124 THE FALL OF THE YEAR 



teristic sights and sounds of the season, as he must be trained to look 

 for and listen for the characteristic notes and actions of individual 

 things — birds, animals, flowers. If, for instance, his eye catches the 

 galloping, waving motion of the woodpecker's flight, if his ear is 

 trained to distinguish the rappings of the same bird on a hollow limb 

 or resonant rail, then the pupil knows that bird and has clues to what 

 is strange in his plumage, his anatomy, his habits, his family traits. 



The world outdoors is all a confusion until we know how to separate 

 and distinguish things ; and there is no better training for this than 

 to get in the way of looking and listening for what is characteristic. 



Each locality differs, however, to some extent in its wild life ; so 

 that some of the sounds in this chapter may need to have others sub- 

 stituted to meet those differences. Remember that you are the 

 teacher, not the book. The book is but a suggestion. You begin 

 where it leaves off ; you fill out where it is lacking. A good book is 

 a very good thing ; but a good teacher is a very much better thing. 



FOR THE PUPIL 



Now do not stuff cotton in your ears as soon as you have heard 

 these ten sounds ; or, what amounts to the same thing, do not stop 

 listening. If you do only what the book says and nothing else, learn 

 just the day's lesson and nothing more, your teacher may think you 

 a very "good scholar," but I will tell you that you are a poor 

 student of nature. The woods are full of sounds — voices, songs, 

 whisperings — that are to be heard when none of these ten are 

 speaking. 

 Pages 88 and 90 



hear their piercing whistle : the husky yap, yap, yap of the fox : It 

 is usually the young hawks in the fall that whistle, as it is usually 

 the young foxes in the summer and fall that bark. 

 Page 91 



" Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead ; 

 They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread." 



" The robin and the wren are flown, but from the shrub the jay, 

 And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy day." 



Study this whole poem ("The Death of the Flowers," by Bryant) 

 for its excellent natural history. Could the poet have written it 

 had oe been ignorant of nature ? Can you appreciate it all unless 



