264 



THE GUIDE TO NATURE 



can raise money enough to send West 

 and buy a barrel full of honey. In the 

 linden and raspberr) territories it is 

 sold in hulk very cheaply (good honey, 

 too) and will delighl your friends and 

 the grocer. 1 1" you have sufficient of 

 this homy, you can probably ge\ from 

 the grocer, without too big a cheek for 

 the balance, enough granulated sugar 

 to keep your bees from starvation dur- 

 ing the winter. It is a great delight to 

 'keep a few bees" — as many as one 

 hundred and twenty-seven (127) in 

 one hive, with the queen sometimes, in 

 the spring (if you have fed persist- 

 ently), and to harvest — a large number 

 of stings. But it really does pay. 

 * * * 



Moral — The delights of cash should 

 not be polluted with any "nature for 

 its own sake." Cash is really worth 

 while in itself — our fraternal "practi- 

 cal" magazines and suggesting sub- 

 scribers to the contrary, notwithstand- 

 ing. 



China Painting from Nature. 



BY WM. D. DALGLEISH, GLENBROOK, CONN. 



The more frequently one paints from 

 nature, the sooner he will abandon 

 "studies." Of course by studies I 

 mean lithographic copies, which are all 

 very well for the beginner who has little 

 skill in drawing and so takes an out- 

 line transfer and fills it in with color, 

 but this is not art nor will it develop 



art. .More than that, it takes away all 

 ambition to become proficient in draw- 

 ing. "What useless labor, what a loss 

 of time, when all you need is a sheet 

 of tracing paper and one of carbon," 

 the amateur china painter says, and so 

 keeps on for a while with his outlining 

 and transferring, and then, becoming 

 sated, abandons the pursuit, having 

 thrown away money and valuable time 

 with no adequate return. 



[f you want to paint china without 

 losing interest, study nature, and if you 

 have a love for art, that love will 

 increase, and so will your skill, while 

 as a pastime it can have no equal, 

 always supposing that you are an ad- 

 mirer of art as well as of nature. 



I would not c uggest that you sit 

 in a flower garden and try to paint 

 it all, but that you select two or three 

 flowers and paint them in the sunlight 

 with a delicately tinted sky for a back- 

 ground — blue and grey or azure with 

 sunlit clouds. Then again try land- 

 scapes and marine views. The paint- 

 ing of skies as pastime and practice 

 combined will become most alluring. 

 Having become proficient in skies try 

 foliage and pasture and distant hills, 

 or a rocky coast and a sandy beach 

 with a sail to suggest distance. With 

 perseverance one can do all these 

 things and more. A great mistake is 

 to think that it is possible to learn 

 china painting in a certain number of 

 lessons, because somebodv's circular 



SOME SPECIMENS OF CHINA DECORATION FROM NATURE. 



