SCHOOL DEPARTMENT 



Edited by ALICE HALL WALTER 



Address all communications relative to the worlc of this depart- 

 ment to the Editor, 67 Oriole Avenue, Providence, R. I. 



"What is most striking in tlie Maine wilderness is the continuousness of the forest. 

 Except the burnt lands, the narrow intervals on the rivers, the bare tops of the high 

 mountains, and the lakes and streams, the forest is uninterrupted. It is even more grim 

 and wild than you had anticipated, a damp and intricate wilderness. . . . The lakes 

 are something you are unprepared for, they lie so exposed to the light, and the forest is 

 diminished to a fine fringe on their edge. These are not the artificial forests of an English 

 King. Here prevail no forest laws but those of nature. . . . 



"it is a country full of evergreen trees, of silvery birches and watery maples, the 

 ground dotted with insipid small, red berries, and strewn with moss-grown rocks — a 

 country diversified with innumerable lakes and rapid streams, peopled with trout, salmon, 

 shad, pickerel, and other fishes; the forest resounding at rare intervals with the note of 

 the chickadee, the blue jay, and the woodpecker, the scream of the fish hawk and 

 the eagle, the laugh of the loon, and the whistle of ducks along the solitary streams; 

 at night, with the hooting of owls and howling of wolves; in summer, swarming with 

 myriads of black flies and mosquitos more formidable than wolves to the white man. 

 Such is the home of the moose, the bear, the caribou, the wolf, the beaver, and the 

 Indian. — Excerpt from Thoreau's "Camping in the Maine Woods." 



BIRD-STUDY IN SHAKESPEARE'S TIME 



[Note: This article may be used by teachers in correlation with English, History 

 and Literature.] 



DURING this year of the three hundredth anniversary of Shakespeare's 

 death, it may be of interest to bird students to recall some of Shakes- 

 peare's allusions to birds which were known to him, and also to in- 

 quire into the knowledge of birds current in his time. The half-century when 

 he lived, 1564-1616, was notable, it will be remembered, for exploration as 

 well as for poetry and drama, and references to birds of many climes abound 

 in the literature of that time. Many different species of native birds were also 

 known then. In fact, owing to the great fens and marshes, undrained or only 

 partially reclaimed, water fowl and wading birds, now rare or entirely absent, 

 were abundant. 



Perhaps the first thing to notice with regard to the knowledge of birds 

 current in Shakespeare's day is the credulity and superstition that character- 

 ized it. The persevering student finds throughout the references to land as 

 well as water birds mentioned in the literature of that period an astonishing 

 number of fanciful conceptions regarding the nature, habits and uses of birds. 

 One author stated that certain species of birds migrated to the moon, others 

 described birds of 'ill omen,' while not a few writers most grotesquely mis- 

 interpreted the life-history of fairly common species. 



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