OTIIKR ANIMALS PLANT ECOLOGY. 141 



Other Animals. — Other animals, higher and lower than 

 insects, may happen to be convenient subjects for Nature 

 Study. In preparing your lessons, should you desire any 

 book-help on squirrels and mice, McMurry's " Special Method 

 in Natural Science " gives a winter study of the fox-squirrel, 

 the first three months in the life of a gray squirrel, and " Our 

 Mouse, Jim," pp. 207-222. 



Consult "Public School Nature Study," pp. 42-44, for 

 assistance in directing a study of the garter snake. This 

 harmless, beautiful and useful animal ought to be better 

 known and less abhorred. If you feed a captive specimen 

 with earthworms or can train it to take bits of raw meat, you 

 can easily study it. The writer has kept one in apparent 

 good health and comfort in the school-room for over five years, 

 most of the time in a jar such as is described on page 68. 

 During that period it has sloughed its skin over a dozen times 

 but has increased only slightly in size and weight. In 

 Blatchley's " Gleanings from Nature," pp. 27-74, there is an 

 interesting account of the harmless snakes and of the rattler. 

 Abbott's " Naturalist at Home," pp. 282-307, has also a good 

 chapter on snakes. 



Hodge's "Nature Study and Life," pp. 405-6, will assist 

 you in studying another misunderstood and curious animal — 

 the common bat. 



A helpful treatment of the earthworm, which Darwin 

 showed to be so indispensable to agriculture, will be found in 

 " Public School Nature Study," pp. 56-59. 



Plant Ecology. — Plants may be regarded as machines 

 consisting of parts such as roots, stems, leaves, flowers, etc., 

 which in life carry on two kinds of work, one — a set of 

 internal activities such as circulating sap, making starch, etc., 

 — which we study under the term physiology ; another — a set 



