Chapter III: To the Teacher

There is a three-pronged point to this chapter: (1) the empty
birds’ nests are not things to mourn over. The birds are safe
and warm down south; and they will build fresh, clean nests when
they get back. Teach your children to see things as they
are--the wholesomeness, naturalness, wisdom, and poetry of
Nature’s arrangement. The poets are often sentimental; and most
sentimentality is entirely misplaced. (2) The nest abandoned by
the bird may be taken up by the mouse. The deadest, commonest of
things may prove full of life and interest upon close
observation. Summer may go; but winter comes and brings its own
interests and rewards. So does youth go and old age come. There
is nothing really abandoned in nature--nothing utterly lacking
interest. (3) A mouse is not a Bengal tiger; but he is a whole
mouse and in the _completeness_ of his life just as large and
interesting as the tiger. If the small, the common, the things
right at hand, are not interesting, it is not their fault--not
the mouse’s fault--but _ours_.

FOR THE PUPIL

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_white-foot_: the deer, or wood mouse (_Peromyscus leucopus_).

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“_There are no birds in last year’s nest_”: a line from a poem
by Longfellow called “It is not always May.”

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_Darwin’s book on earthworms:_ Read in this book how the worms
make garden soil.