142 NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS 



PAGE 35 



half-moulted hen : Pick her up and notice the regular and system- 

 atic arrangement of the young feathers. Or take a plucked hen 

 and draw roughly the pin-feather scheme as you find it on her 

 body. 

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reed-birds : The bobolink is also called " rice-bird >? from its habit 

 of feeding in the rice-fields of the South on its fall migration. 



CHAPTER VI 



FOR THE PUPIL 



Do not stop doing or seeing or hearing when you have done, seen, 

 and heard the few things suggested in this chapter and in chapters 

 iv and x ; for these are only suggestions, and merely intended to 

 give you a start, as if your friend had said to you upon your visiting 

 a new city, "Now, don't fail to see the Common and the old State 

 House, etc. ; and don't fail to go down to T Wharf, etc.," knowing 

 that all the time you would be doing and seeing and hearing a thou- 

 sand interesting things. 



CHAPTER VII 



TO THE TEACHER 



I called this chapter when I first wrote it "The Friendship of 

 Nature " a much used title, but entirely suggestive of the thought 

 aad the lesson in the story here. This was first written about six 

 years ago, and to-day, May 12, 1912, that pair of phcebes, or another 

 pair, have their nest out under the pig-pen roof as they have had every 

 year since I have known the pen. Repeat and expand the thought as 

 I have put it into the mouth of Nature in the first paragraph " We 

 will share them [the acres] together." Instill into your pupils' minds 

 the large meaning of obedience to Nature's laws and love for her and 

 all her own. Show them also how ready Nature is (and all the birds 

 and animals and flowers) to be friendly; and how even a city door- 

 yard may hold enough live wild things for a small zoo. This chapter 



