12 THE OPEN BOOK OF NATURE 
entomologists, or ornithologists. What is badly 
needed is a thorough survey of Nature in every 
district of our country. If intelligent and earnest 
boys and girls would combine to collect information 
about their own immediate neighbourhoods, and 
make good and orderly records of rocks, fossils, 
flowers, insects, birds, rainfall, temperature, and so 
forth, such a survey might soon be an accomplished 
fact. 
Personally, I move about the country a good deal, 
and see Nature under many aspects, but I often say 
that if I could never get beyond a two-mile radius 
from my house, I should still have an inexhaustible 
field for investigation, and if I were confined to my 
own garden, it would provide me with Nature-study 
to the end of my natural life. Boys and girls, 
especially boys, sometimes think that to be natural- 
ists they must travel thousands of miles and see the 
wonders of foreign lands. Truly, many great 
naturalists have been great travellers, and their 
travels and observations have enriched our know- 
ledge. But a boy or girl can be an excellent 
naturalist without going a mile in a train or a knot in 
a boat. Know your own districts thoroughly, that’s 
my advice, and if you act upon it I am sure you will 
thank me for it some day. 
By the way, I shall be obliged to use some rather 
big words and occasional scientific terms in this book. 
I shall also give you the scientific names of most 
objects as well as their popular ones. I think my 
readers will want to gradually get into the way of 
really accurate description, and to do this they must 
