Chapter V: To the Teacher

Let this chapter be read very close to the Christmas recess,
when your children’s minds are full of Christmas thoughts. This
unconventional turn to the woods, this thought of Christmas
among the animals and birds, might easily be the means of
awakening many to an understanding of the deeper, spiritual side
of nature-study--that we find in Nature only what we take to
her; that we get back only what we give. It will be easy for
them to take the spirit of Christmas into the woods because they
are so full of it; and so it will be easy for them to feel the
woods giving it back to them--the very last and best reward of
nature-study. No, don’t be afraid that they are incapable of
such lessons, of such thoughts and emotions. Some few may be;
but no teacher ever yet erred by too much faith in the capacity
of her pupils for the higher, deeper things.

FOR THE PUPIL

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These lines of poetry you all know. But who can tell who wrote
them? Where did he live and when?

_gum swamp:_ See description of such a swamp on pages 262-263 of
the author’s “Wild Life Near Home.” This is the tree known as
sour gum, more properly tupelo (_Nyssa sylvatica_ or
_uniflora_).

_cardinal grosbeak:_ Commonly called “cardinal,” or “redbird.”

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_Holy Day:_ What was the oldest form of our word “holiday”?

_ilex:_ _Ilex verticillata_, the black alder, or winterberry,
one of the holly family. A low swamp bush covered with red
berries all winter.

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_Lupton’s Pond:_ A little pond along Cohansey Creek near
Bridgeton, N. J.

_Persimmon trees_: found from New Haven, Conn., to Florida.

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_Bob Cratchit’s goose:_ There never was such a goose, as you all
know who have read Dickens’s “Christmas Carol.”

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_liquid amber:_ The balsamic juice of the sweet gum tree,
sometimes called “bilsted” (_Liquidambar styraciflua_), a large,
beautiful swamp tree found from Connecticut to Florida and west
to Texas.

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_half-human tracks:_ Because the coon is a relative of the bears
and has a long hind foot that leaves a track much like that of a
small baby.

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_tupelo:_ See note on _gum swamp_, page 141.

_sour gums_: same as tupelo.

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_chicken or frost grapes_: _Vitis cordifolia_: the smallest,
sourest, best (boy standards) of all our wild grapes. They ripen
_after_ the frost and feed the boys and birds when all other
such fruits have gone from the woods.

_Smooth winterberry_: is really another ilex, _Ilex lævigata_, a
larger bush than _Ilex verticillata_, the black alder or
winterberry.

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_Fox sparrows:_ See the frontispiece. The largest, most
beautiful of our sparrows. Nests in the Far North. A migrant to
New England and the Southern States.

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_The crows were winging over toward their great roost:_ Don’t
fail this winter to spend, if not Christmas Day, then one of
your Christmas vacation days, in the woods, from morning until
the crows go over to their roost. You will never forget that
day.