176 NATURE-STUDY 



rate of mulitiplication, and their vast power for harm and 

 for good, should be studied in nature-study. The children 

 should learn to distinguish the most common beneficial and 

 harmful insects, note their habits, and learn the methods of 

 fighting them if injurious. 



Teacher and pupils should go out and collect insects for 

 study in the school-room, and should oJDserve their habits out- 

 doors. Insects may be found in various places according to 

 their food and life habits. Flower-loving insects are found 

 in the garden, in the clover field, on the wayside flowers, 

 and in the meadows. Flowers attract the nectar-sipping 

 insects, such as butterflies, moths, bees, and bumble-bees. 

 The vegetable garden will show grubs, cutworms, beetles, 

 and bugs that feed upon the leaves or other parts of the 

 planted crops. In the orchard we find leaf-eating cater- 

 pillars, bark-borers, plant lice, scale insects, bugs, fruit- 

 destroying insects; and in the flowering time hosts of bees 

 and other nectar-loving insects. Many insects, such as 

 ground beetles, ants, cockroaches, crickets, etc., may be found 

 imder stones, logs, boards, and imder the bark of decaying 

 stumps and logs. Locusts, grasshoppers, and crickets 

 swarm in grassy meadows and pastures. 



A walk along the country road will show us swallow-tailed 

 butterflies, milkweed, cabbage, roadside, red admiral, fri- 

 tillary, mourning-cloak, and other butterflies flitting over 

 the wayside flowers; moths of various kinds will flutter up 

 from the grass as we disturb them, or, toward dusk, we may 

 find them probing the deep-cupped flowers with their long 

 probosces. Locusts and crickets are chirping in the grass or 

 adjoining fields. Here we see the orb spider spinning its 

 beautiful web in the fence corner, and running spiders in 



