The study of birds has proved so delightful, so fascinating 

 and so rich in rewarding every effort to add to one's knowl- 

 edge, that I wish I could find words wherewith to tempt others 

 to follow in my footsteps. — Mrs. Nathalie Alexandre. 



THE GUIDE TO NATURE 



EDUCATION AND RECREATION 



Volume IV JULY 1911 Number 3 



A Love for Nature, Both Great and Small 



By EDWARD F. BIGELOW, Arcadia: Sound Beach, Connecticut 



£L_rl 



HE love and study of na- 

 ture take three principal 

 forms. There is the love 

 of things in their larger 

 \gfe/ aspect, as skies, land- 



v" scapes, country roads, 



picturesque ravines, fields, 

 gardens. Then there is a love in ob- 

 servation of the details of nature, as 

 in the careful scrutiny of a bird, with 

 a record of its markings and habits ; 

 or the close, prolonged study of some 

 smaller objects of nature as in the case 

 of a student whom I met and who had 

 devoted six years to the study of sec- 

 tions of the bumblebee, and another 

 who, for some fifteen years, had 

 worked faithfully on the earthworm. 

 The unfortunate thing is that the 



members of these classes do not have 

 proper respect for one another. An 

 important mission of this magazine is 

 to unify the two and to show that their 

 pursuits are so similar that practically 

 they are the same thing. 



The man who gives loving and de- 

 tailed care to the trees, shrubbery and 

 garden of his estate, and does not have 

 them for mere show, possesses, in the 

 ultimate analysis, the same spirit as the 

 student who carefully fits up an aquar- 

 ium of algae and then gives prolonged, 

 enthusiastic, microscopical study to the 

 thread-like filaments that we call algae. 

 One, we say, loves an estate and the 

 other is a biologist. But they are 

 brothers in nature, if the spirit is the 

 same; and one can be a sham with a 



Copyright 1911 by The Agassiz Association, Arcadia: Sound Beach, Conn. 



