30 



THE GUIDE TO NATURE. 



have submitted photographs on all 

 forms of outdoor interests. 



Your comment that the reading of 

 the magazine leaves a desire to talk 

 things over is one of the best that we 

 have received. The editor is thoroughly 

 desirous not to have abstract articles 

 but to have a close personal relation 

 among students and lovers of nature. 



How I Became Interested in Nature. 



BY C. A. CI. ARK, LYNN, MASSACHUSETTS. 



When I was between three and four 

 years of age, 1 lived in West Lynn, 

 close to the salt marshes where birds 

 and insects were abundant, but being 

 very young, 1 didn't know a crow from 

 a sandpiper, Nearly every day I used 

 to roam over the marshes near my 

 house and always avoided the streams 



they did not seriously attract my at- 

 tention. 



During the warm summer days in- 

 sect life is the chief attraction on the 



RED MAPLE WITH TWO TRUNKS 



marshes, and butterflies, bees, wasps 

 and the like are seen flying from 

 flower to flower extracting the nectar 

 found in most of the blossoms and 

 supplying hundreds of insects with 

 food. On the ground and all over the 

 tall grass blades I saw hundreds of 

 grasshoppers jumping here and there 

 as I walked through the herbage and 

 they seemed to be my chief attraction. 

 Every chance I could get I roamed 

 over the marshes in search of grass- 

 hoppers and no other insect seemed 

 to be in my mind. T took a large- 

 necked bottle, and went out on the 

 marsh, catching grasshoppers in my 

 hands and placing them in the bottle. 

 I stayed on the marsh until my bottle 

 and pools of water that are frequently was solidly packed with them and then 

 seen in such a locality, never getting returned home. My father kept sev- 

 near enough to fall into one of them, eral hens, ducks and geese and he gave 

 The streams were full of minnows but the grasshoppers to the hens. It was 



S TIDYING THE GYPSY MOTHS 



