CHAPTER IX
FOR THE PUPIL
The picture of the young buzzard is as true as a photograph; the bumped-up drawing of the old bird looks precisely as she did atop her dead tree, watching my approach. This vulture rarely soars into New England skies; down South, especially along the coast, the smaller black vulture (Catharista urubu) is found very tame and in great abundance; while in the far Southwest lives the great condor.
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tulip poplar: tulip-tree (Liriodendron tulipifera).
“For it had bene an auncient tree”: from Edmund Spenser’s “Shepherd’s Calendar.”
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a dozen kinds of cramps: Perhaps you will say I didn’t find much in finding the buzzard’s nest, and got mostly cramps! Yes, but I also got the buzzard’s nest—a thing that I had wanted to see for many years. It was worth seeing, however, for its own sake. Even a buzzard is interesting. See the account of him in “Wild Life Near Home,” the chapter called “A Buzzard’s Banquet.”
CHAPTER XI
TO THE TEACHER
The point of the story is the enthusiasm of the naturalists for their work—work that to the uncaring and unknowing seemed not even worth while. But all who do great things do them with all their might. No one can stop to count the cost whose soul is bent on great things.