The Audubon Societies 383 



in the majority of rural cunmuuiiLies, if teachers, pupils and parents could 

 find a common interst in bird- and nature-study. 



The scrap-book method of putting together systematically material about 

 birds or any other subject is especially valuable in country schools, where the 

 time spent on any one study is more or less left to the discretion of the teacher. 

 Even in large, crowded, city grade-schools, this method may be successfully 

 used. Aside from the interest which it stimulates in the pupils, it is valuable 

 for the training it gives in orderly and compact arrangement of material. 



In connection with drawing and art-work in the schools, "beautiful" 

 scrap-books can be made, as a teacher in a Rhode Island factory town demon- 

 strated. In this instance, each pupil made an entire book from cover to cover, 

 besides drawing or putting in colored illustrations, and various hand-painted 

 or written material. The time allowed for this work covered the bird-study 

 period weekly throughout an entire year, but the teacher could truthfully 

 say the work never dragged, for the pupils looked forward to their scrap-book 

 work with the utmost pleasure. 



In schools where bird-study is thus delightfully associated with agreeable 

 tasks and home interest, a public exhibition of the scrap-books might give 

 added zest to the work. 



Perhaps, if any moral need be drawn from the foregoing experiences, it 

 would be to the effect that work and play combined toward an absorbing end, 

 are better and more successful incentives to thorough work in the school-room, 

 and cordial good-will on the part of parents, than the "prod"' and discipline 

 method of former days. — A. H. W. 



JUNIOR AUDUBON WORK 



For Teachers and Pupils 



Exercise XII: Correlated Studies, Drawing, Spelling and Reading 



HOW BIRDS ARE FITTED TO GET THEIR FOOD 



Thus far in our study, we have been concerned only with certain external 

 conditions, that have more or less to do with the determination of the dis- 

 tribution, migration and nesting-habits of the birds of North America. Viewed 

 from the standpoint of geography and physiography, our continent is seen to 

 be broken up into so-called life-zones, that is, into areas where the conditions 

 are such that not all forms of life thrive or survive equally well in them. Cli- 

 mate in relation to temperature and humidity is probably the most important 

 factor in determining these unstable areas, although other distinctive factors, 

 such as altitude, forestation, water-supply, rock-formation and depth of soil 

 present great variation in different localities, and have much to do with the 

 presence or absence of birds and other forms of life in any particular place. 



