Faqat Litresda o'qing

Kitobni fayl sifatida yuklab bo'lmaydi, lekin bizning ilovamizda yoki veb-saytda onlayn o'qilishi mumkin.

Kitobni o'qish: «Winter», sahifa 7

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NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS

CHAPTER I

TO THE TEACHER

“It must be a lovely place in the summer!” the dull and irritating often say to me, referring to my home in the country. What they mean is, of course, “How wretched a place the country is in winter!” But that attitude toward winter grows less and less common. We are learning how to enjoy the winter; and it is my hope that this volume may distinctly contribute to the knowledge that makes for that joy. Behind such joy is love, and behind the love is understanding, and behind the understanding is knowledge.

The trouble with those who say they hate winter is a lack of knowledge. They do not know the winter; they never tramp the woods and fields in winter; they have no calendar of the rare, the high-festival days of winter.

Such a day is the one of this opening chapter – “Hunting the Snow.” And the winter is full of them; as full as the summer, I had almost said! The possibilities of winter for nature-study, for tramps afield, for outdoor sport – for joy and health and knowledge and poetry are quite as good as those of summer. Try it this winter. Indeed, let the coldest, dullest, deadest day this winter challenge you to discover to yourself and to your pupils some sight, some sound, some happening, or some thought of the world outside that shall add to their small understanding, or touch their ready imaginations, or awaken their eager love for Nature.

And do not let the rarer winter days pass (such as the day that follows the first snow-fall) without your taking them or sending them a-hunting the snow, else you will fail in duty as grievously as you would if you allowed a child to finish his public-school education without hearing of Bunker Hill.

In reading this first chapter lay emphasis upon: (1) the real excitement possible without a gun in such a hunt; (2) the keener, higher kind of joy in watching a live animal than in killing it; (3) the unfairness of hunting to kill; (4) the rapid extinction of our wild animals, largely caused by guns; (5) the necessity now for protection – for every pupil’s doing all he can to protect wild life everywhere.

FOR THE PUPIL

Study the drawings of the tracks in this chapter, then go into the woods and try to identify the tracks you find in the snow. Every track you discover and identify will be quarry in your bag – just as truly as though you had killed a deer or a moose or a bear. You can all turn snow-hunters without leaving blood and pain and death and emptiness and silence behind you. And it is just as good and exciting sport.

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cushion-marked holes: Examine a cat’s feet. Make a study of cat tracks: how they are placed; how wide apart; how they look when she walks, when she runs, when she jumps, when she gathers herself together for a spring. You can learn the art of snow-hunting by studying the tracks of the cat in your own dooryards.

wood pussy: a polite name in New England for the skunk.

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the great northern hare: The northern hare is not often seen here, and I am not sure but that this may be the common brown rabbit.

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slashings: The name for the waste limbs and tops left after cutting forest trees. Tree wardens should compel the woodchoppers to pile this brush up as they cut and burn it while the snow is on the ground to prevent forest fires in summer.

hazelnuts: small brown nuts like the filberts of the stores. They grow on a bush two to six feet high. There are two kinds, – common hazelnut and beaked hazelnut. The green husk looks like a cap, hence its Saxon name haesle, a cap, and the scientific name Corylus from the Greek corys, a helmet.

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Burns: Robert Burns, the Scotch poet.

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root and all, and all in all: from a poem by Lord Tennyson called “Flower in the Crannied Wall.”

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Atalanta’s race: Look up the story of the beautiful girl runner who lost her race with her lover because of her desire to pick up a golden apple.

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Two mighty wings: an owl’s wing marks, perhaps the barred owl or the great horned owl, or the snowy owl, which sometimes comes down from the north in the winter.

CHAPTER II

TO THE TEACHER

This herding and driving of turkeys to market is common in other sections of the country, particularly in Kentucky. I have told the story (as told to me by one who saw the flock) in order to bring out the force of instinct and habit, and the unreasoning nature of the animal mind as compared with man’s.

FOR THE PUPIL

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Shepherd-dog: Only a well-trained dog would do, for turkeys are very timid and greatly afraid of a strange dog.

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Black Creek: a local name; not in the Geography.

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a chorus of answering gobbles: Turkeys will follow their leader. It was this habit or trait that the boys now made use of.

CHAPTER III

TO THE TEACHER

There is a three-pronged point to this chapter: (1) the empty birds’ nests are not things to mourn over. The birds are safe and warm down south; and they will build fresh, clean nests when they get back. Teach your children to see things as they are – the wholesomeness, naturalness, wisdom, and poetry of Nature’s arrangement. The poets are often sentimental; and most sentimentality is entirely misplaced. (2) The nest abandoned by the bird may be taken up by the mouse. The deadest, commonest of things may prove full of life and interest upon close observation. Summer may go; but winter comes and brings its own interests and rewards. So does youth go and old age come. There is nothing really abandoned in nature – nothing utterly lacking interest. (3) A mouse is not a Bengal tiger; but he is a whole mouse and in the completeness of his life just as large and interesting as the tiger. If the small, the common, the things right at hand, are not interesting, it is not their fault – not the mouse’s fault – but ours.

FOR THE PUPIL

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white-foot: the deer, or wood mouse (Peromyscus leucopus).

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“There are no birds in last year’s nest”: a line from a poem by Longfellow called “It is not always May.”

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Darwin’s book on earthworms: Read in this book how the worms make garden soil.

CHAPTER IV

TO THE TEACHER

If you have at hand “The Fall of the Year,” read again the suggestions on page 112 for the chapter on “Things to See this Fall,” making use of this chapter as you did of that (1) as the object of a field excursion – or of several excursions until all the things suggested here have been seen; (2) as a test of the pupil’s actual study of nature; for there is scarcely a city child who cannot get far enough into nature (though he get no farther than the city park), and often enough to see most of the things pointed out in this chapter; (3) as suggestions for further study and observation by the pupils – things that they have seen which might be added to these ten here, and written about for composition work in English.

FOR THE PUPIL

Here are ten different things for you to see this winter, and most of them, whether you live in the city or country, you can see, provided you live where the snow falls. But you will have some kind of a winter no matter where you live. Don’t miss it – its storms, its birds, its animals, its coasting, skating, snowshoeing, its invitations to tramp the frozen marshes and deep swamps where you cannot go in the summer, and where, on the snow you will catch many a glimpse of wild life that the rank summer sedges will never reveal. Don’t stop with these ten suggestions; there are a hundred other interesting things to see. And as you see them, write about them.

CHAPTER V

TO THE TEACHER

Let this chapter be read very close to the Christmas recess, when your children’s minds are full of Christmas thoughts. This unconventional turn to the woods, this thought of Christmas among the animals and birds, might easily be the means of awakening many to an understanding of the deeper, spiritual side of nature-study – that we find in Nature only what we take to her; that we get back only what we give. It will be easy for them to take the spirit of Christmas into the woods because they are so full of it; and so it will be easy for them to feel the woods giving it back to them – the very last and best reward of nature-study. No, don’t be afraid that they are incapable of such lessons, of such thoughts and emotions. Some few may be; but no teacher ever yet erred by too much faith in the capacity of her pupils for the higher, deeper things.

FOR THE PUPIL

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These lines of poetry you all know. But who can tell who wrote them? Where did he live and when?

gum swamp: See description of such a swamp on pages 262-263 of the author’s “Wild Life Near Home.” This is the tree known as sour gum, more properly tupelo (Nyssa sylvatica or uniflora).

cardinal grosbeak: Commonly called “cardinal,” or “redbird.”

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Holy Day: What was the oldest form of our word “holiday”?

ilex: Ilex verticillata, the black alder, or winterberry, one of the holly family. A low swamp bush covered with red berries all winter.

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Lupton’s Pond: A little pond along Cohansey Creek near Bridgeton, N. J.

Persimmon trees: found from New Haven, Conn., to Florida.

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Bob Cratchit’s goose: There never was such a goose, as you all know who have read Dickens’s “Christmas Carol.”

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liquid amber: The balsamic juice of the sweet gum tree, sometimes called “bilsted” (Liquidambar styraciflua), a large, beautiful swamp tree found from Connecticut to Florida and west to Texas.

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half-human tracks: Because the coon is a relative of the bears and has a long hind foot that leaves a track much like that of a small baby.

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tupelo: See note on gum swamp, page 141.

sour gums: same as tupelo.

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chicken or frost grapes: Vitis cordifolia: the smallest, sourest, best (boy standards) of all our wild grapes. They ripen after the frost and feed the boys and birds when all other such fruits have gone from the woods.

Smooth winterberry: is really another ilex, Ilex lævigata, a larger bush than Ilex verticillata, the black alder or winterberry.

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Fox sparrows: See the frontispiece. The largest, most beautiful of our sparrows. Nests in the Far North. A migrant to New England and the Southern States.

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The crows were winging over toward their great roost: Don’t fail this winter to spend, if not Christmas Day, then one of your Christmas vacation days, in the woods, from morning until the crows go over to their roost. You will never forget that day.

CHAPTER VI

TO THE TEACHER

Read to the pupils Emerson’s poem “The Titmouse,” dwelling on the lines, —

“Here was this atom in full breath,
Hurling defiance at vast death,” etc.

and the part beginning, —

“’Tis good will makes intelligence,”

letting the students learn by heart the chickadee’s little song, —

“Live out of doors
In the great woods, on prairie floors,” etc.

Poem and chapter ought mutually to help each other. Read the chapter slowly, explaining clearly as you go on, making it finally plain that this mere “atom” of life is greater than all the winter death, no matter how “vast.”

FOR THE PUPIL

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“The Lilac”: My lilac bush with its suet has become a kind of hotel, or inn, or boarding-house, for the chickadees.

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Phœ-ee-bee!: more often the spring call than the winter call of Chickadee. It is to be distinguished from the “phœ’be” call of the phœbe, the flycatcher, by its greater softness and purity, and by its very distinct middle syllable, as if Chickadee said “Phœ’ – ee – bee.” Phœbe’s note is two-syllabled.

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protective coloration: a favorite term with Darwin and many later naturalists to describe the wonderful harmony in the colors of animals, insects, etc., and their natural surroundings, the animal’s color blending so perfectly into the color of its surroundings as to be a protection to the creature.

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card house: as if made of cards, easily pushed, even blown down.

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the workman’s chips: Look on the ground under a newly excavated woodpecker’s hole, and you will find his “chips.”

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a tiny window: The tough birch-bark would bend readily. I would shut the window in leaving by means of a long, sharp thorn.

CHAPTER VII

TO THE TEACHER

Make a point of going into the winter woods and fields, taking the pupils as often as possible with you. It may be impossible for your city children to get the rare chance of glare ice; but don’t miss it if it comes.

This is the time to start your bird-study; to awaken sympathy and responsibility in your pupils by teaching them to feed the birds; to cultivate cheerfulness and the love of “hardness” in them by breasting with them a bitter winter gale for the pure joy of it. Use the suggestions here for whatever of resourcefulness and hardiness you can cultivate in the girls as well as in the boys.

FOR THE PUPIL

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the good things to read: To name only a few of them, we might mention John Burroughs’s “Winter Sunshine” and “Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers,” Bradford Torrey’s “Footing it in Franconia,” Frank Bolles’s “At the North of Bearcamp Water,” William Hamilton Gibson’s “Eye Spy,” William L. Finley’s “American Birds,” and Edward Breck’s “Wilderness Pets.”

CHAPTER VIII

TO THE TEACHER

I believe this to be one of the most important chapters in the volume, dark and terrible as its lesson may appear. But grim, dark death itself is not so dark as fear of the truth. If you teach nothing else, by precept and example, teach love for the truth – for the whole truth in nature as everywhere else. Winter is a fact; let us face it. Death is a fact; let us face it; and by facing it half of its terror will disappear; nay more, for something of its deep reasonableness and meaning will begin to appear, and we shall be no more afraid. The all of this is beyond a child, as it is beyond us; but the habit of looking honestly and fearlessly at things must be part of a child’s education, as later on it must be the very sum of it.

Great tact and fine feeling must be exercised if you happen to have among the scholars one of the handicapped – one lacking any part, as the muskrat lacked – lest the application be taken personally. But let the lesson be driven home: the need every boy and girl has for a strong, full-membered body, – even for every one of his teeth, – if he is to live at his physical best.

FOR THE PUPIL

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incisor teeth: the four long front teeth of the rodents, – rats, mice, beavers, etc. These incisor teeth, are heavily enameled with a sharp cutting edge and keep growing continuously.

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voles: meadow mice.

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chimney swallows: more properly swifts; as these birds do not belong to the swallow family at all.

vermin: The swifts are generally infested with vermin.

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clapper rails: or marsh-hens (Rallus crepitans).

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“List’ning the doors an’ winnocks rattle”: lines from Burns’s “A Winter Night.”

CHAPTER IX

TO THE TEACHER

Make this chapter, as far as you can, the one in the volume for most intensive study. Show the pupils how the study of animal life is connected with geology, tell them of the record of life in the fossils of the rocks, the kinds of strange beasts that once inhabited the earth. Show them again how the study of animals in their anatomy is not the study of one – say of man, but how man and all the mammals, the reptiles, the birds, the fishes, the insects, on and on back to the single-celled amœba, are all related to each other, all links in one long wonder chain of life.

FOR THE PUPIL

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Charles Lamb: Look up his life in the Encyclopedia. Read for yourselves his essay on Roast Pig.

modus edibilis: the Latin for “manner of eating.”

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the ’possum’s relations: They are the marsupials, the pouched animals, like the kangaroo.

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reptilian age: one of the great geological ages or eras, known to the geologists as the great mesozoic or “middle” epoch, when reptiles ruled the land and sea.

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smiles at you – grins: Read the account of this habit in the opening chapter of the author’s “Wild Life Near Home.”

CHAPTER X

TO THE TEACHER

This chapter and the next go together – this for the lover of wild life, the next for the lover of adventure. The spring freshet is one of the most interesting of the year of days for animal study – better even than the day after the first snowfall. But more than this, let both chapters suggest to you how primitive and elemental the real world is after all; with what cataclysmal forces the seasons are changed. As summer often passes into autumn with a silencing frost that rests like a hush of awe over the land; so winter often gives way to spring with a rush of wind and tidal powers that seem to shake the foundations of the world. To feel these forces, to be a part of all these moods, to share in all these feelings – this, too, is one of the ends of nature-study.

CHAPTER XII

TO THE TEACHER

I should like to repeat here the suggestions in “The Fall of the Year” for this corresponding chapter. I will repeat only: “that you are the teacher, not the book. The book is but a suggestion. You begin where it leaves off; you fill out where it is lacking.” For these are not all the sounds of winter; indeed they may not be the characteristic sounds in your neighborhood. No matter: the lesson is not this or that sound, but that your pupils learn to listen for sounds, for the voices of the season, whatever those voices may be in their own particular region. The trouble is that we have ears, and literally hear not, eyes and see not, souls and feel not. Teach your pupils to use their eyes, ears, yes and hearts, and all things else will be added unto them in the way of education.

FOR THE PUPIL

I

It is the stilling of the insects that makes for the first of these silences; the hushing of the winds the second; the magic touch of the cold the third.

II

The voice of the great spring storm should be added to these, and the shriek of the wind about the house.

III

You should not only hear, but you should also feel this split – passing with a thrilling shock beneath your feet.

V

How many other of the small voices do you know? The chirp of the kinglets; the scratching of mice in a shock of corn; the – but you write a story about them. So listen for yourself.

VI

Do all you can to preserve the quail. Don’t shoot.

VIII

Along toward spring you should hear him “drumming” for a mate – a rapid motion of his wings much like the hollow sound of a distant drum.

CHAPTER XIII

TO THE TEACHER

Do all that you can to teach the signs of the zodiac, the days of the seasons, and all the doings of the astronomical year. All that old lore of the skies is in danger of being lost. Some readers will say: “The author is not consistent! He loves the winter and here he is impatient to be done with it!” Some explanation on your part may be necessary: that the call of the spring is the call of life, a call so loud and strong that all life – human and wild, animal and vegetable, – hears it and is impatient to obey. If possible take your scholars upon a walk at this raw edge of the season when they will feel the chill but also the stirring of life all about them.