NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS
CHAPTER I
TO THE TEACHER
Put the question to your scholars individually: Who is your messenger of spring? Make the reading of this book not an end in itself, but only a means toward getting the pupils out of doors. Never let the reading stop with the end of the chapter, any more than you would let your garden stop with the buying of the seeds. And how eager and restless a healthy child is for the fields and woods with the coming of spring! Do not let your opportunity slip. Go with them after reading this chapter (re-reading if you can the first chapter in “The Fall of the Year”) out to some meadow stream where they can see the fallen stalks and brown matted growths of the autumn through which the new spring shoots are pushing, green with vigor and promise. The seal of winter has been broken; the pledge of autumn has been kept; the life of a new summer has started up from the grave of the summer past. Here by the stream under your feet is the whole cycle of the seasons – the dead stalks, the empty seed-vessels, the starting life.
Let the children watch for the returning birds and report to you; have them bring in the opening flowers, giving them credit (on the blackboard) for each new flower found; go with them (so that they will not bring the eggs to you) to see the new nests discovered, teaching them by every possible means the folly and cruelty of robbing birds’ nests, of taking life; while at the same time you show them the beauty of life, its sacredness, and manifold interests.
FOR THE PUPIL
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Have you ever seen a “spring peeper” peeping? You will hear, these spring nights, many distinct notes in the marshes, and when you have seen all of the lowly musicians you will be a fairly accomplished naturalist. Let the discovery of “Who’s Who among the Frogs” this spring be one of your first outdoor studies. The picture shows you Pickering’s hyla, blowing his bagpipe. Arbutus: trailing arbutus (Epigæa repens), sometimes called ground-laurel, and mayflower, fishflower (in New Jersey).
hepatica: liver-leaf (Hepatica triloba).
Spice-bush: wild allspice, fever-bush, Benjamin-bush (Benzoin æstivale).
Wood-pussy: the skunk, who comes out of his winter den very early in spring, and whose scent is one of the characteristic odors of a New England spring.
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All white and still: The whole poem will be found on the last page of “Winter,” the second book in this series.
trillium: the wake-robin. Read Mr. Burroughs’s book “Wake-Robin,” – the first of his outdoor books.
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phœbe: See the chapter called “The Palace in the Pig-Pen.”
bloodroot: Sanguinaria canadensis. See the picture on this page. So named because of the red-orange juice in the root-stalks, used by the Indians as a stain.
marsh-marigolds: The more common but incorrect name is “cowslip.” The marsh-marigold is Caltha palustris and belongs with the buttercup and wind-flower to the Crowfoot Family. The cowslip, a species of primrose, is a European plant and belongs to the Primrose Family.
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woolly-bear: caterpillar of the isabella tiger moth, the common caterpillar, brown in the middle with black ends, whose hairs look as if they had been clipped, so even are they.
mourning-cloak: See picture, page 77 of “Winter,” the second book of this series. The antiopa butterfly.
juncos: the common slate-colored “snowbirds.”
witch-hazel: See picture, page 28 of “The Fall of the Year”; read description of it on pages 31-33 of the same volume.
bluets: or “innocence” (Houstonia cœrulea).
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the Delaware: the Delaware River, up which they come in order to lay their eggs. As they come up they are caught in nets and their eggs or “roe” salted and made into caviar.
Cohansey Creek: a small river in New Jersey.
Lupton’s Meadows: local name of meadows along Cohansey Creek.
CHAPTER II
TO THE TEACHER
Read Kipling’s story in “The Second Jungle Book” called “The Spring Running.” Both Jungle Books ought to be in your school library. Spring is felt on the ocean as well as over the land; life is all of one piece; the thrill we feel at the touch of spring is felt after his manner and degree by bird and beast and by the fish of the sea. Go back to the last paragraph of chapter I for the thought. Here I have expanded that thought of the tides of life rising. See the picture of the herring on their deep sea run on page 345 of the author’s “Wild Life Near Home.” Let the chapter suggest to the pupils the mysterious powers of the minds of the lower animals.
FOR THE PUPIL
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Mowgli: Do you know Mowgli of “The Jungle Book”?
Chaucer: the “Father of English Poetry.” This is one of the opening lines of the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales.
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migrating birds: See “The Great Tidal Waves of Bird Life” by D. Lange, in the “Atlantic Monthly” for August, 1909.
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The cold-blooded: said of those animals lower than the mammals and birds, that have not four-chambered hearts and the complete double blood-circulation.
Weymouth Back River: of Weymouth, Massachusetts.
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catfish: or horn-pout or bull-pout, see picture, page 12.
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stickleback: The little male stickleback builds a nest, drives the female into it to lay her eggs, then takes charge of the eggs until the fry hatch out and go off for themselves.
CHAPTER III
TO THE TEACHER
You will try to get three suggestions out of this chapter for your pupils: First, that an old tree with holes may prove to be the most fruitful and interesting tree in the neighborhood, that is to say, nothing out of doors is so far fallen to pieces, dead, and worthless as to be passed by in our nature study. (Read to them “Second Crops” in the author’s “A Watcher in the Woods.”) Secondly: the humble tree-toad is well worth the most careful watching, for no one yet has told us all of his life-story. Thirdly: one of the benefits of this simple, sincere love of the out-of-doors will come to us as rest, both in mind and body, as contentment, too, and clearer understanding of what things are worth while.
FOR THE PUPIL
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burlap petticoat: a strip of burlap about six inches wide tied with a string and folded over about the trunks of the trees under which the night-feeding gypsy moth caterpillars hide by day. The burlaps are lifted and the worms killed.
a peddler’s stall: In the days of the author’s boyhood peddlers sold almost everything that the country people could want.
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grim-beaked baron: the little owl of the tree.
keep: an older name for castle; sometimes for the dungeon.
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for him to call the summer rain: alluding to his evening and his cloudy-day call as a sign of coming rain.
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castings: the disgorged lumps of hair and bones of the small animals eaten by the owls.
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Altair and Arcturus: prominent stars in the northern hemisphere.
CHAPTER IV
TO THE TEACHER
See the suggestions for the corresponding chapter in “The Fall of the Year,” the first volume in this series. Lest you may not have that book at hand, let me repeat here the gist of what I said there: that you make this chapter the purpose of one or more field excursions with the class – in order to see with your own eyes the characteristic sights of spring as recorded here; secondly, that you use this, and chapters VI and X, as school tests of the pupil’s knowledge and observation of his own fields and woods; and thirdly, let the items mentioned here be used as possible subjects for the pupil’s further study as themes for compositions, or independent investigations out of school hours. The finest fruit the teacher can show is a school full of children personally interested in things. And what better things than live things out of doors?
CHAPTER V
TO THE TEACHER
I might have used a star, or the sun, or the sea to teach the lesson involved here, instead of the crow and his three broken feathers. But these three feathers will do for your pupils as the falling apple did for Sir Isaac Newton. The point of the chapter is: that the feathers like the stars must round out their courses; that this universe is a universe of law, of order, and of reason, even to the wing feathers of a crow. Try to show your pupils the beauty and wonder of order and law (not easy to do) as well as the beauty and wonder of shapes and colors and sounds, etc.
FOR THE PUPIL
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primaries, secondaries, tertials: Turn to your dictionary under “Bird” (or at the front of some good bird book) and study out just which feathers of the wing these named here are.
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half-moulted hen: Pick her up and notice the regular and systematic arrangement of the young feathers. Or take a plucked hen and draw roughly the pin-feather scheme as you find it on her body.
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reed-birds: The bobolink is also called “rice-bird” from its habit of feeding in the rice-fields of the South on its fall migration.
CHAPTER VI
FOR THE PUPIL
Do not stop doing or seeing or hearing when you have done, seen, and heard the few things suggested in this chapter and in chapters IV and X; for these are only suggestions, and merely intended to give you a start, as if your friend had said to you upon your visiting a new city, “Now, don’t fail to see the Common and the old State House, etc.; and don’t fail to go down to T Wharf, etc.,” – knowing that all the time you would be doing and seeing and hearing a thousand interesting things.
CHAPTER VII
TO THE TEACHER
I called this chapter when I first wrote it “The Friendship of Nature” – a much used title, but entirely suggestive of the thought and the lesson in the story here. This was first written about six years ago, and to-day, May 12, 1912, that pair of phœbes, or another pair, have their nest out under the pig-pen roof as they have had every year since I have known the pen. Repeat and expand the thought as I have put it into the mouth of Nature in the first paragraph – “We will share them [the acres] together.” Instill into your pupils’ minds the large meaning of obedience to Nature’s laws and love for her and all her own. Show them also how ready Nature is (and all the birds and animals and flowers) to be friendly; and how even a city dooryard may hold enough live wild things for a small zoo. This chapter might well be made use of by the city teacher to stir her pupils to see what interesting live things their city or neighborhood has, although the woods and open fields are miles away.
FOR THE PUPIL
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a hornet’s nest: the white-faced hornet, that builds the great cone-shaped paper nests.
swifts thunder in the chimney: See chapter VII (and notes) in “Winter.” For the “thunder” see section IX in chapter X of this book.
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cabbage butterfly: a pest; a small whitish butterfly with a few small black spots. Its grubs eat cabbage.
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the crested flycatcher: is the largest of the family; builds in holes; distinguished by its use of cast-off snake-skins in its nests.
kingbird: Everybody knows him, for it is usually he who chases the marauding crows; he builds, out in the apple tree if he can, a big, bulky nest with strings a-flying from it: also called “bee-martin,” a most useful bird.
wood pewee: builds on the limbs of forest trees a most beautiful nest, much like a hummingbird’s, only larger. Pewee’s soft, pensive call of “pe-e-e-wee” in the deep, quiet, dark-shrouded summer woods is one of the sweetest of bird notes.
chebec: a little smaller than a sparrow; builds a beautiful nest in orchard trees and says “chebec, chebec, chebec.”
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One had died: After phœbe brings off her first brood sprinkle a little, tobacco-dust or lice-powder, such as you use in the hen-yard, into the nest to kill the vermin. Otherwise the second and third broods may be eaten alive by lice or mites.
CHAPTER VIII
TO THE TEACHER
In “Winter” I put a chapter called “The Missing Tooth,” showing the dark and bitter side of the life of the wild things; here I have taken that thought as most people think of it (see Burroughs’s essay, “A Life of Fear” in “Riverby”) and in the light of typical examples tried to show that wild life is not fear, but peace and joy. The kernel of the chapter is found in the words: “The level of wild life, the soul of all nature, is a great serenity.” Let the pupils watch and report instances of fear (easy to see) and in the same animals instances of peace and joy.
FOR THE PUPIL
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gray harrier: so named because of his habit of flying low and “harrying,” that is, hunting, catching small prey on or near the ground. “Harry” comes from the Anglo-Saxon word for army.
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“He looketh as it were a grym leoun”: from Chaucer’s description of the Cock in the story of the Cock and the Fox.
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terrible pike: closely related to the pickerel.
kingfisher: builds in holes in sand-banks near water. Its peculiar rattle sounds like the small boys’ “clapper.”
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“The present only toucheth thee!”: Burns’s poem “To a Mouse.”
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“The fair music that all creatures made”: from Milton’s poem “To a Solemn Music,” “solemn” meaning “orchestral” music.
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then doubling once more: This is all figurative language. I am thinking of myself as the fox. The dogs have run themselves to death on my trail, and I am turning back, “doubling,” to have a look at them and to rejoice over their defeat.
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pine marten: The marten is so rare in this neighborhood that I am inclined to think the creature was the large weasel.
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the heavy bar across their foreheads: a very unusual way of yoking oxen in the United States. The only team I ever saw here so yoked.
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San Francisco: alluding to the earthquake and fire which nearly wiped out the city in 1906.
CHAPTER IX
FOR THE PUPIL
The picture of the young buzzard is as true as a photograph; the bumped-up drawing of the old bird looks precisely as she did atop her dead tree, watching my approach. This vulture rarely soars into New England skies; down South, especially along the coast, the smaller black vulture (Catharista urubu) is found very tame and in great abundance; while in the far Southwest lives the great condor.
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tulip poplar: tulip-tree (Liriodendron tulipifera).
“For it had bene an auncient tree”: from Edmund Spenser’s “Shepherd’s Calendar.”
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a dozen kinds of cramps: Perhaps you will say I didn’t find much in finding the buzzard’s nest, and got mostly cramps! Yes, but I also got the buzzard’s nest – a thing that I had wanted to see for many years. It was worth seeing, however, for its own sake. Even a buzzard is interesting. See the account of him in “Wild Life Near Home,” the chapter called “A Buzzard’s Banquet.”
CHAPTER XI
TO THE TEACHER
The point of the story is the enthusiasm of the naturalists for their work – work that to the uncaring and unknowing seemed not even worth while. But all who do great things do them with all their might. No one can stop to count the cost whose soul is bent on great things.
FOR THE PUPIL
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Burlington: in Vermont.
Concord and Middleboro: in Massachusetts.
Zadoc Thompson: a Vermont naturalist.
D. Henry Thoreau: better known as Henry D. Thoreau; author of “Walden,” etc.
J. W. P. Jenks: for many years head of Pierce Academy, Middleboro, and later Professor of Agricultural Zoölogy in Brown University.
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Contributions: used in place of the whole name: Go yourself into the public library and read this and look at the four large volumes.
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spatter-docks: yellow pond-lily (Nuphar advena).
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dinosaurian: one of the fossil reptile monsters of the Mesozoic, or “middle,” period of the earth’s history, before the age of man.
CHAPTER XII
TO THE TEACHER
In this story I have tried to settle the difficult question of debit and credit between me and the out-of-doors. Shall we exterminate the red squirrels, the hawks, owls, etc., is a question that is not so easily answered as one might think. The fact is we do not want to exterminate any of our native forms of life – we need them all, and owe them more, each of them, for the good they do us, than they owe us for the little harm they may do us. Read this over with the children with its moral and economic lesson in view. Send to the National Association of Audubon Societies, New York City, for their free leaflets upon this matter. The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, Harrisburg, Pa., has a bulletin upon this same subject which will be sent free upon application.
FOR THE PUPIL
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June-bug: the very common brown beetle whose big white grubs you dig up under the sod and in composts.
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rose-breasted grosbeak: one of the most beautiful of our birds, and a lovely singer.
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Chickaree: the common name of the red squirrel. The red squirrel does not need to be destroyed.
tree swallows: They build in holes in orchard trees, etc.; to be distinguished on the wing from the barn swallows by their white bellies and plain, only slightly forked tails.
chippies: the little chipping sparrow, or hair-bird.
red-eyed vireos: the most common of the vireos; see picture of its nest on page 40 of “Winter.”
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cowbird: the miserable brown-headed blackbird that lays its egg or eggs in smaller birds’ nests and leaves its young to be fed by the unsuspecting foster-mother. As the young cowbird is larger than the rightful young, it gets all the food and causes them to starve.
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Thorn Mountain: one of the smaller of the White Mountains; it overlooks the village of Jackson, N. H.
CHAPTER XIII
TO THE TEACHER
If you have read through “The Fall of the Year” and “Winter” and to this chapter in “The Spring of the Year,” you will know that the upshot of these thrice thirteen readings has been to take you and your children into the woods; you will know that the last paragraph of this last chapter is the aim and purpose and key of all three books. You must go into the woods, you must lead your children to go, deep and far and frequently. The Three R’s first – but after them, before dancing, or cooking, or sewing, or manual training, or anything, send your children out into the open, where they belong. The school can give them nothing better than the Three R’s, and can only fail in trying to give them more, except it give them the freedom of the fields. Help Nature, the old nurse, to take your children on her knee.
FOR THE PUPIL
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Here is the prescription: Think you can swallow it? Go out and try.
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Golden Chariot: In what Bible story does the Golden Chariot descend? and whom does it carry away?
pale-face: an Indian name for the white man.
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box turtles: They are sometimes found as far north as the woods of Cape Cod, Massachusetts; but are very abundant farther south.
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Chewink: towhee, or ground-robin; to be distinguished by his loud call of “chewink” and his vigorous scratching among the leaves.