HARTLAND VERMONT 
5 
one hundred specimens of grasses and sedges, and who showed 
a paternal interest in everybody and everything. 
Thus at the end of its second year the Club became conscious 
of its own beginnings, and the world outside of Hartland became 
conscious of the Club. 
ITS ANCESTORS 
The club has been, as is every organism, the product of its 
ancestors and its environment. 
Like water which seeps through the soil after a rain to 
bubble forth at another level as a spring, love for nature and 
interests in natural phenomena had permeated the hearts and 
minds of Vermonters as an inheritance from their ancestors 
and fore-runners. 
It was encouraged by the little red schoolhouse and by the 
old academies which stamped upon the people of Vermont a 
scholarly impression. Says Cady, “Bucolic yet academic are 
Vermont villages-with entire streets of homes in every one 
of which dwells some person familiar with Virgil and on friendly 
terms with Horace” - - 
There, for instance, was the Green Mountain Liberal Insti¬ 
tute, later the Green Mountain Perkins Academy, at South 
Woodstock. It did much to stimulate interest along scientific 
lines by the fine training it gave under the leadership of wise 
and sympathetic men, notably Dr. J. S. Lee, its principal during 
the Civil War period. 
Students from this institution became teachers of our rural 
schools; and private schools were often taught by them for a 
few weeks in the winter. They aroused here and there an in¬ 
terest in astronomy, geology, or zoology. The occasion of their 
thus teaching was their poverty—a poverty that became to us 
riches. High ideals and the spirit of learning was the rule 
among them. So when in due course the Nature Club took 
shape, there was good soil for its growth. 
There are lively traditions of a uniquely humorous farmer 
named Luther Damon, who had a fine farm near the Windsor 
line, and who was noted for “sayings”. He had a son named 
William, and a daughter named Elizabeth. It is recorded that 
he took William on a trip to Boston, and that the boy saw there 
Aquarial Hall. Whether Elizabeth went along is apparently 
not known. But the two young Damons became pioneers in 
