198 NATURE STUDY. 



Nature Study Lessons. X. 



BY EDWARD J. BURNHAM, 



There is a fascination about a brook at every season of 

 the year, but the spell is most potent in springtime. The 

 angler feels it, and examines his tackle long before the ice 

 has gone from the streams ; the small boy feels it, and is 

 conscious of vague yearnings within him. It is little won- 

 der that the earliest of the Greek philosophers, groping 

 about, trying to find a reason for things, came to feel that 

 water was the great first cause, the origin and source of 

 matter and of life. A rude and crude philosophy ; and yet 

 the boy feels some faint impulse from it today, as he peers 

 questioningly into the dark pool by the overhanging bank, 

 and the biologist feels it as he studies the beginnings of 

 life in the tiny forms that are ceaselessly multiplying in 

 pond and stream and sea. 



Nature study walks in spring and summer ought some- 

 times to lead along a brook, and there should be dredging 

 and investigation. If somewhat of the fascination of mys- 

 tery is lost, as the vague belief in huge fantastic .shapes is 

 dispelled, there will come the more satisfactory conscious- 

 ness of knowledge gained ; and the real forms, although so 

 much smaller than fancy pictured them, are sufficiently 

 fantastic to satisfy the liveliest imagination. 



There ought to be nothing formidable about the word 

 aquarium. It is merely a convenient term used to express 

 the idea of a dish, a pan, a pail or a tub used to hold wa- 

 ter and the many kinds of creatures and plants that live in 

 it. Almost any sort of a receptacle that will hold water 

 will answer for an aquarium, and in the warm weather of 

 spring and summer it can be set out of doors, in a shed — 

 almost anywhere. If, some rainy day, it is permitted to 

 be placed on the kitchen table, the children will forget that 



