NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS 



CHAPTER I 



TO THE TEACHER 



Let me say again that the best thing any nature book can do for 

 its readers is to take them out of doors ; and that the best thing any na- 

 ture-study teacher can do for them is to take them out of doors. Think 

 of going to school to a teacher so simple, wholesome, vigorous, origi- 

 nal, and rich in the qualities of the soul that she (how naturally we 

 say " she " !) that she comes to her classroom by way of the Public 

 Garden, carrying a bird-glass in her hand ! or across the fields with a 

 rare orchid in her hand, and the freshness and sweetness of the June 

 morning in her face and spirit ! Why, I should like to be a boy again 

 just to have such a teacher. Instead of bird-songs it is too often 

 school gossip, instead of orchids it is clothes, instead of the open 

 fields it is the round of the schoolroom that most teachers are ab- 

 sorbed in. Most teachers can add and spell much better than they 

 can read, because they do not know the literary values and sugges- 

 tions of words. Nothing would so help the run of teachers as the back- 

 ground, the observation and feeling, that would come from an intimate 

 knowledge of the out-of-doors in the vicinity of their schoolrooms. 



FOR THE PUPIL 

 PAGE 1 



Learn first of all the joy of walking. It is enough at first to say 

 " I am going to take a woods walk," with nothing smaller in mind 

 to do or hear or see. Such tramping itself is one of the very best 

 ways of meeting the wild folk, and getting acquainted with na- 

 ture. Go to a variety of places the seashore, the water-front, 

 the upland pasture, the deep swamps, even if you take a car-ride 

 to reach them. Then select the place nearest at hand to frequent 

 and watch closely. 



