stbwakt] MATURE-STUDY IN ITS PRACTICAL BEARINGS 57 



vent actual starvation, and if we recall the calculations of the Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture to the effect that every toad in our garden is 

 worth $19. So per season, because of the insects, cabbage " worms ' 

 and slugs that it eats, we may begin to see the value of discriminat- 

 ing between our friends and foes, of seeking out and encouraging the 

 one, among birds and insects and every living thing, and of discour- 

 aging the other. Who will care if the robin does take a few cherries 

 later in the season, when he knows what a powerful ally it has been 

 in protecting the crops against possibly pints of voracious insect 

 larv;v ? And yet we still see the small boy out on all possible occa- 

 sions stoning the toads or practicing with his new gun, and improving 

 his marksmanship at the expense of the downy or the hairy wood- 

 pecker that never ate any of his fruit but was giving its strength to 

 ridding "his apple trees of the codlin-moth and destructive borers. 

 And his excuse, when he has one, is that it was only an old sap- 

 sucker. 



But the industrial waste and mistaken effort, which thus directly 

 affect more than half of our earning capacity as a nation, are not our 

 only failings. Few people get the pleasure out of life that the all- 

 wise Creator designed that they should. We go through too much 

 of life with our ears and eyes closed. Why should Indiana be now 

 publicly urging its boys to remain in the country and shun the city? 

 Why should men be sending off to mid- Africa for plants and shrubs 

 to decorate their homes, wasting their time and money in trying to 

 keep them up in their unnatural surroundings, when nearly every 

 road-side and woodland contains many of our own plants that are 

 fully equal in beauty and vastly better fitted for life here, but are 

 passed by under the name of weeds? Why should many of our 

 invaluable bits of natural scenery be continually torn up and 

 " improved" for financial purposes ? Why should it practically require 

 an armed guard to prevent one of our stateliest and most venerable 

 objects of national pride, the giant sequoias in California, from being 

 splintered into pickets for grape arbors ? In most cases it is because 

 the actual value of the country and of its common familiar objects is 

 not known. Our education leads away from the woods and fields and 

 waters, the atmosphere of our main occupation, instead of toward 

 them. In Forbes' words again, ••One's resources of enjoyment 

 become so narrowed that he is often an object of pity when seen away 

 from a city street. The ordinary tourist in our national park — one of 

 the loveliest spots on earth — rushes from hot springs to geyser and 



