You are Cocoinella septempunctata. And you?" 

 —to her sister ladybug — "You are Coccinella, 

 also, but you are novemnotata." The joy of it ! 

 And something of that joy is hers, for she has a 

 nature-study class at a young ladies' seminary. 



I hardly know which state of mind is farther 

 from the mind of the true nature-lover— the 

 ecstatic, exclamatory one, that goes chanting 

 rimes and verses like priests and spring poets, 

 or the analytical, labeling mind, that scours the 

 country with a book, finding out what Linnseus, 

 Audubon, and Gray called things. 



Of course the lover of the out-of-doors wants 

 to know— even know that the ladybug is Cocci- 

 nella septempunctata ; but classifying the world of 

 field and wood is only the beginning of know- 

 ledge. How, for instance, does the fact that the 

 dandelion is Taraxacum officinale compare with 

 the discovery of its shining face in the cold, wet 

 death of some February roadside, or the finding 

 of its hoary hairs in the lining of a chebec's 

 nest? And to the exclamatory, all-worshiping 

 ones what mean the loving lines : 



Dear common flower that grow'st beside the way, 

 Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold, 



[174] 



