260 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [10:7— Oct., 1914 



number of grade teachers entering these courses, which offer work 

 of college grade and prepare especially for teaching in high schools, 

 is small. The teacher in elementary grades could select courses 

 in these schools from subjects best adapted to elementary grades 

 and arrange such material to meet the needs of elementary courses. 



We must look to our neighboring country to see the progress in 

 nature-study that we wish to see and to find a school which is con- 

 ducted primarily for the interests of science courses for the elemen- 

 tary teachers and the elementary school. 



At the Ontario Agricultural College, Guelph, Ontario, courses 

 are offered which make it possible for a teacher to gain considerable 

 nature knowledge during a course of one or two terms of study. 

 During this period all subjects taken, deal directly with nature- 

 study, including garden, field, laboratory and class-room work, thus 

 giving teachers an opportunity to become thoroughly informed in 

 several phases of elementary nature-study. 



The Mourning Doves 



Sarah V. Prueser 



It is not always in April that you hear the sad love-song of the 

 mourning or turtle dove. It may be on a clouded June morning 

 that the pensive cooing disturbs your merriest mood ; or on a dark 

 day in August, when an east wind predicts a three-day drizzle that 

 its cooing seems somewhat melancholy. The mourning dove 

 arrives early in the spring, usually April 1-15, and remains late in 

 the fall. Its song, a rather sad "coo-oo, coo-oo" is heard through- 

 out the summer season. 



On April 20th, I found a mourning dove's nest in the lowest 

 branch of a yellow pine, not more than nine feet from the ground. 

 Had not my walking under the tree disturbed the mother bird, 

 causing her to fly from the nest, I should not have suspected that 

 the few dry twigs and sticks laying criss-cross on the branch, were a 

 bird's nest. The colors of the bird and nest were so like that of the 

 twigs and needles that she was all but invisible. In the nest were 

 two white eggs, much smaller than the eggs of the passenger pigeon, 

 for which they are often mistaken. 



After a few visits, she became accustomed to my coming and 

 never left the nest unless I pulled down the branch, when she 



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