540 



Home Nature-Study Course. 



Probably wild animals suffer more cruelty through the agency of 

 traps than through any other form of human persecution. The savage 

 steel traps often catch the animal by the leg, holding it until it gnaws off 

 the imprisoned foot and thus escapes maimed and handicapped for its 

 future struggle for food ; or if the trap gets a stronger hold the poor 

 creature may suffer tortures during the long period before the owner 

 of the trap appears to mercifully put an end to its sufferings by killing 

 it. If box traps be used they are often neglected and the poor creature 

 imprisoned is left to languish and starve. The teacher cannot enforce 

 too strongly upon the child the ethics of trapping ; impress upon him 

 that the box traps are far less cruel, but that if set they must be examined 

 regularly and not neglected. 



In studying mice give the children a 

 good lesson in humane trapping. Let 

 them set a figure 4 or a bowl trap and 

 then bring their little prisoners to school 

 so that they may be studied, meanwhile 

 treating them kindly and feeding them 

 bountifully. After a mouse has been 

 studied it should be set free, even though 

 it is one of the quite superfluous field 

 mice. The moral effect of killing an 

 animal after the child has become thoroughly interested in it and its 

 life is always bad. 



AA. 



Figure 4 trap. 



THE WOLF. 



Preliminary Work. — We think it a good pl^n to preface the study of the dog 

 with a study of the wolf, for after knowing the habits of wolves the pupils will be 

 much better able to understand what the dog's life as a wild animal may have 

 been. In New York State the study of the wolf must, of course, be a matter of 

 reading, unless the pupils have a chance to study the animal in a traveling menagerie 

 or in the New York Zoological Garden. It would be well to begin the work with 

 a talk about the wolves that formerly inhabited America, of which we had two 

 species, the Gray or Timber Wolf and the Coyote or Prairie Wolf. The Gray Wolf 

 ranged in packs over New York State a hundred years ago; now it menaces the 

 cattle herds on our western plains and holds its own in many of our forest pre- 

 serves. The Coyote has learned to adapt itself to civilization and flourishes in the 

 regions of the upper Missouri in Colorado to the Pacific Coast. If your school 

 is situated in the western districts of New York, outside of cities, you may be able 

 to find some person, who will remember the stories about wolves in that locality 

 told to him by his parents or grandparents. Such a story would be the most desir- 

 able nucleus for beginning this study. 



Use, Bulletin 72, by Vernon Bailey. United States Department of Agriculture 

 Forest Service, to give the pupils a geography lesson on distribution of wolves now 

 in the United States. 



