Chapter V: To the Teacher

I might have used a star, or the sun, or the sea to teach the
lesson involved here, instead of the crow and his three broken
feathers. But these three feathers will do for your pupils as
the falling apple did for Sir Isaac Newton. The point of the
chapter is: that the feathers like the stars must round out
their courses; that this universe is a universe of law, of
order, and of reason, even to the wing feathers of a crow. Try
to show your pupils the beauty and wonder of order and law (not
easy to do) as well as the beauty and wonder of shapes and
colors and sounds, etc.

FOR THE PUPIL

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_primaries, secondaries, tertials_: Turn to your dictionary
under “Bird” (or at the front of some good bird book) and study
out just which feathers of the wing these named here are.

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_half-moulted hen_: Pick her up and notice the regular and
systematic arrangement of the young feathers. Or take a plucked
hen and draw roughly the pin-feather scheme as you find it on
her body.

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_reed-birds_: The bobolink is also called “rice-bird” from its
habit of feeding in the rice-fields of the South on its fall
migration.