from foggy England and bulbs from the lowlands of Holland should be planted to bloom in the cool days of spring, and the phlox from Texas will prosper in the heat and drought of July and August. With this idea well fixed in your mind, you will easily see that when you know the country from which a plant has come, a knowledge of the physical geography of that country will be helpful in knowing how to make the plant happy and prosperous. We must also make the plant comfortable in the soil. There is great difference in what plants require to make them comfortable. Some, like thistles or mullein or ragweed, will thrive on almost any soil and are no more exacting as to food than a goat or a mule; but other plants are as notional as children reared in the lap of luxury. As a rule, flowering plants belong to the "lap-of-luxury" class. Soil covers the land as thin skin covers an apple or as a thin coat of butter covers bread, and it holds more or less plant-food. When men erect school buildings and afterwards grade the ground they usually turn a part of the soil upside down. There is also considerable rubbish of the builders left scattered about, such as brick-bats, chips of stone, and the like, that go to make the place an uncomfortable one for notional plants. For this reason I wish particularly to call your attention to the manner in which you should prepare the ground on which you intend to plant. The first thing to do is to spade the ground thoroughly to the depth of at least ten inches. All stones as large as a big boy's fist should be thrown out, and all lumps given a bat with the back of the spade to break them into fine particles. This is to be a flower-bed and should be soft like your own bed. It would be better to make it up more than once. After the first spading it would be well to cover the bed with a coat of stable fertilizer to a depth of six to eight inches, which will give additional plant-food; and in spading the second time, this fertilizer will become thoroughly mixed with the soil. The surface should next be raked smooth, and your flower-bed will then be ready for planting. We all admire the bright bulb flowers that are among the first to blossom in the spring. These mostly come from Holland, or at least attain their perfection there. We have just spoken of the importance of planting flowers at such a time that they may live their career when our climate is most like that from which they come. In the case of bulbs, spring and early summer is the most favorable time for them in this country, and fall is the proper time for planting. The exact time in the fall to plant, how to plant, what bulbs to plant, when to put a winter overcoat on the bed, and other details, I will leave for Mr. Hunn to tell in the following Leaflet. He has had many years' experience in the management of flowers, and I advise you to read carefully what he says. [Illustration: _Fig. 368. A bulb bed at the school house._] LEAFLET LXXIX. A TALK ABOUT BULBS BY THE GARDENER.[100] BY C. E. HUNN. [100] Nature-Study Quarterly, October, 1899. [Illustration] Perhaps you would like to hear from the gardener. Your Uncle John has told you something about preparing a bed for your plants. His advice is very good; but the bulbs we are to talk about are like those notional children whom he mentions and they do not want tallow candles for any part of their meal. You should know that bulbs do not want to come into direct contact with the stable fertilizer. They want the fertilizer below them where the feeding roots may nibble at it when the bulb is hard at work developing the leaves and flower. You know that all the leaves and the flowers were made the year before, and the bulb simply holds them until the new roots have formed. No kind of treatment will make a bulb produce more flowers than were formed in the year it grew (last year); but the better the treatment the larger and finer the flowers will be. If I wanted to make a bulb bed, I should choose, if possible, a sandy soil and throw out the top soil to the depth of six inches. Then I should put into the bottom of the bed about two inches of well rotted manure and spade it into the soil. Then I should throw back half of the top soil, level it off nicely, set the bulbs firmly on this bed, and then cover them with the remainder of the soil; in this way you will have the bulbs from three to four inches below the surface. It is dark down there and in the fall months the top of the ground is cooler than at the depth of five or six inches and the top of the bulb will not want to grow, while the bottom, which is always in a hurry, will send out roots, to push out the leaves and flowers the next spring. When the weather is cold enough to freeze a hard crust on the soil, the bed should have its winter overcoat. This may be straw, hay, cornstalks, or leaves spread over the bed to the depth of six inches if the material is coarse; but if you use leaves, three inches will be enough, because the leaves lie close together and may smother out the frost that is in the ground and let the bulbs start. What we want is to keep them asleep until spring, because if they start too early the hard freezes of March and early April will spoil their beauty if the leaves or flowers are near or above the surface. Early in April the covering may be removed gradually and should all be off the beds before the leaves show above the ground. [Illustration: _Fig. 369. Simple designs for bulb beds._] Perhaps many of you cannot find a sandy place for your beds; if not, make your beds as has been told you, leaving the stones in the bottom of the bed for drainage. Then, when you are ready to set the bulb, place a large handful of sand where your bulb is to go and set your bulb on it; this will keep the water from standing around the bulb. Very good results may be obtained on heavy soil by this method. What kind of bulbs shall we put into these beds? Choose hyacinths, tulips, narcissus, or daffodils, with snowdrops or crocuses of various colors around the edge. If you use hyacinths you can have the national colors, red, white, and blue, or many shades of either color, as shown in the diagrams (Fig. 369). Of tulips you can have stars or ribbons of yellow, white, or crimson, or in fact almost any color except true blue. In narcissus, yellow, sulfur, and white are the colors. The little crocuses come in yellow, blue, white, and striped colors, and are in bloom and gone before the large flowers take your attention. Many other bulbs are fine for spring flowering; but as most of them are more difficult to grow and many of them rather expensive, I do not think we will discuss them now. Suppose we want a bed of red, white, and blue hyacinths (Fig. 369), and make it six feet in diameter: how many bulbs would you want? Now, hyacinths should be planted six inches apart each way, and the outside row should be at least three inches from the edge of the bed. You see you will want a little over one hundred bulbs, which, if one person had to buy them, would cost him a considerable sum; but if fifty or more boys and girls would club together it would be easy for everyone. If you want a bed of tulips, they should be planted four or five inches apart instead of six inches. So you will need more bulbs; but they are cheaper than hyacinths. The narcissus bulbs, being still smaller than tulips, may be planted three inches apart; and the little crocuses, the first flowers of spring, should touch one another, as should also the snowdrops. Perhaps many of you do not wish to wait until spring for your bulbs to flower, in which case we must try to persuade them to bloom through the winter, say at Christmas. Nearly all bulbs are good-natured, and may be coaxed to do things that nature never asks them to do; so if we go at it right we shall find it very easy to make them think their time to bloom has come, even if the ground is covered with snow and the ice is thick on the ponds. Hyacinths, narcissus, and crocus can all be made to flower in the winter by starting this way. Get the bulbs so as to be able to pot them by the middle or last of October, or if earlier all the better. The soil should be rich, sandy loam if possible; if not, the best you can get, to which add about one-fourth the bulk of sand and mix thoroughly. If ordinary flower pots are to be used, put in the bottom a few pieces of broken pots, charcoal, or small stones for drainage; then fill the pot with dirt so that when the bulbs are set on the dirt the top of the bulb is even with the rim of the pot. Fill around it with soil, leaving just the tip of the bulb showing above the dirt. If the soil is heavy, a good plan is to sprinkle a small handful of sand under the bulb to carry off the water, the same as is done in the beds outdoors. If you do not have pots you may use boxes. Starch boxes are a good size to use as they are not heavy to handle; and I have seen excellent flowers on bulbs planted in old tomato cans. If boxes or cans are used, care must be taken to have holes in the bottoms to let the water run out. A large-size hyacinth bulb will do well in a five-inch pot. The same size pot will do for three or four narcissuses or eight to twelve crocuses. After the bulbs are planted in the pots or other receptacles, they should be placed in a cool place, either in a cold pit or cellar or on the shady side of a building, or, better yet, plunged or buried up to the rim of the pot in a shady border. This is done to force the roots to grow while the top stands still; as only the bulbs with good roots will give good flowers. When the weather gets cold enough so that a crust is frozen on the soil, the pots should be covered with a little straw, and as the weather gets colder more straw must be used. From six to eight weeks after planting, the bulbs should have made roots enough to grow the plant, and the pots may be taken up and placed in a cool room for a week or so; after which, if the plants have started into growth, they may be taken into a warmer room where they can have plenty of light. They will grow very rapidly now and will want lots of water; after the flowers begin to show, the pots may stand in a saucer of water all the time. When just coming into bloom the plants may have full sunlight part of the time to help bring out the color of the flowers. Fig. 370 shows a pot of tulips. [Illustration: _Fig. 370. Pot of tulips._] I want to tell you of two bulbs that do not need so much fussing with to get them to bloom for Christmas. One of them is called freesia (Fig. 371) and if I could have but one kind of bulb to flower in the winter, I should choose this. The little bulbs are not half as large as crocus bulbs and you will be astonished at the large leaves and flowers such a bulb can produce. The bulbs are about the cheapest of all winter bulbs and they grow without putting them away to make roots, as the tops do not seem as impatient to start as those of most other bulbs, but wait until there are roots to help them along. The flowers are borne on a slender stem and look very graceful, either on the plant or in bouquets. They are also very fragrant, and a pot with five or six bulbs will perfume a large room. All they need is good light soil, sunlight, water, and warmth to make glad the heart of anyone who plants them. [Illustration: _Fig. 371. Pot of the freesia._] The other bulb I should select is the oriental narcissus or Chinese sacred lily. This grows in water without any soil whatever. Just take a bowl or glass dish about three times the size of the bulb; put some pretty stones in the bottom; set in the bulb and build up around it with stones so as to hold it stiff when the leaves have grown; tuck two or three small pieces of charcoal among the stones to keep the water sweet; then fill up the dish with water and add a little every few days, as it evaporates. Set the dish in a warm, light place. In about six weeks the fragrant, fine white flowers will fill the room with perfume and you will have the pleasure of watching the roots start and grow, the top throw up long green leaves, and the flower clusters develop and open their flowers. Hyacinths may also be grown in water, but not as easily as this narcissus, or in such inexpensive dishes. [Illustration: _Fig. 372. Winter box of bulbs._] The picture (Fig. 372) of a bulb box was taken last winter from a box of mixed bulbs grown at Cornell. The calla in the center and the Kenilworth ivy trailing over the front were planted in the box in September, and pots of geraniums and other plants set on the dirt to fill the space. When the bulbs that were in pots were ready to be started they were taken out of the pots and set in the dirt in the box, where they grew and flowered; the tall stems are paper white narcissus, the best variety for winter. On each side there is a hyacinth just starting and in front a little freesia in bloom. When these bulbs were done flowering, small pots of blooming plants were set on the box and a charming window box was obtained with many different things in it through the winter. WHERE TO PLANT BULBS; AND OTHER ADVICE FOR THE OUTDOOR GARDEN. A large part of the beauty of the flower-bed lies in its position. A flower-bed in the middle of the lawn is usually out of place. It has no "setting," as the artists say. It lacks background. It is merely an incidental thing dropped into the sward. It is out of place. A flower-bed should belong to some part of the general planting of the grounds, or it should be a part of the border or boundary surrounding the place. The center of any grounds should be left open, or free from heavy planting. A few trees may be planted in the center, if one desires shade; but all the masses of foliage and flowers should be somewhere near the sides or else near the foundations of the house or near other definite boundary lines. In such places the flower-bed is supported by other herbage. It has relation to something else. It forms a part of a general picture; and every good yard should be a picture. Along the borders the beds are usually more easily cared for than they are in the center of the lawn. In the latter place they are in danger of being trampled over, and the roots of the grass run underneath the bed and absorb the food and moisture which the flowers need. The beauty of a formal bed in the center of the lawn is destroyed if some of the plants are injured or do not develop. Symmetry is part of its merit. If, however, the bed is along the border, a few vacant places in the bed do not attract great attention. In school grounds it is well to have the beds somewhat near together or continuous, in order that the labor of taking care of them may be less. It is always well to plant profusely. Much of the beauty of a flower-bed lies in an abundance of color. One must consider, also, that some of the roots, seeds, or bulbs may fail. Some of them may not grow in the first place, and others may be injured by weather or by accidents. It is well to provide for all these contingencies. One of the best plants to use for the school bulb garden is the crocus, because the bulbs are cheap and very hardy. The mixed bulbs, comprising all the common colors, can be had for forty or fifty cents per hundred at retail, and if one should buy them in considerable quantities, they could be had for less than this. A thousand bulbs of mixed crocuses should be got for three dollars or a little more, and these would make a great display along the fence or walks of any school garden. One of the ways to grow crocuses is to plant the bulbs in the grass, not cutting out the grass where they are planted. That is, they grow right in the sod. By the time the lawn needs to be mown in the spring, the flowers are gone and the crocuses can be cut with the grass. The crocuses will not last so long in a mown sod as they will in beds which are especially prepared for them, but they will ordinarily give good results for two or three years if the land is good; and they are so cheap that they can be renewed from time to time. Other good, hardy bulbs for fall planting out-of-doors, aside from lilies, are hyacinth, snowdrop, snowflake, tulip, narcissus of various kinds (including daffodils and jonquils), grape hyacinth, squill. All these are early spring bloomers and will delight the children's eyes. [Illustration: _Fig. 373. A good arrangement of shrubbery and flower-beds._] LEAFLET LXXX. HORSES.[101] BY ALICE G. McCLOSKEY and I. P. ROBERTS. [101] Junior Naturalist Monthly, December, 1904. [Illustration] A few minutes ago I went into the stable to see Peg and Nan, the two bay horses. On the outside of each stall I found a door-plate, with _Nan_ written in large, black letters on one, _Peg_ on the other. I visited each old friend in turn. They are quite different in disposition, these two horses. Nan is gentle, affectionate, patient; Peg is spirited, unfriendly, restless. I am very fond of them both and as yet have not been able to decide which I enjoy the more, quiet Nan or spirited Peg. All horses are interesting to me. As I take my daily walk, I like to look at the different ones I meet along the way. There is the baker's horse and the butcher's; the doctor's horse, sleek and active; the heavy gray horses that haul loads of coal up the hill all through the winter weather; "Old Speckle," the postman's horse; and the friendly bay I so often see feeding in the meadow. [Illustration: _Fig. 374. Nan._] Of all these wayside acquaintances, I like best the one I meet in the meadow. Perhaps I associate him with the meadow-lark's song, the fresh, green grass, and the gay little dandelions that were about when I first crossed his path; or, perhaps our friendship progressed more rapidly than city streets ever will permit. He seems to know when I am approaching and raises his head in welcome. I always pet him and talk to him a bit, and we both know that two friends have met. There are many things about horses that everyone ought to know. If we were to ask Junior Naturalists how coach horses differ from roadsters and how roadsters differ from draft horses, how many would be able to tell us? Perhaps you will ask, "What is a draft horse?" The draft horse has short legs, a heavy body, a short, thick neck, broad deep chest and shoulders, strong hocks and moderately large feet. It may be that your father owns a draft horse. Ask him whether it is a Percheron, a Clydesdale, or an English Shire. These are the most familiar breeds of draft horses. The Percherons came from France and at first they were gray. Now they are often black or dark brown. The Shires, commonly bay, brown or sorrel, came from England; and the Clydesdales, similar in appearance to the Shires but smaller and more active, came from Scotland. [Illustration: _Fig. 375. A typical draft horse._] All boys and girls know coach horses. As you stand by the school-room window, you may see one pass. They have long arched necks and fine heads. Their bodies are rounded and well proportioned. Roadsters, trotters, and saddle horses are usually not so large as coachers. Their necks are inclined to be longer and their chests narrower than in the coach horse; however, their muscles and tendons are strong. [Illustration: _Fig. 376. Welsh pony and its mother._] Now you must not think that just because a horse is drawing a load he is a draft horse; nor because a horse is hitched to a coach he is a coach horse; nor because he is driven on the road he is a roadster. These three names,--draft horses, coach horses, roadsters,--represent types or classes. They mean kinds of horses that are supposed to be best adapted for drawing, or for coaches and carriages, or for fast driving, providing the horse has no other work to do. But the horses that you usually see are just mere common horses of no particular type, and are used for a great variety of purposes. They are "nondescripts," which means "undescribed" or "unclassified." You would not think of putting a true draft horse, like the animal in Fig. 375, on a light carriage; nor of hitching a coacher like that in Fig. 377 to a coal wagon. Do you think there is any real roadster, or coach horse, or draft horse in your neighborhood? If not, perhaps you can tell, as the horses pass you, whether they are nearest like one type or another. Try it. If you will observe horses closely you will find that some are large, heavy, and strong, and that they are seldom made to move rapidly, while others may be nearly as tall but they are slim, and carry their heads high and their necks arched. You should also notice that the heavy draft horse does not lift his feet high nor walk with a proud and lofty tread, while the coach horse lifts his feet high, carries his head high, and moves very proudly. [Illustration: _Fig. 377. A good coacher._] There are several breeds of draft or heavy horses. Fig. 375 shows a fine Clydesdale horse imported from Scotland. Notice how nicely he is marked. The horseman would say that he has four "white stockings" and plenty of "feather" on his fetlock; strange, is it not, that this long hair should be called feather? If you should see a large, smooth gray horse similar to the Clyde, without the "white stockings" or the "feather," you may conclude that he is a Percheron horse. As we have said before, the Percheron breed of horses came from France. It is not always gray in color. It is slightly smaller than the Clydesdale. After you have learned that a draft horse should be large and strong, study the picture of the coach horse (Fig. 377). Compare him with the draft horse. The coach horse is not a fast trotter nor even a fast roadster, but he is usually very beautiful, strong, and stylish. [Illustration: _Fig. 378. Arabian horse._] Now I shall ask you to compare the neck shown in Fig. 380 with that shown in Fig. 381. Which do you think is the more beautiful? The horse with the long, slim neck is a noted trotter. If the neck and head were large, would it help or hinder the trotter? Compare the neck of the trotter with that of the draft horse and see whether you can explain why one is heavy and the other light. Can you explain to your parents why the draft horse should weigh more than the coach horse? Do you admire the head and neck shown in Fig. 380? Wherein does it differ from the others? This type is called "ewe-neck." Can you tell why? Tell me whether you think this horse would be a safe driver. What do you think of the head and neck of the Arabian horse (Fig-378)? You like it, do you? Why? Can you imagine what kind of horse belongs to that head and neck? Describe it. Probably the Arabian horse would be too spirited for you so I shall show you a Shetland pony. (Fig. 379.) Where is Shetland? Why are horses so small in the country where this little fellow came from? How does he differ from the other horses shown in the Leaflet? Note _all_ of the differences. [Illustration: _Fig. 379. Shetland pony._] In Fig. 376 you will see the picture of a Welsh pony, and she has a ponyette, a baby only a few days old. Which is the larger, the Shetland pony or the Welsh pony? Which one would you prefer if the baby were left out? Could you raise a calf until it became a grown cow and then trade it for a pony? Just a plain little pony can be bought for the price of a good cow. It is part of a good education to know how to raise and handle cows and horses. [Illustration: _Fig. 380. Ewe-neck, a poor horse._] With this Leaflet in your hand, you should go to the stable, or, better still, out on the street, and see whether you can find as good horses and ponies as the pictures represent. As you study horses try to answer the following questions: 1. Where is the horse's knee joint? Which way does the knee bend? 2. Where is the hock joint? Which way does it bend? 3. Can a horse sleep when standing? 4. How are the legs placed when a horse lies down? 5. How does a horse get up,--front legs first or hind legs first? How does a cow get up? 6. When a horse starts, after standing, what foot does he put forward first,--the left or the right? Fore or back? What foot moves next? 7. When a horse trots, do the two feet on one side move together? Or do lefts and rights move together? 8. What does a driver mean when he says that a horse "forges" or "over-reaches?" 9. Name the things that a horse commonly eats. What is a good feed for a day,--how much of each thing, and when given? [Illustration: _Fig. 381. Neck of a trotter._] [Illustration: _Fig. 382. At pasture._] INDEX. ["Fig." means that the page referred to contains the figure only, no text reference.] PAGE. Agassiz, glacial hypothesis 105 making of surveys and maps 202, 203 Agriculture, its place in schools 45-47 Agricultural education, what it is 45-53 Air 87, 123, 124 Alfalfa 40, 354, 355, 357-360, 489-493 Alluvial fans 132 Annual rings 321, 327, 328, 329, 330, 335, 474 Ants 62, 64, (Fig.) 224, 243-251, 274, 508, 513 Ant-lions 250 Aphids 62, 68, 248-251, 539 Aphis-lion 249, 539, 540, 543 Apple, buds 328, 329 fruit 467-472 grafting of 374, 375 shape of tree 304 twigs 317-325 Apple-scab 470, (Fig.) 471 Apricot 328, 375, 377 Aquaria 59, 60, 141-156, 165, 166 Arborvitae 345, 346, 347 Asters 379-383 Azalea 331 Back-swimmers, see "Bugs." Bagworms 61 Balsams 383 Barngrass 362 Bass, black 162 Basswood leaf-roller, see "Moths." Beans 291, 460-466, 563, 564 Begonias 372, 373 Bees, wings of (Fig.) 224 bumble 65, 68, 351, 352 carpenter 61 honey 62, 64, 65, 353 Beet 257, 415, 416 sugar 405 Beetles 210, 223, 224, 507 engraver 61 plum curculio 68 Beetles, potato 62, 63, 68 predaceous diving 151 snapping (Fig.) 223 tiger 61 water scavenger 152 whirligig 135 wood-boring (Fig.) 223 Bibliography of nature-study 76-79 Biennial 416 Birds, leaflets on 253-290, 503, 504, 515, 516 suggestions for study 70, 71 See special birds. Black bass, see "Bass." Blackberry 305, 370, 375 Blackbird, redwing 263 Black-fly, see "Flies." Bluebells 362 Bluebird 238, 261 Black-nosed dace, see "Dace." Bordeaux mixture 381, 382, 389 Breeding cage 228 Brook, The, insects of 135-140 suggestions for study 125 work of 126-134 Brownie-bugs, see "Bugs." Budding 376, 377 Buds apple 317-325 apricot 328 azalea 331 butternut 474 dormant 318, 314-320, 329 elm 330 flower 319, 328, 330 hepatica 392 hickory 329, (Fig.) 330 horse-chestnut (Fig.) 474 leaf 319, 328, 330 maple 329, 473 peach 328 pear 328 pussy-willow 330 terminal 318, 474 winter 72, 331, 332, 327-336, 473, 474 Bugs, 223 brownie (Fig.) 223 back-swimmers 136, 152, 153 giant water 137, 153 June 288 Bugs, lady 210, 250 stink 223 water boatmen 136, 152 water scorpions 152, 153 water-striders 137 Bulbs 567, 577-580, 581-583 see special bulbs. Burdock 362 Butterflies 58, 59, 61, 62, 224, 238, 544 cabbage 208, 209, 210, (Fig.) 224, 540 common blue 248 milkweed 208, 209 monarch 63, 544 viceroy 63 Butternut (Fig.) 474 Cabbage butterfly, see "Butterflies." Caddice-worm 61, 136, 155 Cambium 375 Cankerworms 68 Carnations (Fig.) 370, 372 Carrot 257 Caterpillars 58, 62, 501 apple-tree tent 59, 69, 227-235 of cecropia moth 167, 168 cabbage 63, 68, 208, 209, 210 of codlin-moth 470 of common blue butterfly 248 of fall web-worm 61 of promethea moth 168, 169 "woolly-bear" 210, 238, 539, (Fig.) 541 Catfish 150, 161 Cat-tails 364 Cecropia moth, see "Moths." Cereals, food value of 409-414 Chara (Fig.) 148, 149 Charcoal 144 Cherry, grafting of 377 Chestnut, grafting of 374 Chickadee 279-281, 285, 503, 504 Chickens 70, 522-524, 525, 526, 527 Child's Realm, The (poem) 451 Chinese lily, see "Narcissus." Chipmunk 69 Choke-cherries 362 Chrysalids 58, 59 of apple-tree tent caterpillar 233 cabbage butterfly 209, 540 Chrysalids, codlin-moth 470 milkweed butterfly 208 Cicada 66, 210, (Fig.) 223, 529-535 dog-day harvest fly 534, 535 seventeen-year locust 529-535 Cion 374 Clam 150 Clarkias 383 Clay 117, 118 Clothes moth, see "Moths." Clouds 84, 85, 88, 90 Codlin-moth, see "Moths." Clover 124, 349-360 alsike 353 buffalo 352, 353 crimson 352 hop, see yellow. hop trefoil, see low hop. least hop 354 low hop 354 rabbit foot (Fig.) 353, 354 red 351, 352 scarlet, see crimson. stone, see rabbit-foot. zig-zag 352 See, also, "Alfalfa," "Medics," "Melilots." Cocoons 58, 59, 167-169 of cecropia moth 167, 168 codlin-moth 508 lace-winged fly 539, 540, 543 promethea moth 168, 169 tent caterpillar (Fig.) 233, 235 "woolly-bear" 211, 539 Cockle 363 Cold-blooded animals 199 Coleus 370, 372 Common blue butterfly, see "Butterflies." Cones, of arborvitae 345, 347 hemlock 344, 347 balsam fir 343, 347 Austrian pine 338, 339, (Fig.) 340, 346 pitch pine 337, 338, 346 Scotch pine 338, 339, 346 white pine (Fig.) 335, 336, 346 black spruce 341, 342, 346 Norway spruce 341, (Fig.) 342, 346 red spruce 342, 347 white spruce 342, 346 Corn, Indian 397-407, 409-414, 485-488, 571 Coreopsis 383 Corydalis, 138 Cowbird 261, 262 Crane-fly, see "Flies." Crayfish 150 Creek chub 165 Crickets 59, 66, 543 Crocus 582, 583, 588 Crow 197, 284, 287-290, 501, 502 Cross-fertilization, see "Pollination." Currants 305, 370, 373, (Fig.) 374, 375 Currant-worms 68 Cuttings 369-378 Cutworms 288, 400, 501 Cyanide bottle 216, 217 Dace, black-nosed 159 Daffodils 582-588 Dahlia 564 Dairy products, value in N. Y. State, 489 Damping-off 370, 371 Damsel-flies 136, 154 Dandelion 362, 363, 481, 482 Darter, Johnny 163 Delta 103, 131, 132, 133 Dew 83 Dobson 137, 138 Dock 362, 380 Dodder 360 Dog-day harvest fly, see "Cicada." Domestic animals 70, 414 See, also, "Horses," "Poultry." Doves 254, 261, 264 Dragon-flies 136, 154, 155, 222 Ducks 522-524, 525, 526 Duck-weed 148 Eel-grass 147, 148 Eggs, of ants 246 caterpillars 210, 229, 230, (Fig.) 235 cicada 530, 534 frogs 188 grasshoppers 210 lace-winged fly 539, 543 mosquito 238, 239 domestic fowls 524, 525 salamanders 188 spiders 181-183, 211, 288 toads 186-189, 200 Egg-shell farms 456, 566, 573-576 Electric-light bug, see "giant water bug" under "Bugs." Elm, American 300, 303, (Fig.) 308, 309, 310-316, 330 slippery (Fig.) 299, 300, 301, 303 struggle for existence 361 Entomological supplies, dealers in 226 Evaporation 82 Evergreens 333-347 See special kinds. Fall web-worm, see "Caterpillars." Ferns 76, 362 Finch, grass, see "vesper sparrow" under "Sparrows." purple 261, 265, 266 Fir, balsam 343, 347 Fireweed 364 Fish 69, 149, 150, 157-166 See special fish. Flicker, see "Woodpeckers." Flies 62, 224 black 139 crane (Fig.) 223 hellgrammite 138 horse 210 house 63 pomace (Fig.) 222 Flood-plain 104, 130 Flowers, pistillate 400 staminate 400 study of 71, 72 Fog 83, 86, 88, 89 Foods, value of various kinds 411, 412 bulletins on 413 Forestry 75 Fossils 107 Frog 150, 151, 188, 189, 501 Frost 426, 427 Fruits 71, 72 Galls 61 pine-cone willow 135, 136 Gardens, children's 36, 37, 40, 379-383, 559-566, 569-571, 573-576 Geese 520-522, 525, 526 Geraniums 370, 372, 419 Giant water-bug, see "Bugs." Germination 560-562, 566, 573-576 of bean 291, 460-466 squash 291-295 Glacial scratches (Fig.) 104, 105, 108, 109, 110 Glacier (Fig.) 100, 104-113 Gladiolus 564 Gold-fish 150 Gooseberries 305, 373, 375 Grackle, bronzed 261, 262, 263 Grafting 374-378 Grape (Fig.) 363, 364, 370, 373, 375 Grape hyacinth 588 Grass 362, 363, 364, 380 Grasshoppers 56, 59, 62, 63, 66, 210, 288, 524 Guinea-pigs 70 Hail 88, 89 Hawthorn 374 Hay, value as crop in N. Y. State 489 Hellgrammite fly, see "Flies." Hemlock 343-345, 347 Hepatica 391-393, 477, 478 Hibernation, of butterflies 61, 238 mosquitoes 238 toad 199, 200 "woolly-bear" 539 Hickory, buds 329, (Fig.) 330 small-fruited shagbark (Fig.) 298, 300 pignut (Fig.) 298, 300 High-hole, see "flicker" under "Woodpeckers." Horse-chestnut (Fig.) 474 Horse-fly, see "Flies." Horses 589-594 See, also, "Domestic Animals." Horticulture 75 House-fly, see "Flies." Hyacinth 582, 583, 586, 588 Ichneumon flies 210 Imperial moth, see "Moths." Indian turnip, see "Jack-in-the-Pulpit." Insects, cage for 539, (Fig.) 540 how to collect and preserve 213-226 of a brook 135-140 suggestions for study 58-69 Isabella moth, see "Moths." Jack-in-the-Pulpit 395, 396, 479, 480 Johnny Darters, see "Darter." June bug, see "Bugs." Katydid 66 Kingfisher 261, 266 Knotweed 262 Lace-winged fly 539, 540, 543, 544 Lady-bugs, see "Bugs." Leaf-miners 60 Leaf-rollers 60 basswood (Fig.) 224 Leaf-scars 474 of evergreens 334 Leaves, autumn colors 71, 426, 427, 483 fall of 427 functions of 424, 425, 426, 483 Lenses 228 Lettuce 563, 564 Lightning 89, 91 Lilac 305 Lime 118 Lobster 50 Locusts, mouth parts 530 seventeen-year, see "Cicada." Lucerne, see "Alfalfa." Luna moths, see "Moths." Maple, black 428 box elder 428 goose-foot, see striped. mountain 427, (Fig.) 429 Norway 329, 428 planting of 446 red 428, (Fig.) 429, (Fig.) 473 silver 428 striped 427, (Fig.) 428 sugar 73, 74, 329, 423-430 swamp, see red. Maple sugar 431-434 Maps, construction of 202-205 Martins 254 May-flies 138, 139 Meadow-lark 261, 263, 264, 274 Medics 350, 351 black 355 hop, see black toothed 355 spotted 355 See, also, "Alfalfa." Melilots 350, 351 white sweet clover 356 yellow sweet clover 356 Bokhara clover 356 Mice 69 Milkweed butterfly, see "Butterflies." Mineral matter, in seeds 410, 411 in soils 100 Minnows 149, 165 Monarch butterfly, see "Butterflies." Moraine 110 Mosquitoes 58, 59, 62, 153, 154, 237-241, 272 Moths, how to collect 222 how to distinguish from butterflies 224 life cycle 169 basswood leaf-roller (Fig.) 224 cecropia 167, 168 clothes 68 codlin 68, 468-471, 508 imperial (Fig.) 225 Isabella tiger 539, (Fig.) 542 luna (Fig.) 226 promethea 167, 168, 169 scallop-shell 61 tussock 68 underwing (Fig.) 225 Moulting, of caterpillars 232 cicada 531 snake 198 toad 198, 199 Mudwasps, see "Wasps." Mulching, of soil 120, 121, 122, 380, 381 Mullein 362, 579 Museum pests 219, 220 Mushrooms 74 Narcissus 582, 583, 588 oriental 585, 586 Nature-study, outline of movement 21-29 suggestions for (graded course and bibliography) 55-79 what it is 11-20 Nettles 364 N. Y. Teachers, An appeal to 31-43 N. Y. State Teachers' Library 148 Nitella (Fig.) 148, 149 Nitrogen 350, 360 Note-taking 455-457, 458, 459, 460-466 Nuthatch, white-breasted 283-286 red-breasted 285 Nutmeg 409 Oaks, grafting of 374 scarlet 300 swamp white 300 Oil, in seeds 398, 405, 410 Oriole 515, 516 Parsley 363 Parsnips 257 Parrot's feather (Fig.) 148, 149 Peaches 328, 375, 377 Pear 374, 375 Pepperidge 300, 301, 304, 309 Petunias 383 Phlox 383 Phoebe 280, 361, 363 Pigeons 254 Pigweeds 362, 367 Pines, Austrian 338, 339, (Fig.) 340, 346 pitch 336-338, 346 Scotch 338, 339, 346 Pitchforks 362 Plantain 362 Plants, breeding of 389, 390, 405-407, 411 planting of 367, 368 physiology of 72, 73, 74, 142, 424-427 societies of 361-365 Plums 375, 377 Plum curculio, see "Beetles." Pokeweed 364 Pollination 351, 352, 400 Polliwogs, see "Tadpoles." Pomace flies, see "Flies." Ponies 593, 594 Pop-corn 488 Poplar, Carolina 444 cutting of 373 Lombardy 301, (Fig.) 303, 304 Poppies 383 Potatoes 370, 374, 385-390, 407 Pot-holes 133 Poultry 517-527 See, also, "Domestic Animals." Predaceous diving beetles, see "Beetles." Promethea moth, see "Moths." Protective coloration 62, 63 Protein 398, 405 Pruning 417-421, 444, 475, 476 Pumpkin 401 Pupa, of ants 244, 245, 246 butterflies, see "Chrysalids." mosquitoes 239, 240 moths, see "Chrysalids." Quince 374 Rabbit 56, 70 Radish 563, 564 Ragweed 362, 579 Raindrops 86, 88, 89, 90 Rainfall 119, 123 Raspberry 305, 375 Robin 238, 261, 499, 500 Rock flour 110 Roots, growing point of 293, 294 Rose (Fig.) 371 Rust, on asters 381, 382 Salamanders 188, 197, 501, 539-544 Sand 117, 120 Sapsucker, see "Woodpeckers." Sassafras 301, (Fig.) 302, 309 Scale insects 68 Scallop-shell moth, see "Moths." School grounds, improvement of 35, 38-41, 437-447, 566-568, 571, 572 Schoolroom, The 9 Scion, see "Cion." Seed, dispersal of 72 dormant 409, 410 uses of stored food 409-414 See, also, "Germination." Shiner 162, 165 Shower, A Summer 81-91 Silage 403 Siphon 144 Skipper, silver spotted 61 Sleep, of flowers 72 Slug 149 Smartweed 362, 380 Snakes 197, 198, 501 Snails 143, 148, 149 Snow 84, 85, 93-97, 453, 454 Snowball bush 305 Snowdrops 582, 583, 588 Snowflakes 588 Soil 99-114 value of various kinds 115-124 in school gardens 560, 570, 571, 574, 579, 581 Sparrows, fox 264, 265 song 261, 265 tree 265 white-crowned 265 white-throated 261, 265 vesper 265 Spiders 65, 66, 68, 69, 171-183, 211, 249, 288 Spraying 68, 69 Springs 126 Spruce, black 341-343, 346 Norway 339-341, (Fig.) 342, 346 red 342, 343, 347 Squash 291-295, 407 Squill 588 Squirrel, red 435, 436 black 435 how to study 69 Starch 331, 386, 387, 398, 405, 410, 483 Stems, growing point of 295 Stickleback 163 Stink-bugs, see "Bugs." Stock, for grafting 374 Stone-flies 138, 140 Storms, snow 93-97, 453, 454 thunder 86, 87, 90 Stratification 133 Stream-cutting 127-129, 133 Stream deposition 104, 130, 133 Struggle for existence 74, 75, 361, 410, 418 Sumac 431, 433, 466 Sunfish 161 Sweet clover, see "Melilots." Sweet-peas 379-383, 564 Swallow, tree 254 Tadpoles 135, 189-193 Tape-grass 147, 148 Terrarium 207-212, 537-544 Thistle 364, 579 Thunder 89 Thorn-apple 301, (Fig.) 303, 309 Tillage 570, 571 Tomato 374 Trees, winter aspect of 297-305 how to draw 307-316 how to plant 444-446 see special kinds. Tree-toads 188, 189, 210 Tussock moth, see "Moths." Underwing moth, see "Moths." Virginia creeper 444 Vireo 515 Verbena 372 Vegetables 71 Viceroy butterfly, see "Butterflies." Walking-sticks 63 Warm-blooded 199 Wasps 62, 63, (Fig.) 224 mud 136 Water 120, 126 Water boatmen, see "Bugs." Watercress 148 Waterfalls 129, 133 Water-milfoil (Fig.) 148, 149 Water-purslane (Fig.) 148, 149 Water-scavenger beetle, see "Beetle." Water-scorpion, see "Bugs." Water-strider, see "Bugs." Water-tiger 152 Weeds 74 Wheat 411 Whirligig beetle, see "Beetles." Willows 305, 373, 443, 446 pussy 330 Wire-grass 362 Wire-worms 400 Woodpeckers 269-277, 505-513 downy 269, 270, 271, 284, 507-510 flicker 274-277, 512, 513 golden-winged, see flicker. hairy 269, 270, 271, 284 red-head 272, 505-507 sapsucker 270, 271, 272, 510-512 Wrens 254 Yarup, see "flicker" under "Woodpeckers." Yellow-hammer, see "flicker" under "Woodpeckers." Zinnias 383 [Transcriber's Note: Alternative spelling retained. Punctuation normalized without comment. Spelling change Page 108, "moivng" was changed to read "moving" Page 155, "caddice-warm" was changed to read "caddice-worm." Page 178, "entangeled" was changed to read "entangled." Page 190, "grow a a great" was changed to read "grow a great." Page 223, "Snappping beetle" was changed to read "Snapping beetle." Page 274, "Ornothology" was changed to read "Ornithology." Page 284, "I pounded on the widow" was changed to read "I pounded on the window." Page 285, "Audobon" was changed to read "Audubon." Page 288, "omniverous" was changed to read "omnivorous." Page 321, "histery" was changed to read "history." Page 363, "open ones eyes" was changed to read "open one's eyes." Page 383, "motherworth and Virginia creeper" was changed to read "motherwort and Virginia creeper." Page 396, "Is is pleasant" was changed to read "Is it pleasant." Page 530, "thousand liliputian" was changed to read "thousand lilliputian." Page 510, "once that it it is" was changed to read "once that it is." Page 592, "Is you should" was changed to read "If you should."]