PREFA TOR Y. V 



From a notice of a recent publication I clip the 

 following : " A capital book to slip into one's 

 pocket when taking an outing." If, because of 

 its size, it could be readily slipped into one's 

 pocket, then it was a capital way of getting rid of 

 it. What sort of an outing can one have who 

 reads all the while? Is not the cloud-flecked 

 sky something more than a ceiling, the surround- 

 ing hills more than mere walls, the grass and 

 flowers more than carpet ? There is one pleas- 

 ure even greater than that of reading, and that 

 is being out of doors. To read at such a time 

 seems to imply one of two things : either that 

 the reader knows Nature thoroughly, or is indif- 

 ferent to such knowledge. The former phenom- 

 enon the world has never seen ; the latter, to 

 speak mildly, deserves our pity. To escape ridi- 

 cule, which is something, to insure happiness, 

 which is more, to avoid great dangers, which is 

 of even greater importance, one must know some- 

 thing of Nature. In one sense she is our per- 

 sistent foe. She mantles with inviting cover of 

 rank grass her treacherous quicksands; she 

 paints in tempting colors her most poisonous 

 fruits ; she spreads unheralded the insidious mi- 

 asma from the meadow and the swamp; but 

 neither the quicksand, the unwholesome fruit, nor 

 noxious vapors is an unmixed evil. Let us take 

 them as they are, see them as parts and parcels 



