Chapter VII: To the Teacher

I called this chapter when I first wrote it “The Friendship of
Nature”--a much used title, but entirely suggestive of the
thought and the lesson in the story here. This was first written
about six years ago, and to-day, May 12, 1912, that pair of
phœbes, or another pair, have their nest out under the
pig-pen roof as they have had every year since I have known the
pen. Repeat and expand the thought as I have put it into the
mouth of Nature in the first paragraph--“We will share them [the
acres] together.” Instill into your pupils’ minds the large
meaning of obedience to Nature’s laws and love for her and all
her own. Show them also how ready Nature is (and all the birds
and animals and flowers) to be friendly; and how even a city
dooryard may hold enough live _wild_ things for a small zoo.
This chapter might well be made use of by the city teacher to
stir her pupils to see what interesting live things their city
or neighborhood has, although the woods and open fields are
miles away.

FOR THE PUPIL

PAGE 48

_a hornet’s nest_: the white-faced hornet, that builds the great
cone-shaped paper nests.

_swifts thunder in the chimney_: See chapter VII (and notes) in
“Winter.” For the “thunder” see section IX in chapter X of this
book.

PAGE 49

_cabbage butterfly_: a pest; a small whitish butterfly with a
few small black spots. Its grubs eat cabbage.

PAGE 54

_the crested flycatcher_: is the largest of the family; builds
in holes; distinguished by its use of cast-off snake-skins in
its nests.

_kingbird_: Everybody knows him, for it is usually he who
chases the marauding crows; he builds, out in the apple tree if
he can, a big, bulky nest with strings a-flying from it: also
called “bee-martin,” a most useful bird.

_wood pewee_: builds on the limbs of forest trees a most
beautiful nest, much like a hummingbird’s, only larger. Pewee’s
soft, pensive call of “pe-e-e-wee” in the deep, quiet,
dark-shrouded summer woods is one of the sweetest of bird
notes.

_chebec_: a little smaller than a sparrow; builds a beautiful
nest in orchard trees and says “chebec, chebec, chebec.”

PAGE 58

_One had died_: After phœbe brings off her first brood
sprinkle a little, tobacco-dust or lice-powder, such as you use
in the hen-yard, into the nest to kill the vermin. Otherwise the
second and third broods may be eaten alive by lice or mites.