AQUARELLES OF OUR COMMON WOODLANDS 
word as to the inspiration these groups! 
give to go out and see for oneself these 
scenes put forth so powerfully. The 
appeal to children is strong; they are 
the nature lovers of the future, in whom 
the love of wild life imparted by the 
great story of the Museum cases will 
bear fruit in better protection of what 
wild spots we still have left. We know 
nothing about immortality, but this we 
know, that in our children we do live, 
and in them there will be carried forward 
what character the world once knew as 
ourselves. The Boy of Ten stands in the 
flesh before me, myself, yet also so differ- 
ent, my own son, just turned ten years. 
How do these scenes strike him? Well— 
there is little that those bright blue eyes 
overlook; not a tiny detail that passes 
unnoticed. He is living in the midst of 
the thing, not viewing it from a distance 
as we older ones must. Every scrap of 
pond life refers at once to his own 
aquarium: here’s where you look for 
this particular kind of tadpole — he 
didn’t know that there were several 
varieties of tadpoles before; that back- 
water is the place where those newts 
grow; never knew before that those pe- 
culiar greenish warty bulbs were a frog’s 
egg mass, thought all eggs were in strings 
like toad’s eggs — Oh, these cases were a 
mine of practical information to him, 
and we look for a large increase in the 
population of the aquarium this spring! 
And, what of that other child, not so 
1 Photographs of the reptile and amphibian 
groups of the American Museum, other than the 
Toad Group will be found in previous issues of the 
Journat as follows: Bullfrog Group, October, 
1911; Giant Salamander Group, December, 1912; 
Lower California Lizard Group, February. 1914. 
175 
fortunate as to have his mind directed 
from infancy to the world of the great 
out-of-doors and with no large country- 
side to roam over, the city waif who 
comes in here to look—and wonder? 
Who can tell but that many such re- 
ceive their first call to go back to the 
land, here; to forsake the crowded slum 
where body nor soul has a chance, and 
to earn their bread in their future close 
to the green soil, with just such a pond 
right over the dip of the hill! 
And what of the older ones, we whose 
pathways in life are fixed, and may not 
be changed because here in the city we 
earn the bread that those dependent 
upon us must eat? 
to us? 
What of the appeal 
Here is Nature, spread before 
us; Nature in her most charming mood, . 
with her silver filaments of still waters, 
her teeming abundance of humble (but 
not really familiar) pond life. And Na- 
ture can be found within an hour’s train 
or trolley ride of the city. Shall we pre- 
sume that, to the thousands who look 
upon these scenes there comes no desire 
to look again at the forgotten brookside? 
To discover for themselves many things 
besides flowers and birds, things that 
were before passed over unheeded, not 
knowing what to look for, nor realizing 
what a wealth of interest lay here un- 
touched? Shall we not rather rest as- 
sured that thousands have here had 
reborn in them an inspiration to re- 
visit old scenes, and a resolve not yet 
to let the home country-side relapse 
into the limbo of forgotten memories, 
not yet to let one’s love of Nature be 
deep-buried in the dust of the city’s 
turmoil. 
