140 NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS 



CHAPTER III 



TO THE TEACHER 



You will try to get three suggestions out of this chapter for your 

 pupils : First, that an old tree with holes may prove to be the most 

 fruitful and interesting tree in the neighborhood, that is to say, 

 nothing out of doors is so far fallen to pieces, dead, and worthless 

 as to be passed by in our nature study. (Read to them " Second 

 Crops " in the author's " A Watcher in the Woods.") Secondly : the 

 humble tree-toad is well worth the most careful watching, for no one 

 yet has told us all of his life-story. Thirdly: one of the benefits of 

 this simple, sincere love of the out-of-doors will come to us as rest, 

 both in mind and body, as contentment, too, and clearer understanding 

 of what things are worth while. 



FOR THE PUPIL 

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burlap petticoat : a strip of burlap about six inches wide tied with 



a string and folded over about the trunks of the trees under 



which the night-feeding gypsy moth caterpillars hide by day. 



The burlaps are lifted and the worms killed. 



a peddler's stall : In the days of the author's boyhood peddlers 



sold almost everything that the country people could want. 

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grim-beaked baron : the little owl of the tree. 



keep: an older name for castle ; sometimes for the dungeon. 

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for him to call the summer rain : alluding to his evening and his 



cloudy-day call as a sign of coming rain. 

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castings : the disgorged lumps of hair and bones of the small 



animals eaten by the owls. 

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Altair and Arcturus : prominent stars in the northern hemisphere 



