Winter

CHAPTER VIIITO 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 IXTO 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 amœba, 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.

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smiles at you – grins: Read the account of this habit in the opening chapter of the author’s “Wild Life Near Home.”

CHAPTER XTO THE TEACHER

This chapter and the next go together – this for the lover of wild life, the next for the lover of adventure. The spring freshet is one of the most interesting of the year of days for animal study – better even than the day after the first snowfall. But more than this, let both chapters suggest to you how primitive and elemental the real world is after all; with what cataclysmal forces the seasons are changed. As summer often passes into autumn with a silencing frost that rests like a hush of awe over the land; so winter often gives way to spring with a rush of wind and tidal powers that seem to shake the foundations of the world. To feel these forces, to be a part of all these moods, to share in all these feelings – this, too, is one of the ends of nature-study.

CHAPTER XIITO THE TEACHER

I should like to repeat here the suggestions in “The Fall of the Year” for this corresponding chapter. I will repeat only: “that you are the teacher, not the book. The book is but a suggestion. You begin where it leaves off; you fill out where it is lacking.” For these are not all the sounds of winter; indeed they may not be the characteristic sounds in your neighborhood. No matter: the lesson is not this or that sound, but that your pupils learn to listen for sounds, for the voices of the season, whatever those voices may be in their own particular region. The trouble is that we have ears, and literally hear not, eyes and see not, souls and feel not. Teach your pupils to use their eyes, ears, yes and hearts, and all things else will be added unto them in the way of education.

FOR THE PUPILI

It is the stilling of the insects that makes for the first of these silences; the hushing of the winds the second; the magic touch of the cold the third.

II

The voice of the great spring storm should be added to these, and the shriek of the wind about the house.

III

You should not only hear, but you should also feel this split – passing with a thrilling shock beneath your feet.

V

How many other of the small voices do you know? The chirp of the kinglets; the scratching of mice in a shock of corn; the – but you write a story about them. So listen for yourself.

VI

Do all you can to preserve the quail. Don’t shoot.

VIII

Along toward spring you should hear him “drumming” for a mate – a rapid motion of his wings much like the hollow sound of a distant drum.

CHAPTER XIIITO THE TEACHER

Do all that you can to teach the signs of the zodiac, the days of the seasons, and all the doings of the astronomical year. All that old lore of the skies is in danger of being lost. Some readers will say: “The author is not consistent! He loves the winter and here he is impatient to be done with it!” Some explanation on your part may be necessary: that the call of the spring is the call of life, a call so loud and strong that all life – human and wild, animal and vegetable, – hears it and is impatient to obey. If possible take your scholars upon a walk at this raw edge of the season when they will feel the chill but also the stirring of life all about them.

FOR THE PUPIL

Get an almanac and study the old weather signs.

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“When descends on the Atlantic”: from Longfellow’s “Seaweed.”

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frog or hyla: The hylas belong to the family Hylidæ and include our tree-toad, and our little tree-frog.

“For, lo, the winter is past,”: from The Song of Songs, or The Song of Solomon, in the Bible.