14 NATURAL HISTORY OF Till- FARM 



seeds, studied in the lielil. will be very desirable. You will 

 want to take another l<K)k at them after you get baek; so 

 preiKirc to take them liome, where \-()U can sit at a table and 

 work with them. A bag or a basket will hold, besides tools, a 

 lot of stout envelopes, for keeping things a])art. with labels 

 and necessary data \\Titten on the outside. 



7. As to reference books: "Study nature, not books", 

 said the great naturalist and teacher, Louis Agassiz. By all 

 means, get the answers to the questions involved in your 

 reconis of these studies direct from nature and not from books. 

 Hut while you are in the field, you will meet with many things 

 about which vou will wish to know. Ask your instructors 

 freely. Get acquainted, also, with some of the standard 

 reference lxx)ks, which will help you when instructors fail. 

 Only a few of the more generally useful can be mentioned 

 here. 



There are three classical manuals for use in the eastern 

 United States and Canada, that have hcl]:)ed the naturalists 

 of several generations. These are Gray's Manual of Botany, 

 Jordan's Manual of the Vertebrates and Comstock's Manual 

 for the Studv of Insects. There are two great cyclopedias, 

 both echted bv Professor L. H. Bailey— The American 

 Cvclopechas of Horticulture and of Agriculture. There arc 

 manv lxx)ks of nature-study, but most useful of them all is 

 Mrs.' Comstock's Handbook of Nature-Study. The best 

 single bird book is Chairman's Handbook of North American 

 Birds. A new book that will help toward acquaintance 

 with aquatic plants and animals is Nccdham and Lloyd's 

 Life of Inland Waters. All these should be accessible on 

 reference shelves. 



"Note — At Cornell University the field tool that is fur- 

 nished to classes for individual use is a sharj) brick-layer's 

 hammer weighing about a pound. It is not heavy enough 

 to be burdensome, and it is ada])table to a great variety of 

 u.ses, such as digging roots, cracking nuts, stripping bark, 

 s]jlitting and s]jlintering kindling, ])lanting seedlings, etc. A 

 light hatchet will ser\'e man\-, but not all of these uses. 



