90 
THE GUIDE TO NATURE 
All the joys of this world and all the 
hopes of the next are based on the 
seeing and the thinking of the natural- 
ist. There is not a religion worth hav- 
ing from that of the savage to that of 
the highest theological seminary that 
does not first of all have its basis in 
the manifestation of the works of God 
in the realms of nature. Everything 
that makes life worth living now or will 
make it worth living in the future owes 
its origin to the source of all life, Old 
Mother Nature, and the naturalist is 
simply one who loves and studies her 
and tries to know her better, to know 
what she wants of the human offspring 
and how best she shall care for them. 
Back of all supplies for the dining 
room, back of all comforts of heating 
the home, back of all excursions into 
foreign lands, back of all recreations 
are the labors of the naturalist. 
Then conies the appalling thought, 
how comparatively few they have been, 
how thoughtless has been the great 
part of humanity ! A few have served 
and supplied and others have received 
the abundance of these few thought- 
lessly, yes, even ungratefully. The 
great mass of humanity has turned on 
their supplying friends, the naturalists, 
and given them indifference and, alas, 
too often ridicule. The most poorly 
supported sections of our modern 
schools are the biological departments. 
“Oh, let us have something useful,” 
forgetting that out of biology has come 
every good thing for the human race. 
How soon the inventor, who is merely 
a thoughtful naturalist in the realms of 
physics, is forgotten. There are the 
hue and cry of revelry in the enjoy- 
ments of his products but who stops to 
say, “Blessings on the naturalist who 
thought this thing out. who studied the 
laws of nature and who made this thing 
work for our benefit and joy !” 
“Would a naturalist starve?” The 
question implies this belittling idea to 
which we have referred. He is thought 
to be a man who knows only “bugs and 
things” and pulls up strange and un- 
known plants and tests a fungus here 
and there and tries to ascertain whether 
a berry is poisonous or not. Yes, he 
does that. He always has been doing 
that but his feast of good things should 
not for a moment even in thought be 
limited to his newer experiments as he 
explores into new realms. He has the 
great storehouses of all cereals, all 
fruits, all vegetables. They have been 
brought out by members of his ilk and 
clan. All the best of the realms, all 
the resources, all the accomplishments, 
all the storehouses, all the food are the 
possessions of the naturalist. 
Then what a question is that, 
“Would a naturalist starve?” God pity 
the human race if the naturalist ever 
should have the desire and the power 
to take his own and keep it. All other 
thoughtless human beings would then 
be like a howling pack of starving 
wolves in the darkness of the natural 
world. The naturalists would all be 
secure in the comfortable homes of 
civilization with what their thought, 
their energy, their enthusiasm have 
provided, furnished and supplied, with 
the abundance of good things. 
“Would a naturalist starve?” What 
an awful slam upon the great majority 
of the human race ! Yes, such is the 
baseness of ingratitude. Millions of 
people would indifferently let him 
starve, they would take and enjoy the 
accomplishments of the past and pro- 
vide not a dollar for the future, though 
he is stimulating thousands to research 
in nature, to better appreciation of her. 
Alas, Mrs. Editor, I think you are 
right. They would look at his institu- 
tion, wag their heads and wink their 
eyes, and say, “Ha ha, he he, hi hi, let 
us pass thoughtlessly by. ‘Let the nat- 
uralist starve.’ It is no concern of 
ours.” 
Autumn. 
BY ROBERT SPARKS WALKER, CHATTANOOGA, 
TENNESSEE. 
The summer’s come and gone again, 
Jack Frost is tramping through the fen; 
On every hand 
In pasture land, 
The spiders weave their pictures grand. 
The crickets pitch their voices high. 
And songbirds toss as they pass by, 
A farewell kiss, 
To friends they’ll miss, 
When trees are bare and cold winds hiss. 
’Tis time for boys and girls to go, 
And rake the leaves where breezes blow, 
Round Rocky crags, 
Where nut-twig wags, 
For those below with begging bags. 
Jack Frost the laughing earth may brown. 
And shrink its face in freezing frown; 
But there’s a tune 
In hearts immune, 
That brings to us the warmth of June! 
