Chapter X: To the Teacher

This chapter and the next go together--this for the lover of
wild life, the next for the lover of adventure. The spring
freshet is one of the most interesting of the year of days for
animal study--better even than the day after the first snowfall.
But more than this, let both chapters suggest to you how
primitive and elemental the real world is after all; with what
cataclysmal forces the seasons are changed. As summer often
passes into autumn with a silencing frost that rests like a hush
of awe over the land; so winter often gives way to spring with a
rush of wind and tidal powers that seem to shake the foundations
of the world. To feel these forces, to be a part of all these
moods, to share in all these feelings--this, too, is one of the
ends of nature-study.