CHAPTER I
TO THE TEACHER
Put the question to your scholars individually: Who is your messenger of spring? Make the reading of this book not an end in itself, but only a means toward getting the pupils out of doors. Never let the reading stop with the end of the chapter, any more than you would let your garden stop with the buying of the seeds. And how eager and restless a healthy child is for the fields and woods with the coming of spring! Do not let your opportunity slip. Go with them after reading this chapter (re-reading if you can the first chapter in “The Fall of the Year”) out to some meadow stream where they can see the fallen stalks and brown matted growths of the autumn through which the new spring shoots are pushing, green with vigor and promise. The seal of winter has been broken; the pledge of autumn has been kept; the life of a new summer has started up from the grave of the summer past. Here by the stream under your feet is the whole cycle of the seasons—the dead stalks, the empty seed-vessels, the starting life.
Let the children watch for the returning birds and report to you; have them bring in the opening flowers, giving them credit (on the blackboard) for each new flower found; go with them (so that they will not bring the eggs to you) to see the new nests discovered, teaching them by every possible means the folly and cruelty of robbing birds’ nests, of taking life; while at the same time you show them the beauty of life, its sacredness, and manifold interests.
FOR THE PUPIL
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Have you ever seen a “spring peeper” peeping? You will hear, these spring nights, many distinct notes in the marshes, and when you have seen all of the lowly musicians you will be a fairly accomplished naturalist. Let the discovery of “Who’s Who among the Frogs” this spring be one of your first outdoor studies. The picture shows you Pickering’s hyla, blowing his bagpipe. Arbutus: trailing arbutus (Epigæa repens), sometimes called ground-laurel, and mayflower, fishflower (in New Jersey).
hepatica: liver-leaf (Hepatica triloba).
Spice-bush: wild allspice, fever-bush, Benjamin-bush (Benzoin æstivale).
Wood-pussy: the skunk, who comes out of his winter den very early in spring, and whose scent is one of the characteristic odors of a New England spring.
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All white and still: The whole poem will be found on the last page of “Winter,” the second book in this series.
trillium: the wake-robin. Read Mr. Burroughs’s book “Wake-Robin,”—the first of his outdoor books.
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phœbe: See the chapter called “The Palace in the Pig-Pen.”
bloodroot: Sanguinaria canadensis. See the picture on this page. So named because of the red-orange juice in the root-stalks, used by the Indians as a stain.
marsh-marigolds: The more common but incorrect name is “cowslip.” The marsh-marigold is Caltha palustris and belongs with the buttercup and wind-flower to the Crowfoot Family. The cowslip, a species of primrose, is a European plant and belongs to the Primrose Family.
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woolly-bear: caterpillar of the isabella tiger moth, the common caterpillar, brown in the middle with black ends, whose hairs look as if they had been clipped, so even are they.
mourning-cloak: See picture, page 77 of “Winter,” the second book of this series. The antiopa butterfly.
juncos: the common slate-colored “snowbirds.”
witch-hazel: See picture, page 28 of “The Fall of the Year”; read description of it on pages 31-33 of the same volume.
bluets: or “innocence” (Houstonia cœrulea).
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the Delaware: the Delaware River, up which they come in order to lay their eggs. As they come up they are caught in nets and their eggs or “roe” salted and made into caviar.
Cohansey Creek: a small river in New Jersey.
Lupton’s Meadows: local name of meadows along Cohansey Creek.