PRACTICAL OBSERVATION 11 
town or city, you can still do some Nature-work. 
If you get to know the story of everything that is 
sold in a fruiterer’s shop you will have become quite 
a good botanist. Go to the fishmonger’s place, to 
the grocer’s, the florist’s, the bird-shops, and the 
public parks, museums, and libraries ; you can learn 
much of Nature from such sources. Try to grow a 
few wild flowers in pots or window-boxes; they 
will provide you with hours of delightful observation 
and study. ‘“‘ Where there’s a will there’s a way ”— 
there’s no mistake about it. If you want to study 
Nature and be thoroughgoing naturalists, you will 
find material anywhere. Enthusiasm, determina- 
tion, and common sense will carry you a long way, 
and enable you to accomplish great things. 
The final and crowning object of this book is that 
it may help you to become really practical naturalists, 
and to do some Nature-work that will be of real 
service to your fellow-men. Books are very useful 
friends and helpers, but you must not be content to 
enjoy Nature through their pages; you must use 
them for guidance in actual field-work. I want 
you to go out of doors and see things with your 
own eyes and form your own conclusions about 
them. Don’t be satisfied with knowing the name of 
a bird or a flower; get to know its life-story, and 
don’t be too sure about anything said in a book 
until you have tested the truth of it for yourselves. 
In field-work you will find yourselves attracted to 
particular lines of study. Some of you may feel 
impelled to make a special study of the rocks, and 
so become geologists. Others may favour the 
flowers, insects, or birds, and so become botanists, 
