Chapter V: To the Teacher

With a map of Boston follow the course of this title--from the
crowded wharf and water-front to the wide, country-like fields
of Franklin Park. It is a five-cent car-ride, a good half-day’s
walk if you watch the wild life on the way. Map out such a
course in your own city and take your pupils over it on a
tramp, watching for glimpses of animal and bird life and for the
sight of Nature’s face--the sky, the wind, the sunshine, trees,
grass, flowers, etc. Make the most of your city chance for
nature-study. It is an important matter.

FOR THE PUPIL

T wharf, long one of the busiest fish wharves in the world,
perhaps the busiest, is, as I write, on the point of being
abandoned by the fish-dealers of Boston, who are to occupy a
huge new pier at South Boston, built by the State at a cost of
about a million dollars. Franklin Field is a great athletic
field adjoining Franklin Park in the southern part of Boston.

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_list of saints_: these immortal names are carved in various
places on the outer walls of the Public Library.

_cranium_: the head, or rather the skull.

_herring gull_: _Larus argentatus_, one of the largest and
commonest of the harbor birds, and very much like the Western
gull of Three-Arch Rocks. It is a pearl-gray and pure white
creature with black on the wings. The immature birds are a
brownish gray and look like an entirely different species for
the first year.

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_Boston, Baltimore, etc._: Make a study of your city parks and
the spots of green and the open spaces where the wild things may
be found. Go to the Public Library and ask for the books that
treat of the wild life of your city: “Wild Birds in City Parks,”
by Walter, will be such a book for Chicago; “Birds in the Bush,”
by Torrey, and “Birds of the Boston Public Garden,” by Wright,
for Boston.

_Charles River Basin_: the wide fresh-water part of Charles
River just above the dam and near Beacon and Charles Streets.

_Scup_: another name is porgie, porgy, scuppaug.

_Squid_: (_Ommastrephes illecebrosus_), a cephalopod, or
cuttlefish, used for bait along the Atlantic coast.

The “cuttle-bone” in canaries’ cages is taken from the genus
_Sepia_.

_Squeteague_: pronounced skwe-tēg´; also called weakfish and
sea-trout.

_Scallops_: are shellfish the large muscle of which is much
prized for food.

These are only a few of the fish kinds brought in at T Wharf.

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_Grand Banks_: a submarine plateau in the Atlantic, eastward
from Newfoundland; noted as a fishing-ground. Its depth is
thirty to sixty fathoms.

_the Georges_: a smaller bank lying off Cape Cod.

“_We’re Here_”: the name of the schooner in Kipling’s “Captains
Courageous.”

_Quincy Market_: an old well-known market in Boston.

_King’s Chapel_: on Tremont Street. It was begun in 1749 and is
still used for worship. See “Roof and Meadow” for a fuller
account of the sparrows.

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_rim rock_: the edging of rock around the flats and plains of
the sage deserts of Oregon.

_Boston Common_: known to every child who has read the history
of our country. The “Garden” is across Charles Street from the
Common.

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_Agassiz Museum_: the Museum of Comparative Zoölogy at Harvard
University. It is popularly called the Agassiz Museum in honor
of the great naturalist Louis Agassiz, who founded it.

See Sarah K. Bolton’s “Famous Men of Science.”

_Arnold Arboretum_: is near the western edge of Boston; one of
the most celebrated gardens of trees in the world.

_Through the heaven’s wide pathless way_: from “Il Penseroso,”
by Milton.

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_Swales_: wet, grassy, or even bushy, meadows.