of 



patch ; for, once you have digged into earth of your 

 own, then have a care, else along with the cucumber 

 seed you will plant your soul. The man in the Scrip- 

 tures who bought a piece of land and wished there- 

 after only to dig, had a real case. 



Owning a farm is not necessary. To be near the 

 open country is enough, so near that you can know 

 it intimately the year around. " He is a thoroughly 

 good naturalist," says Kingsley, "who knows his 

 own parish thoroughly." He was thinking of Gilbert 

 White, I am sure, that gentle rector who lived in 

 Selborne, and there grew old with his tortoise. 



This is all there is to nature study, this growing 

 old with your garden and your tame tortoise. The 

 study of the out-of-doors is not a new cult ; it is not 

 a search after a living uintatherium, or after a frog 

 that can swallow his pond, or a fish hawk that reads, 

 not a hunt for the extraordinary or the marvelous 

 at all, but for things as the Lord made them. Nature 

 study is the out-of-door side of natural history, the 

 unmeasured, unprinted side of poetry. It is joy in 

 breathing the air of the fields ; joy in seeing, hear- 

 ing, living the life of the fields ; joy in knowing and 

 loving all that lives with you in your out-of-doors. 



