146 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW 



Ttirtles are sunning themselves on a water-soaked log, but plop 

 into the water at your approach. 



Over by the alders are red winged black birds. Che winks 

 call from the bushes farther along. Redstarts "start" about, 

 catching insects for hungry little ones in the nest up on a m.aple. 

 A thrasher sings from the top of a grey, field birch. A red-eyed 

 vireo's basket hangs from a branch, so low one can look in at it, 

 and the mother stays guarding her treasures till one can almost or 

 quite ( !) stroke her. Slowly and heavily a nightheron flaps along to 

 the cove across the pond, alights, wades out into the water and be- 

 comes like a stick in the water-scape, until a lightning-quick stroke 

 of his sharp bill secures the fish or frog for the babies over there, half-a- 

 mile away, in a nest that is one of two or three hundred. 



Great heaps of white clouds drift lazily across the blue sky. 

 Bees hum about the flowers, carrying pollen from flower to flower 

 as they search for nectar, or, maybe pack some of the pollen in the 

 basket on their back legs. 



The dank smell of the mud, and lush vegetation forms a back- 

 ground for the waft of delicate perfume of the water lilies or stronger 

 sweeter odor of the clethra, or the strong health-giving breath of 

 the sun-soaked pines. 



As one sits, munching some of the wintergreen leaves gathered 

 a little way back, sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch all com.bine, 

 and we "yield ourselves to the perfect whole." 



Children may or may not wish to search deeper into the reasons 

 for such groupings of animals and plants. Some will be keenly 

 interested to search further, to find, for instance, that there is no 

 inlet, no outlet to this pond, and to learn that it is a typical glacial 

 kettle-hole, that the peat mosses and other bog plants are edging 

 farther and farther into the pond, making a false bottom, perhaps, and 

 that, given time enough, this beautiful little sheet of water will be swal- 

 lowed up, changing into a swam.p, later to become a muck hole, 

 later still dry land, with a black soil, well-fitted for some garden 

 crops. But everyone, however young or immature will store 

 up these mental pictures for future pleasure, if only attention is 

 called to various features which would, in most cases, otherwise 

 remain unnoted. 



The study of a leaping, laughing brook would offer a great 

 contrast to the previous picture; the rocks, ferns, flowers, fish, 



