The Fall of the Year Part 14

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_timothy_: "Herd's-gra.s.s" or "English hay"--as it is sometimes called in New England.

_plenty for the birds_: What are the "weeds" made for? You growl when you are set to pulling them in the garden. What are they made for? Can you answer?

CHAPTER X

TO THE TEACHER

Perhaps you are in a crowded school-room in the heart of a great city. What can you do for your pupils there? But what _can't_ you do? You have a bit of sky, a window surely, an old tin can for earth, a sprig of something to plant--and surely you have English sparrows behind the rain pipe or shutter! You may have the harbor too, and water-front with its gulls and fish, and the fish stores with their windows full of the sea. You have the gardens and parks, burial-grounds and housetops, bird stores, museums--why, bless you, you have the hand-organ man and his monkey; you have--but I have mentioned enough. It is a hungry little flock that you have to feed, too, and no teacher can ask more.

FOR THE PUPIL

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_An English sparrow_: Make a long and careful study of the sparrows that nest about you. If you live in the country try to drive them away from the bluebird house and the martin-boxes.

The author does not advise boys and girls to do any killing, but carefully pulling down a sparrow's nest with eggs in it--if you are _sure_ it is a sparrow's nest--is kindness, he believes, to the other, more useful birds. Yet only yesterday, August 17th, he saw a male sparrow bring moth after moth to its young in a hole in one of the timbers of a bridge from which the author was fishing. It is not easy to say just what our duty is in this matter.

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_clack of a guinea going to roost_: The guinea-fowl as it goes to roost frequently sets up a clacking that can be heard half a mile away.

_an ancient cemetery in the very heart of Boston_: The cemetery was the historic King's Chapel on Tremont Street, Boston. Some of the elm trees have since been cut down.

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_Cubby Hollow_: a small pond near the author's boyhood home, running, after a half-mile course through the woods, into Lupton's Pond, which falls over a dam into the meadows of Cohansey Creek.

_on the water_: What water is it that surrounds so large a part of the City of Boston?

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_the shuttered buildings_: Along some of the streets, especially in the wholesale district, the heavy iron shutters, closed against the high walls of the buildings, give the deserted streets a solemn, almost a forbidding aspect.

_facing the wind_: like an anch.o.r.ed boat, offering the least possible resistance to the storm.

_out of doors lies very close about you, as you hurry down a crowded city street_: Opportunities for watching the wild things, for seeing and hearing the things of nature, cannot be denied you even in the heart of the city, if you have an eye for such things. Read Bradford Torrey's "Birds on Boston Common," or the author's "Birds from a City Roof" in the volume called "Roof and Meadow."

CHAPTER XI

TO THE TEACHER

This is a chapter on the large wholesomeness of contact with nature; that even the simple, humble tasks out of doors are attended with a freedom and a naturalness that restore one to his real self by putting him into his original primitive environment and by giving him an original primitive task to do.

Then, too, how good a thing it is to have something alive and responsive to work for--if only a goat or a pig! Take occasion to read to the cla.s.s Lamb's essay on Roast Pig--even fifth grade pupils will get a lasting picture from it.

Again--and this is the apparent purpose of the chapter--how impossible it is to go into the woods with anything--a hay-rake--and not find the woods interesting!

FOR THE PUPIL

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_the unabridged dictionary_: What does "unabridged" mean?

_hay-rig_: a simple farm wagon with a "rigging" put on for carting hay.

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_cord wood_: wood cut into four-foot lengths to be cut up smaller for burning in the stove. What are the dimensions of a cord of wood?

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_through the cold gray of the maple swamp below you, peers the face of Winter_: What does one see in a maple swamp at this time of year that looks like the "face of winter." Think.

_he that gathers leaves for his pig spreads a blanket of down over his own winter bed_: How is this meant to be taken?

_round at the barn_: It is a common custom with farmers to make this nightly round in order to see that the stock is safe for the night. Were you ever in a barn at night where the horses were still munching hay, and the cattle rattling their stanchions and horns? Recall the picture in Whittier's "Snow-Bound."

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_diameters_: the unit of measure in the "field" or the lens of the microscope, equivalent to "times."

_white-footed wood mouse_: Text should read _or_ wood mouse.

There are other wood mice, but Whitefoot is known as the wood mouse.

_gives at the touch_: an idiom, meaning _moves_ back, gives way.

_red-backed salamander_: very common under stones; his scientific name is _Plethodon erythronolus_.

_His "red" salamander_: Read chapter V in "Pepacton," by Burroughs. His salamander is the red triton, _Spelerpes ruber_.

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_dull ears_: Our ears are dulled by the loud and ceaseless noises of our city life, so that we cannot hear the small voices of nature that doubtless many of the wild creatures are capable of hearing.

_tiny tree-frog, Pickering's hyla_: the one who peeps so shrill from the meadows in spring.

"_skirl_": a Scotch term; see "Tam O'Shanter," by Burns: "He screwed the pipes and gart them skirl."

_bunches of Christmas fern_: Gathered all through the winter here in the ledges about Mullein Hill by the florists for floral pieces.

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_yellow-jacket's nest_: one of the Vespa Wasps, _Vespa Germanica_. Read the first chapter of "Wasps Social and Solitary," by G. W. and E. G. Peckham.