XII 
THE GUIDE TO NATURE— ADVERTISEMENTS 
THE FAME OF JACOBS BIRD-HOUSES IS 
KNOWN IN EVERY LAND 
Beautify your grounds and help your bird neighbors 
by using JACOBS colony houses for Purple Mar- 
tins, individual nest boxes for the Bluebird, Wren, 
Chick-a-dee, Swallow, Flicker, Tit-mice, and Wood- 
pecker. 
Bird Baths and Drinking Fountains. 
Feeding Devices for Winter Birds. 
Sparrow Traps and Bird- 
Banding Traps 
If you mention The Guide to Nature we will send a copy of 
“American Bird-House Journal.” 
JACOBS BIRD HOUSE AND MFG. CO. 
Waynesburg, Pennsylvania 
votion to an unworthy husband has 
learned that to her lifelong sorrow. 
Closely akin to this experience is the 
feeling of every one who knows a good 
camp and hears praiseworthy loyalty 
and deplorable ignorance enthusiastic- 
ally expressed for an inferior camp. 
Hardly five per cent of campers make 
a change by abandoning a poor camp 
for a better one. Once a camper always 
a camper and generally in the camp 
in which one started, the influence be- 
ing largely personal friendship for the 
comrades in suffering or in joy. At 
this point enters the tremendous im- 
portance of an advisory friend, one that 
is not financially interested in any spe- 
cial camp but has surveyed the field 
and is familiar with camping condi- 
tions. Such a person is able to offer 
wise and disinterested advice. 
It is strangely true that some boys 
and girls seem happier in a poor camp 
than in a good one. This appears to 
be a fundamental element of humanity 
in all conditions of life. Never yet 
have I been able to understand why 
some persons prefer to trade at a poor 
store or to eat at an inferior restaurant 
with prices no lower than at much bet- 
ter places. The person adapted to good 
camps and to association with good 
campers should be placed in the best 
camp. Men may be born free and 
equal, sometimes and in some things. 
Happiness is adaptation to environ- 
ment. We may see this wide range of 
adaptation not only in business and in 
society but in recreational, educational 
and religious affairs. With a little play 
upon words one may well adapt Dar- 
win’s survival of the fittest to read the 
happiness of the fitting. Sometimes a 
little help at the beginning goes a long 
way toward the fitting and the adapt- 
ing. It is then, in the words of the 
funny cartoon, that “A feller needs a 
friend.” Future success and happiness 
depend upon a good start, which means, 
first, to select the proper camp and, sec- 
ond, to get, as soon as possible, into the 
ways and social regime of that camp. 
I offer advice and personal aid to 
those who are seeking the best summer 
camps. Those that like or can afford 
only cheap, inferior places of the kind 
have no need of an adviser. But parents 
who can afford the best, parents of dis- 
crimination, refinement and good taste, 
those that value their sons and daugh- 
ters as the best gift that God has given 
them, those boys and girls that know 
nothing of camps but wish to get 
started right, should address Edward 
F. Bigelow, ArcAdiA : Sound Beach, 
Connecticut. 
Interest in Pebbles and Stones. 
BY THEODORE H. COOPER, BATAVIA, N. Y. 
Probably mineralogy would be more 
popular if stones were not often seen. 
If cobblestones were as rare as the eggs 
of the great auk, they would be more 
interesting to a certain class of people. 
Imagine the surprise of a man who 
lived in a world where rocks were so 
uncommon that if he were digging a 
well and should come upon a boulder, 
it would interest the entire community, 
the local newspapers would make an 
ado about it and every one would spec- 
ulate as to how it got there, where it 
came from, etc. Or consider the ex- 
citement that would follow a shower 
