BEYOND THE PASTURE BARS 7 



woods; the moths and butterflies, the orchestra 

 of crickets and grasshoppers; the beetles and 

 bugs! What a world of wild folk lives with me 

 on both sides of the pasture bars! 



But you cannot come to know them all in one 

 summer, nor in one book. The best thing that this 

 book can do, perhaps, is to let down the bars for 

 you ; or, better than that, to tell you to jump them, 

 and then to show you, if it can, how to see and to 

 hear and to know the wild things you will find in 

 the fields just beyond those bars. 



Now your pasture bars may be some iron gate, 

 swinging into an old city cemetery, or into a fine 

 city park, where there are more policemen than 

 any other kind of wild animals, and where you 

 cannot pick the flowers, or climb the trees, or even 

 run across t'he grass. 



Of course you cannot pick the flowers in a city 

 park ; there would not be enough to go round. But 

 you can sit quietly down upon a bench and watch 

 the birds in the trees, the squirrels on the grass, 

 the bees and insects among the flowers. And in 

 some parks you can do what I cannot do here in 

 the country you can see live bears, lions, wolves 

 and other great beasts from the wildest parts of 

 the world. 



