Stalking.—A Scout has to be sharp at seeing things if she is going to be any good as a Scout. She has to notice every little track and every little sign, and it is this studying of tracks and following them out and finding out their meaning which we include under the name of stalking. For instance, if you want to find a bird’s-nest you have to stalk. That is to say, you watch a bird flying into a bush and guess where its nest is, and follow it up and find the nest. With some birds it is a most difficult thing to find their nests; take, for instance, the skylark or the snipe. But those who know the birds, especially the snipe, will recognise their call. The snipe when she is alarmed gives quite a different call from when she is happy and flying about. She has a particular call when she has young ones about. So that those who have watched and listened and know her call when they hear it know pretty well where the young ones are or where the nest is and so on.
A few tracks which you may see some day.
Tracking.—The native hunters in most wild countries follow their game by watching for tracks on the ground, and they become so expert at seeing the slightest sign of a footmark on the ground that they can follow up their prey when an ordinary civilized man can see no sign whatever. But the great reason for looking for signs and tracks is that from these you can read a meaning. It is exactly like reading a book. You will see the different letters, each letter combining to make a word, and the words then make sense; and there are also commas and full-stops and colons; all of these alter the meaning of the sense. They are all little signs which one who is practised and has learnt reading makes into sense at once, whereas a savage who has never learned could make no sense of it at all. And so it is with tracking.
Reading Signs.—As you know a soldier Scout in war can only get his information about the enemy by watching for the smallest signs both on the ground and in the far distance. In the war of Texas against Mexico in the last century, it was very important that the general commanding the Mexican Army should be captured when the defeat of that army was accomplished by the Texans. He had disappeared; but some of the Scouts of the Texan force were out scouting for the enemy when they saw in the distance some deer were suddenly startled by something they could not see and ran away. The Texan Scouts were at once suspicious, and went to the spot as fast as they could. There they found a soldier of the Mexicans evidently trying to escape. When they caught him and opened his tunic they found underneath he was wearing a silk shirt, which was not usual with a private in the Army. They took him to Headquarters, and there found that he was the Commander-in-Chief of the Mexican Army, trying to escape disguised as a soldier. And had it not been that they had noticed the deer being startled, it is probable that they would not have caught him.
Sherlock Holmesing.—In just the same way detectives, when they are following up a crime, have to act on the very smallest clues, and if they did not use their wits and notice these the criminal would probably escape.
Well, I want Girl Scouts to learn to be almost like detectives in their sharpness in noticing small signs and reading the meaning of them, not merely for the purpose of studying animals and birds, but also for studying their human fellow creatures.
It is by noticing small signs of distress or poverty in people that you can often help them in the best way. Generally those people who most need help are the ones who hide their distress; and if you are clever and notice little signs such as unhappiness, you can then give them or offer them help in some way or other. In this way you learn sympathy for fellow-creatures—not merely to be a friend of animals, but also to be a friend of your fellow-men in this world; and that again is carrying out the Girl Scout Law of helping others and being friendly to all.
Nature in the City.—This noticing of small things, especially in animal life, not only gives you great interest, but it also gives you great fun and enjoyment in life. Even if you live in a city you can do a certain amount of observation of birds and animals. You would think there is not much fun to be got out of it in a city, and yet if you begin to notice and know all about the sparrows you begin to find there is a great deal of character and amusement to be got out of them, by watching their ways and habits, their nesting, and their way of teaching their young ones to fly.
Dissecting.—If you go to the butcher’s and get him to give you a sheep’s foot and you carefully open it up with a sharp penknife you will see how wonderfully every bone and joint and sinew is made and fitted into the machine which enables the foot to move and the sheep to get along. Then, if you think it out, you know that if you go away across the sea to the other end of the world, to Australia or New Zealand, and take a sheep’s foot there and dissect it in the same way you find it exactly and identically the same over there as it is here. God’s work is the same all over the world. People don’t notice these things and don’t think about them as a rule, and when you begin to think it out you begin to see what a wonderful work it is of God’s, who made all these different animals in their own form, all alike, and yet so different from the other kind of animals, fishes, or birds. You begin to realise then what a wonderful Creator has made the world and all that is in it.