macdougall] NATURE-STUDY ON AN OLD-TIME FARM 373 



down its slopes. Seeing all these so placed in their own home field 

 where they played daily, they noticed and remembered where each 

 species grew in the woods ; sugar maples on rocky ridges, red maple 

 on the low flat fields. They learned too that the seeds of the soft 

 maples liked to float away upon the water, and therefore ripened in 

 the early summer before the low woods grow dry ; but that where 

 the hard maple thrives no water ever lies, and the hard maple need 

 not hurry the ripening of its seeds, which fall in late summer. 



Their father once took two of the boys off with him for a trip of a 

 dozen miles to search for some shrubs of the button-bush. These 

 were planted in the moistest soil in the field and lived a dwindling 

 life for some seasons, but died; and as the boys watched them fail 

 it was fixed in their minds that in their native haunts they grew 

 with their feet in the water. And so when they saw the staghorn 

 sumach planted near the top of the dry harrow and the red-tasselled 

 spirea on its crest, they knew that they were placed where the soft 

 tints of the spirea and the flaming splendor of the sumach would 

 best catch the eye, but knew too that there were other reasons as 

 well in the very demands of the shrubs for congenial homes. 



As they saw the bitter-sweet and the wild grape planted where 

 they could cling to the tall elms, and the maiden's bower placed by 

 the fence side, they asked after reasons, and were told of the differ- 

 ent habits of climbing of these vines, but only as each returning 

 season enforced the lesson did they really learn its force. 



As the tree-garden grew to be almost inclusive of the trees and 

 shrubs of the district between the St. Lawrence and the Adiron- 

 dacks, and as many wild flowers were added from the stately turks 

 cap lily to the shy, rare green belled trillium, and as the bird and 

 insect life began to alter and grow richer in consequence, these 

 fortunate farm boys had at least a chance for forming scientific 

 habits of trrinking. There was of course no formal nature-study 

 teaching such as is found in our schools to-day. There was no 

 normal teaching of botany, nor use of botanical terms. But there 

 was fresh and loving contact with nature — such contact as is possi- 

 ble and should in some degree be found on every farm. What was 

 the outcome of the opportunity? Let us take the case of the 

 youngest of these three boys, who is now a Professor in an American 

 University, as a criteiion. 



While still a school boy he had made some original observations 

 on the habits of one of the solitary wasps. Those were the days of 



