Part 13 (1/2)

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_Darwin's book on earthworms:_ Read in this book how the worms make garden soil.

CHAPTER IV

TO THE TEACHER

If you have at hand ”The Fall of the Year,” read again the suggestions on page 112 for the chapter on ”Things to See this Fall,” making use of this chapter as you did of that (1) as the object of a field excursion--or of several excursions until all the things suggested here have been seen; (2) as a test of the pupil's actual study of nature; for there is scarcely a city child who cannot get far enough into nature (though he get no farther than the city park), and often enough to see most of the things pointed out in this chapter; (3) as suggestions for further study and observation by the pupils--things that they have seen which might be added to these ten here, and written about for composition work in English.

FOR THE PUPIL

Here are ten different things for you to see this winter, and most of them, whether you live in the city or country, you can see, provided you live where the snow falls. But you will have some kind of a winter no matter where you live. Don't miss it--its storms, its birds, its animals, its coasting, skating, snowshoeing, its invitations to tramp the frozen marshes and deep swamps where you cannot go in the summer, and where, on the snow you will catch many a glimpse of wild life that the rank summer sedges will never reveal. Don't stop with these ten suggestions; there are a hundred other interesting things to see. And as you see them, write about them.

CHAPTER V

TO THE TEACHER

Let this chapter be read very close to the Christmas recess, when your children's minds are full of Christmas thoughts. This unconventional turn to the woods, this thought of Christmas among the animals and birds, might easily be the means of awakening many to an understanding of the deeper, spiritual side of nature-study--that we find in Nature only what we take to her; that we get back only what we give. It will be easy for them to take the spirit of Christmas into the woods because they are so full of it; and so it will be easy for them to feel the woods giving it back to them--the very last and best reward of nature-study. No, don't be afraid that they are incapable of such lessons, of such thoughts and emotions. Some few may be; but no teacher ever yet erred by too much faith in the capacity of her pupils for the higher, deeper things.

FOR THE PUPIL

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These lines of poetry you all know. But who can tell who wrote them? Where did he live and when?

_gum swamp:_ See description of such a swamp on pages 262-263 of the author's ”Wild Life Near Home.” This is the tree known as sour gum, more properly tupelo (_Nyssa sylvatica_ or _uniflora_).

_cardinal grosbeak:_ Commonly called ”cardinal,” or ”redbird.”

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_Holy Day:_ What was the oldest form of our word ”holiday”?

_ilex:_ _Ilex verticillata_, the black alder, or winterberry, one of the holly family. A low swamp bush covered with red berries all winter.

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_Lupton's Pond:_ A little pond along Cohansey Creek near Bridgeton, N. J.

_Persimmon trees_: found from New Haven, Conn., to Florida.

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_Bob Cratchit's goose:_ There never was such a goose, as you all know who have read d.i.c.kens's ”Christmas Carol.”

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