The Spring of the Year

ought to be interested in all of the out-of-doors, it is very necessary to select some one field,

ilbert H. Trafton.) If the bird-house is on a pole or post, invert a large tin pan over the end of the post and nail the house fast upon it. This will keep cats and squirre

ate their owners to the need of keeping them well fed and shut up in the house from early evening until after

of the cats who need to be educated. Out of every hundred nests in my neighborhood the cats of two farmhouses des

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ng intimately acquainted with a locality, so that you know its trees individually, its rocks, walls, fences, the very qualities of its soil. Therefore you want a small area, close at hand. Most observers make the mistake of r

n a letter just received from a teacher, who is also a college graduate, occurs this strange description: "My window faces a hill on which straggle brown houses among the deep green of elms or oaks or maples, I don't know wh

flowers, common bushes, common

ow many things you can grow in a box on the window-sill, or in a corner of the dooryard. There are plants for the sun and plants for the shade, plants

n the woods; one to a deep, wild swamp; one to a wide salt marsh or fresh-water m

aunts; besides, you will get a sight of four distinct kinds of landscape, four deep impressions

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ur first bluebird, robin, oriole, etc.; when and where you find your first hepatica, arbutus, saxifra

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hing); you have gone with the hope (hope is a real thing) of catching fish (fish are real things); and even if you catch no fish, you will be sure, as you wait for the fish to bite, to hear a belted kingfisher, or see a painted turtl

on into frogs. There are glass vessels made particularly for such study (an ordinary glass jar will do). If you can afford a small glass aquarium,

e birds! You will hardly recognize the world as that in which your humdrum days (there are no such days, really) are

rd-study. But if there was not a bird, there would be the sunrise an

h a collection is of great interest and of real value in teaching you names and things, still there are better ways of studying living nature. For instance, I had rather have you tame a hop-toad, feed him, watch him evening after eveni

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he keys to the out-of-doors; that only sympathy and gentleness and quiet are welc