Vlll 



THE GUIDE TO NATURE 



A Local Department of Observations and Suggestions, with the "wisdom," 



not of an owl but of a frog. 



Appliances for Nature Work and 

 Pleasures. 



Perhaps the most important func- 

 tion in the mission of this magazine is 

 to disseminate a correct understanding 

 of what nature work is, and secondarily 

 to be a guide in the better performance 

 of the work. Certain errors are deeply 

 imbedded in the general public mind. 

 I recently read in a journal devoted to 

 the keeping of honeybees about the 

 error in reference to artificial honey- 

 comb with honey sealed in it, a blunder 

 that originated some thirty years ago 

 in a newspaper article, that said that 

 a process for placing honey in such 

 comb had been discovered, as well as 

 a method of sealing the cells with a 

 hot flatiron, so as to give the product 

 the appearance of honeycomb perfected 

 in the hive. That journal stated that 

 this erroneous, pernicious statement 

 had cost thousands of dollars in at- 

 tempts to correct the wrong impres- 

 sion. One of our national bee associa- 

 tions offered a prize of a thousand dol- 

 lars for a sample of such honeycomb. 



That this error was deeply imbedded 

 in the human mind and generally be- 

 lieved, is a trifle when compared with 

 that older and more strongly en- 

 trenched error as to the meaning of 

 studying nature. It appears that cen- 

 turies ago certain members of the in- 

 sect world were used by certain queer 

 people in uncanny experiments in 

 magic, and since that time the study of 

 nature in general popular estimation 

 means the study of bugs. During more 

 recent years, in the renaissance of 

 natural science in our larger institu- 

 tions of learning, there has been dis- 

 seminated another error not quite so 

 prominent but equally difficult to eradi- 

 cate. This is that to study nature 



means to peer through a microscope 

 and to dissect some plant or animal 

 with a scalpel. 



Nature has waited many centuries 

 and met with many difficulties in com- 

 ing into her own, but within the last 

 few decades, perhaps within a score of 

 years, she has been steadily and suc- 

 cessfully doing that. Free yourself, O 

 reader, from the traditional errors of 

 the past, and let us tell you plainly and 

 pointedly that what this magazine 

 stands for is not to lead you to become 

 an expert in any department of en- 

 tomology, not an expert with the tools 

 of the laboratory, but to guide you 

 sympathetically to nature in all her 

 charms, attractions and helpfulness. 



Go to her in your own way, but if 

 you go to her through the chicken yard, 

 you are as much studying birds as you 

 are if you go to her through the field 

 glass, with the object a scarlet tanager 

 at the tonmost tip of a tree. 



Go to her in your garden, and watch 

 that annual marvel of the unfolding of 

 the plant through the germinating 

 seed till it comes in late year to full 

 mystery of a joyous crop. 



Go to her through your greenhouse. 

 Enjoy the esthetics of the varying 

 colors and delicious perfumes offered 

 by the triumphs of the modern florist's 

 art. 



Go to her if you please in the larger 

 forms of cultivated olants that we call 

 agriculture. A cornfield is, if riehtly 

 used and rightly viewed and rigiitly 

 studied, as much a nlacc of inspiration 

 as the tangled thicket. 



Why in the name of common sense, 

 have we relegated the daisv to the 

 botanist and forgotten the cornstalk' 

 No one who risditly views them does 

 that, but in this clinging", cobAvebbv 



