many of them will bear repetition with new materials, or in new situations. Each one includes a brief introductory statement to be read, and an outline of work to be performed. In all of them, it is the doing of the work outlined—not the mere reading of the text-that will yield satisfactory educational results. The work of this course is not new. Much work of this sort has been done, and well done, as nature-study, in various institutions at home and abroad. But here is an attempt to integrate it all, and to show its relation to the sources of our living. So it is the natural history, not of the whole range of things curious and interesting in the world, but of those things that human kind has elected to deal with as a means of livelihood and of personal satisfaction in all ages. These are the things we have to live with: they are the things we have to live by. They feed us and shelter us and clothe us and warm us. They equip us with implements for manifold tasks. They endow us with a thousand delicacies and wholesome comforts. They unfold before us the ceaseless drama of the ever-changing seasons-the informing drama of life, of which we are a part. And when, in our rude farming operations, we scar the face of nature to make fields and houses and stock pens, they offer us the means whereby, though changed, to make it green and golden again—a fit environment wherein to dwell at peace. In the belief that an acquaintance with these things would contribute to greater contentment in and enjoyment of the farm surroundings and to a better rural life, this course was prepared. The original suggestion of it came from Director L. H. Bailey of the New York State College of Agriculture. It was first given in that college by me in coöperation with Mrs. J. H. Comstock. To both these good naturalists, and to all those who have helped me as assistants, I am greatly indebted for valuable suggestions. JAMES G. NEEDHAM. 27. Nature's offerings for spring planting p. 195 with study 27 on page 202 28. A cut-over wood-land thicket 29. Wild spring flowers of the farm I. MOTHER EARTH "Brother, listen to what we say. There was a time when our forefathers owned this great land. Their seats extended from the rising to the setting sun. The Great Spirit had made it for the use of the Indians. He had created the buffalo and the deer and other animals for food. He had made the bear and the beaver. Their skins served us for clothing. He had scattered them over the country and had taught us how to take them. He had caused the earth to produce corn for bread. All this he had done for his red children because he loved them." -From the great oration of "Red Jacket," the Seneca Indian, on The Religion of the White Man and the Red. If you ever read the letters of the pioneers who first settled in your locality when it was all a wilderness (and how recent was the time!), you will find them filled with discussion of the possibilities of getting a living and establishing a home there. Were there springs of good water there? Was there native pasturage for the animals? Was there fruit? Was there fish? Was there game? Was there timber of good quality for building? Was the soil fertile? Was the climate healthful? Was the outlook good? Has it ever occurred to you how, in absence of real-estate and immigration agencies, they found out about all these things? They sought this information at its source. They followed up the streams. They foraged: they fished: they hunted. They measured the boles of the trees with eyes experienced in woodcraft. They judged of what nature would do with their sowings by what they saw her doing with her own native crops. And having found a sheltered place with a pleasant outlook and with springs and grass and forage near at hand, they built a dwelling and planted a garden. Thus, a new era of agriculture was ushered in. Your ancestors were white men who came from another continent and brought with them tools and products and traditions of another civilization. Their tools, though simple, were efficient. Their axes and spades and needles and shears were of steel. Their chief dependence for food was placed in cereals and vegetables whose seeds they brought with them from across the seas. Their social habits were those of a people that had long known the arts of tillage and husbandry: their civilization was based on settled homes. But they brought with them into the wilderness only a few weapons, a few tools, a few seeds and a few animals, and for the balance and continuance of their living they relied upon the bounty of the woods, the waters and the soil. A little earlier there lived in your locality a race of red men whose cruder tools and weapons were made of flint, of bone and of copper; who planted native seeds (among them the maize, the squash, and the potato), and whose traditions were mainly of war and of the chase. These were indeed children of nature, dependent upon their own hands for obtaining from mother earth all their sustenance. There was little division of labor among them. Each must know (at least, each family must know) how to gather and how to prepare as well as how to use. Today you live largely on the products of the labors of others. You get your food, not with sickle and flail and spear, but with a can-opener, and you eat it without even an inkling of where it grew. So many hands have intervened between the getting and the using of all things needful, that some factory is thought of as the source of them instead of mother earth. Suppose that in order to realize how you have lost connection, you step out into the wildwood emptyhanded, and look about you. Choose and say what you will have of all you see before you for your next meal? Where will you find your next suit of clothes and what will it be like? Ah, could you even improvise a wrapping, and a string with which to tie it, from what wild nature offers you? These are degenerate days. One had to know things in order to live in the days of the pioneer and the Indian. But |