Let this chapter be read very close to the Christmas recess, when your children’s minds are full of Christmas thoughts. This unconventional turn to the woods, this thought of Christmas among the animals and birds, might easily be the means of awakening many to an understanding of the deeper, spiritual side of nature-study—that we find in Nature only what we take to her; that we get back only what we give. It will be easy for them to take the spirit of Christmas into the woods because they are so full of it; and so it will be easy for them to feel the woods giving it back to them—the very last and best reward of nature-study. No, don’t be afraid that they are incapable of such lessons, of such thoughts and emotions. Some few may be; but no teacher ever yet erred by too much faith in the capacity of her pupils for the higher, deeper things.
FOR THE PUPIL
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These lines of poetry you all know. But who can tell who wrote them? Where did he live and when?
gum swamp: See description of such a swamp on pages 262-263 of the author’s “Wild Life Near Home.” This is the tree known as sour gum, more properly tupelo (Nyssa sylvatica or uniflora).
cardinal grosbeak: Commonly called “cardinal,” or “redbird.”
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Holy Day: What was the oldest form of our word “holiday”?
ilex: Ilex verticillata, the black alder, or winterberry, one of the holly family. A low swamp bush covered with red berries all winter.
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Lupton’s Pond: A little pond along Cohansey Creek near Bridgeton, N. J.
Persimmon trees: found from New Haven, Conn., to Florida.
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