Summer

the hunter family: these are the spiders that build no nets or webs for snaring their prey, but hunt their prey over the ground.

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Toadfish: See the chapter in the “Fall of the Year” called “In the Toadfish’s Shoe.”

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Surinam toads: pronounced sōō-rī-näm´.

Mother-passion … in the life of reptiles: many readers, seeing this statement in the “Atlantic Monthly,” where the essay first appeared, have written me of how when they were boys they saw snakes swallow their young – or at least killed the old snakes with young in them! Isn’t that mother-love among the reptiles? But every time the story has been about garter snakes or moccasins or some other ovoviviparous snake; that is, a snake that does not lay eggs, but keeps them within her body till they hatch, then gives birth to the young. I have never seen a snake swallow its young; though big snakes do eat little ones whenever they can get them.

CHAPTER IXFOR THE PUPIL

Mother Carey’s chickens are any of the small petrels. The little stormy petrels of poetry and story belong to the Old World and only wander occasionally over to our side of the Atlantic.

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petrel: pronounced pĕt´rel, so called in allusion, perhaps, to Saint Peter’s walking on the sea.

CHAPTER XFOR THE PUPIL

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P Ranch: is one of the Hanley system of cattle ranches, which cover a wide area almost seventy-five miles long. The buildings and tree-fences, the stockades and sheds make it one of the most picturesque I have ever seen. This story was told to me by Jack Wade, the “boss of the buckaroos.” “Buckaroo” is a corruption of the Spanish vaquero, cowherd.

Winnemucca: find the place on the map.

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buckskin: a horse of a soft yellowish color. He got his name Peroxide Jim from the resemblance of the color of his coat to that of human hair bleached by peroxide of hydrogen.

CHAPTER XIFOR THE PUPIL

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paper nests in trees: The common yellow-jacket hornet builds similar large round nests in bushes, and other wasps build paper nests behind walls, under the ground, in holes, etc.

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bite into something poisonous: Send to the Department of Agriculture at Washington for the little booklet on our poisonous plants. It is free.

CHAPTER XIITO THE TEACHER

Try to bring home to the class the profoundly interesting facts of animal distribution – where they live, and how they came to live where they do. Point out the strange shifts resorted to by various creatures who live at the various extremes of height or depth or cold or heat to enable them to get a living.

FOR THE PUPIL

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“And God who clears”: these lines of Kipling I am quoting as I first found them printed. I see in his collected verse that they are somewhat changed.