CHAPTER I 

 NATURE STUDY 



'TVTATURE,' says Carlyle, 'is a volume 

 I ^ written in celestial hieroglyphs, in 

 the true Sacred- writing ; of which 

 even Prophets are happy that they can read 

 here a line and there a line.' A similar 

 thing was said, long before his time, in a 

 little book called, Some fruits of Solitude, 

 attributed to the founder of Pennsylvania : 

 'The world is certainly a great and stately 

 volume of natural history, and may be not 

 improperly styled the hieroglyphics of a 

 better. But, alas, how very few leaves of 

 it do we seriously turn over.' 



The one writer complains of the difficulty 

 of reading; the other of the indifference of 

 the readers. Might we not turn over the 

 leaves of the Book of Nature more frequently, 

 and with greater profit to ourselves and 



