Winter Part 12

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 att.i.tude 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 pa.s.s (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 p.u.s.s.y_: 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-p.r.o.nged 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."