The Nature Library 



merit of the young of some birds carried away by the parents, 

 while with others it is voided from the nest ? Among certain 

 of our birds the family relation, more or less marked, is kept up 

 a long time after the young have left the nest. One sees the 

 parent birds and the young going about in loose flocks often 

 till late into the fall. Of what birds is this true ? 



The questions I have suggested are not important; they do 

 not hold the key to any great storehouse of natural knowledge. 

 Their only value is as a means to quicken the powers of observa- 

 tion. We see vaguely, diffusely. Concentrate the attention 

 not to the extent of missing total effects, as the specialist so often 

 does, but for the purpose of reading correctly the play of life that 

 is constantly going about us. 



Nature's book is like any other book: you must open the 

 covers; you must fix your eyes upon the text; you must get into 

 the spirit of it. When you have read one sentence correctly you 

 are so much the better prepared to read the next one. 



A world of nature about us that we are quite apt to be 

 oblivious to, except as it results in our annoyance, is the insect 

 world. We do not take an intelligent interest in the ants, or the 

 bees, or the moths, or the butterflies, yet here is a field of obser- 

 vation that will amply repay one. One day in a great city I saw 

 a butterfly calmly winging its way high above the crowded street. 

 I knew it was the monarch (Anosia plexippus), probably the 

 greatest traveler of all our butterflies. It is quite certain that they 

 migrate to the South in the fall, and that many return in the 

 spring. I learn from Mr. Holland's Butterfly Book in this library 

 that they have even crossed both oceans of course, by 

 catching a ride on vessels and are now found in Australia and 

 in the Philippines, and they have been collected in England. 

 Have you not seen its chrysalis suspended from some weed or 

 bush, looking like the trunk from some tiny warrior encased in 

 pale-green armor, riveted with gold-headed rivets, a broad, heavy 

 shield over the abdomen, and plate upon plate over the shoulders 

 and back? It is a milkweed butterfly, and will serve as a good 

 introduction to this new world of winged life. Early last spring 

 I found upon the window of my cabin in the woods a butterfly 

 that had evidently hybernated in some snug crack or corner of 

 the building. This was the mourning cloak, with me the first 

 vernal butterfly. When one sees this butterfly dancing through 



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