THE STUDY OF LOCALITY. 729 



at the foot of the taller balsam and spruce. Then one of the boys 

 made the merry discovery of the orange berries of the climbing bitter- 

 sweet shining brilliantly against the bright green of a tall spruce, which 

 it clasped in its tight winding embrace to the very top, while hanging 

 its beautiful clusters down in rich and graceful festoons. At once 

 there was a clambering and a pulling till we had added these gay 

 wreaths to our varied evergreens. Such an outing puts iron into the 

 blood and glad memories into the heart. 



One of our favorite haunts was a piece of bush called Beechwood. 

 Last winter we undertook to make a valuation survey of it on snow- 

 shoes. We first marked off a strip by tramping from one end of the 

 woods to the other in Indian file. Then we counted all the trees in 

 that strip, but recorded the measurement only of those of a circumfer- 

 ence, breast high, of 36 inches or more. Two boys were assigned to 

 each of the principal trees, one of them using the tape while the other 

 kept tally. In the case of the boys in the illustration, it is evident that 

 two of them are measuring one of the large beeches. In this way, 

 we covered the whole woods in four afternoons, and found it to contain 

 670 trees, of which 270, or 40 per cent., were at least three feet around. 

 All the trees but 90 and all the large trees but 30 were maple, beech 

 and basswood, there being as many large maples as large beeches and 

 basswoods together. The other trees present we found to be elm of 

 two species (American elm and slippery elm), ironwood, yellow birch, 

 hemlock, butternut and white ash. 



At the school, we worked out the diameters of the trees whose 

 circumference we had recorded, and then with the aid of lumbermen's 

 tables found the total contents in board feet of the three most numer- 

 ous species. Counting the lumber as worth $12 a thousand, we soon 

 found out the value of the standing timber of our little woods to be 

 about $800. Meanwhile, with compass and pencil in hand we had 

 ascertained the shape and size of the wood, made a chart of it and 

 estimated it to contain about eight acres. 



In the spring, we studied the character of the underbrush and of 

 the soil cover and indicated with proper surveyor's signs the large 

 wooded portion, the two small open grassy corners, the marshy ground, 

 the hill and the paths. Scattered through the wooded part, we placed 

 signs for the principal trees, which signs we had invented ourselves 

 from our observation of the character of the trees. The basswood, for 

 example, we found most numerous in the lower parts, the butternut on 

 the ridges. The ironwoods we noticed to be small but thrifty, shade 

 not being so detrimental to these weeds of the forest as to many other 

 species. At the close of the school year, a little lad of eleven summers 

 had the bright idea of presenting me with an enlarged chart of our 

 wood, done neatly in ink. Here surely is an example of self activity. 



Early last April, we spent two mornings in the woods sugar- 



