a hornet’s nest: the white-faced hornet, that builds the great cone-shaped paper nests.
swifts thunder in the chimney: See chapter VII (and notes) in “Winter.” For the “thunder” see section IX in chapter X of this book.
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cabbage butterfly: a pest; a small whitish butterfly with a few small black spots. Its grubs eat cabbage.
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the crested flycatcher: is the largest of the family; builds in holes; distinguished by its use of cast-off snake-skins in its nests.
kingbird: Everybody knows him, for it is usually he who chases the marauding crows; he builds, out in the apple tree if he can, a big, bulky nest with strings a-flying from it: also called “bee-martin,” a most useful bird.
wood pewee: builds on the limbs of forest trees a most beautiful nest, much like a hummingbird’s, only larger. Pewee’s soft, pensive call of “pe-e-e-wee” in the deep, quiet, dark-shrouded summer woods is one of the sweetest of bird notes.
chebec: a little smaller than a sparrow; builds a beautiful nest in orchard trees and says “chebec, chebec, chebec.”
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One had died: After phœbe brings off her first brood sprinkle a little, tobacco-dust or lice-powder, such as you use in the hen-yard, into the nest to kill the vermin. Otherwise the second and third broods may be eaten alive by lice or mites.
CHAPTER VIII
TO THE TEACHER
In “Winter” I put a chapter called “The Missing Tooth,” showing the dark and bitter side of the life of the wild things; here I have taken that thought as most people think of it (see Burroughs’s essay, “A Life of Fear” in “Riverby”) and in the light of typical examples tried to show that wild life is not fear, but peace and joy. The kernel of the chapter is found in the words: “The level of wild life, the soul of all nature, is a great serenity.” Let the pupils watch and report instances of fear (easy to see) and in the same animals instances of peace and joy.