LOOKING OVER THE FIELDS 



49 



JUNE 1912 



Number 2 



Where is the Ignorance? 

 "Harper's Bazar," which prints the 

 illustration with its legend (on the next 

 page), has, upon my request, kindly 

 lent the cut to The Guide to Nature. 

 A naturalist friend, who called my at- 

 tention to this, suggested that I might 

 be able to give a "rousing editorial" on 



stiued in either way. On the one hand, 

 there is a great deal of "fool farming" 

 on the part of city people, who come 

 into the country, and are rightly the 

 objects of ridicule by the country peo- 

 ple who note their unusual methods. 

 If the city man has read books and 

 goes at the work in the theoretical 



the ignorance of nature manifested by book farming spirit, he becomes an 



city people when they go into the 

 country. He claims, "The boy's facial 

 expression shows that he is laughing 

 at them for not knowing poison ivy 

 and toadstools. Their facial expres- 

 sion shows that they have heard of the 

 effects of poison ivy, and are pained 



object of ridicule, though he may do 

 the work vastly better than the country 

 people. If, in his ignorance, he does 

 foolish things, he is again the butt of 

 ridicule, but I doubt whether ignor- 

 ance ever receives so much condemna- 

 tion from country people, as does the 



to learn that they are gathering it, and exhibition of superior knowledge. Any 



pained in prospect, too, at the thought 

 of their blistered skin. The boy is 

 laughing at their ignorance, not at their 

 admiration of things that, to him, are 

 the commonest of the common." 



I must confess that before I received 

 the letter detailing this point of view, 

 and after I had studied the illustration 

 and read the legend, my sympathies 

 and interests went entirely in the op- 

 posite direction. Here is my version. 



Two enthusiastic people have come 

 from the city to love commonplace 

 nature with uncommon interest, and 

 the boy, like too many people with 

 whom familiarity has brought con- 

 tempt, sees in their actions nothing but 

 the manifestation of a harmless sort 

 of lunacy. I do not know which mean- 

 ing the editor of the "Bazar" intended 

 to convey. The picture may be con- 



man who attempts to do anything in a 

 different and better way becomes a 

 target for ridicule. It is dangerous to 

 think new thoughts. If on the other 

 hand, the city people are really ignor- 

 ant then they receive from the country 

 neople pity and sympathy, and help. 

 But I am inclined to insist that my 

 first impression of this illustration is 

 correct, and that this man and his wife 

 are really in love with the common- 

 place things of nature, to which the 

 boy has always been accustomed, and 

 I can quite readily imagine him sav- 

 ing, "Aren't they the biggest fool peo- 

 ple you ever saw to be interested in 

 just vines and snake brakes and all 

 them sort of things?" He has been so 

 accustomed to the objects without 

 knowing their interests, or having their 

 beauty implanted in his heart, that he 



Copyright 1912 by The Agassiz Association, Arcadia: Sound Beach, Conn. 



