322 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW (11:7— Oct, 1915 



field excursions of the school children. On alternate Fridays, a 

 score of wooden shoes clatter along the brick paved dike, following 

 the schoolmaster in the happiest of all school hours, learning to 

 know a-field, "the wee beasties." 



This particular group has been organized into what in America 

 would be called an Audubon Society. The village museum, the 

 school, are the centers around which crystallize an interest that 

 lasts till golden hairs become silvered. 



• Up among the bonnie braes of Scotland a group are more or less 

 patiently awaiting a delayed train. The station sign reads 

 "Melrose." Some of the people are Americans, who in the pale 

 moonlight of the previous evening have been trying to " see aright," 

 the old abbey that William of Deloraine visited. There is a group 

 of children. One American asks a wee lassie, "Are you going on a 

 picnic?" "Oh! no sir, we are on a school treat!" "But what's a 

 school treat?" "Why, a picnic is just sitting under the trees and 

 drinking tea, but a school treat is hunting for bugs and butterflies, 

 and bumblebees and learning how they keep house. Why a school 

 treat is ever so much rrore fun than just picnicing." 



Out in Bombay, where the Scot has wandered, where the sun's 

 beams fall like javelins in the bazaar streets, is another "school 

 treat." In the far distance, the vultures are hovering over the 

 Towers of Silence, where the Parsees expose their dead to these 

 birds of carrion. The Parsee has learned from the canny Scot how 

 to run factories, until bits of Bombay are as productive indus- 

 trially as Glasgow. And from the sandy haired paleface of heather 

 land, the Parsee has learned that the school treat is good for his 

 black eyed bairns. In silks of many bright hues they start for the 

 country side, but again it is one of the school treats, "that are so 

 much better than a picnic." 



So too, in Japan. Shaven headed little boys that look like 

 pocket editions of solemn Bhuddist priests, until their faces crack 

 into smiles; alm.ond eyed little girls with bright colored obis 

 showing iris and wisteria, cherry petals, autumnal maple leaves, 

 chasing dragon flies along the narrow ditches of the rice paddies, all 

 aglow with the flaming brilliance of the rice paddy, show how 



