Winter Part 14

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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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_Ph-ee-bee!_: more often the spring call than the winter call of Chickadee. It is to be distinguished from the "ph'be" call of the phbe, the flycatcher, by its greater softness and purity, and by its very distinct _middle syllable_, as if Chickadee said "Ph'--ee--bee." Phbe'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 woodp.e.c.k.e.r'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 Suns.h.i.+ne" 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 amba, 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.