FIELD AND STUDY 



nature?" I reply: "Do not try to teach them at all. 

 Just turn them loose in the country and trust to 

 luck." It is time enough to answer children's ques- 

 tions when they are interested enough to ask them. 

 Knowledge without love does not stick; but if love 

 comes first, knowledge is pretty sure to follow. I do 

 not know how I first got my own love for nature, 

 but I suppose it was because I was born and passed 

 my youth on the farm, and reacted spontaneously 

 to the natural objects about me. I felt a certain 

 privacy and kinship with the woods and fields and 

 streams long before the naturalist awoke to self- 

 consciousness within me. A feeling of companion- 

 ship with Nature came long prior to any conscious 

 desire for accurate and specific knowledge about her 

 works. I loved the flowers and the wild creatures, 

 as most healthy children do, long before I knew 

 there was such a study as botany or natural history. 

 And when I take a walk now, thoughts of natural 

 history play only a secondary part; I suspect it is 

 more to bathe the spirit in natural influences than 

 to store the mind with natural facts. I think I know 

 what Emerson means when he says elsewhere in his 

 Journal that a walk in the woods is one of the secrets 

 for dodging old age. I understand what the poet 

 meant when he sang: 



"Sweet is the lore which Nature brings." 



Nature lore that is it. Not so much a notebook 

 28 



