Chapter XI: To the Teacher

This is a chapter on the large wholesomeness of contact with
nature; that even the simple, humble tasks out of doors are
attended with a freedom and a naturalness that restore one to
his real self by putting him into his original primitive
environment and by giving him an original primitive task to do.

Then, too, how good a thing it is to have something alive and
responsive to work for--if only a goat or a pig! Take occasion
to read to the class Lamb’s essay on Roast Pig--even fifth
grade pupils will get a lasting picture from it.

Again--and this is the apparent purpose of the chapter--how
impossible it is to go into the woods with anything--a
hay-rake--and not find the woods interesting!

FOR THE PUPIL

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_the unabridged dictionary_: What does “unabridged” mean?

_hay-rig_: a simple farm wagon with a “rigging” put on for
carting hay.

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_cord wood_: wood cut into four-foot lengths to be cut up
smaller for burning in the stove. What are the dimensions of a
cord of wood?

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_through the cold gray of the maple swamp below you, peers the
face of Winter_: What does one see in a maple swamp at this time
of year that looks like the “face of winter.” Think.

_he that gathers leaves for his pig spreads a blanket of down
over his own winter bed_: How is this meant to be taken?

_round at the barn_: It is a common custom with farmers to make
this nightly round in order to see that the stock is safe for
the night. Were you ever in a barn at night where the horses
were still munching hay, and the cattle rattling their
stanchions and horns? Recall the picture in Whittier’s
“Snow-Bound.”

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_diameters_: the unit of measure in the “field” or the lens of
the microscope, equivalent to “times.”

_white-footed wood mouse_: Text should read _or_ wood mouse.
There are other wood mice, but Whitefoot is known as the wood
mouse.

_gives at the touch_: an idiom, meaning _moves_ back, gives
way.

_red-backed salamander_: very common under stones; his
scientific name is _Plethodon erythronolus_.

_His “red” salamander_: Read chapter V in “Pepacton,” by
Burroughs. His salamander is the red triton, _Spelerpes ruber_.

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_dull ears_: Our ears are dulled by the loud and ceaseless
noises of our city life, so that we cannot hear the small voices
of nature that doubtless many of the wild creatures are capable
of hearing.

_tiny tree-frog, Pickering’s hyla_: the one who peeps so shrill
from the meadows in spring.

“_skirl_”: a Scotch term; see “Tam O’Shanter,” by Burns: “He
screwed the pipes and gart them skirl.”

_bunches of Christmas fern_: Gathered all through the winter
here in the ledges about Mullein Hill by the florists for
floral pieces.

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_yellow-jacket’s nest_: one of the Vespa Wasps, _Vespa
Germanica_. Read the first chapter of “Wasps Social and
Solitary,” by G. W. and E. G. Peckham.

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_long-tusked boar of the forest_: The wild boar, the ancestor of
our domestic pigs is still to be found in the great game
preserves in European forests; in this country only in
zoölogical gardens.

_live in a pen_: How might one, though living in a big modern
house, well furnished and ordered, still make a “pen” of it
only.