4 
BY THE WAYSIDE 
BY THE WAYSIDE 
Published on the tenth of each month ex¬ 
cept July and August. 
The official organ of the Wisconsin Audu¬ 
bon Society. 
f wenty-five cents per year .Single copies 5 cents 
Contributions to By the Wayside are 
invited from all lovers of Nature and 
friends of the birds. All communications 
should be sent to Roland E .Kremers, 1720 
Vilas St., Madison, Wis. 
Roland E. Kremers, Editor, 1720 
Vilas St., Madison, Wis. 
Dr. Victor Kutchin, Secretary-Treas¬ 
urer, Green Lake, Wis. 
Nature Study 
Most authorities on primary educa¬ 
tion admit of the fact that nature 
study is essential in the development 
of a child, but hesitate to introduce 
it into the curriculum because of the 
lack of sufficiently well trained teach¬ 
ers. This is a sad state of affairs, but 
it is true. Until the time shall come 
when enough of such teachers are 
available, there will be a place in the 
school and home for such periodicals 
as By the Wavside aims to be. To 
this end we have set apart a portion of 
each issue which we designate the 
school or children.'s department. Here 
we publish each month an article on 
some bird of interest. Also sugges¬ 
tions for teacliers and students. It is 
difficult enough to arrange and present 
any subject so as to make it interest¬ 
ing and easily understood, and still 
more difficult to adapt it to students 
of various ages and abilities. Hence 
the* matter which we will endeavor to 
insert pach month will have to be more 
or less adapted by each teacher to the 
. ' "* ' . . L - 1 - ^ ‘ 
needs of his or her own class, and its 
value will vary according to the skill 
and ingenuity w r itli which this adapta¬ 
tion is made. In other w^ords, we shall 
endeavor to provide teachers with in- 
'eresting and instructive material and 
let them do the teaching. With the 
co-operation of teachers we shall try 
to fill the gap which separates our 
ideal of nature study in schools and 
its fulfillment. 
The Literary Digest of November 1, 
1913, has an interesting article entitled 
“A Plague of Cats” which is a transla¬ 
tion from Cosmos (Paris, September 
25). It is generally known that as a 
general proposition it is an extremely 
dangerous thing to introduce foreign 
species into a land,—witness the Euro¬ 
pean House Sparrow in our ow T n coun¬ 
try and the mongoose in India. The 
Australians too have realized this les¬ 
son. Their first move w r as to introduce 
rabbits for hunting, there being no na¬ 
tive species. Not checked by any na¬ 
tural enemies they rapidly increased 
until they are a pest in the land. Cats 
were introduced to exterminate the 
rabbits. They too are now as wild crea¬ 
tures and do everything but kill rab¬ 
bits. Then dogs were brought to de¬ 
stroy the cats, and reports come from 
some quarters that they are becoming 
a nuisance. As the Digest remarks it 
might seem as tho here we might have 
an endless game of the House that 
Jack Built; and the writer in Cosmos 
remarks “that the Creator, in his good¬ 
ness, has organized things better than 
our learned agronomists,’’ 
