14 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE FARM 



seeds, studied in the field, will be very desirable. You will 

 want to take another look at them after you get back; so 

 prepare to take them home, where you can sit at a table and 

 work with them. A bag or a basket will hold, besides tools, a 

 lot of stout envelopes, for keeping things apart, with labels 

 and necessary data written on the outside. 



7. As to reference books: "Study nature, not books", 

 said the great naturalist and teacher, Louis Agassiz. By all 

 means, get the answers to the questions involved in your 

 records of these studies direct from nature and not from books. 

 But while you are in the field, you will meet with many things 

 about which you will wish to know. Ask your instructors 

 freely. Get acquainted, also, with some of the standard 

 reference books, which will help you when instructors fail. 

 Only a few of the more generally useful can be mentioned 

 here. 



There are three classical manuals for use in the eastern 

 United States and Canada, that have helped the naturalists 

 of several generations. These are Gray's Manual of Botany, 

 Jordan's Manual of the Vertebrates and Comstock's Manual 

 for the Study of Insects. There are two great cyclopedias, 

 both edited by Professor L. H. Bailey — The American 

 Cyclopedias of Horticulture and of Agriculture. There are 

 many books of nature-study, but most useful of them all is 

 Mrs. Comstock's Handbook of Nature-Study. The best 

 single bird book is Chapman's Handbook of North American 

 Birds. A new book that will help toward acquaintance 

 with aquatic plants and animals is. Needham and Lloyd's 

 Life of Inland Waters. All these should be accessible on 

 reference shelves. 



Note — At Cornell University the field tool that is fur- 

 nished to classes for individual use is a sharp brick-layer's 

 hammer weighing about a pound. It is not heavy enough 

 to be burdensome, and it is adaptable to a great variety of 

 uses, such as digging roots, cracking nuts, stripping bark, 

 splitting and splintering kindling, planting seedlings, etc. A 

 light hatchet will serve many, but not all of these uses. 



