Various

“ There is the low, sweet mother-talk to the brood, the notes of warning, the "scatter calls" of autumn from the survivors of an attack, "Where are you? Where are you?" and a sort of duet between male and female at nesting time. When she leaves the nest, she calls "Lou-is-e!" and he strikes in on the last syllable with "Bob;" she repeats, and he bursts forth "Bob White!" with emphasis. Then the clear, ringing whistles through midsummer sound up and down the meadow from one quail to another. ”

“ Better than a knowledge of Hebrew, Greek and Latin is it to know what the birds, the trees, and flowers all say, what the winds and waves, the clouds and constellations all tell us of coming events.
There is a world of observation, thought and enjoyment for those who study nature in all her varying moods that is denied those who, having eyes see not and having ears hear not. ”

“ Our most glorious bird-day is when the orioles appear in flashing black and gold with ringing whistle, or their orchard cousins in ruddy chestnut tints, alternately singing and scolding, chack! chack! and little later, come the scarlet and summer tanagers to the parks and public gardens, lighting up the tall trees with their splendid color, and making the neighborhood ring with their chip-chur and chicky-tuck! ”

“ Men wonder sometimes how they can expend a modest sum of money to good purpose in giving pleasure and profit to others. Get some pictures of good faces, and flowers, and landscapes, and other proper subjects, and put them upon the walls of your nearest school-house, or of some other in which you may be interested. When you have done this for one school you may want to do it for a second, or you will suggest to some other generous heart the like gift of enduring value. What chance have boys and girls with a dead-alive teacher in a school-house whose blank walls are eloquent of poverty? ”

“ On the contrary, it is by the edge of the wood and after the brood is reared, that tree-top birds, like tanagers and cardinals, grow most friendly and fearless. Frequently, when I raised my glasses to look at some plain brown or gray bird, the scarlet of a tanager would flash across the field, and the rose glow of the cardinals appear in the grass. The female cardinal, with her lovely fawn tints and rose linings, and her beautiful voice, equals the male in interest. ”

“ Every struggle which the poor creature makes to escape causes the sand to slide down faster, and the ant-lion at the bottom jerks up a shower of sand with its head, which hastens the miniature avalanche until the poor victim is within reach of the powerful jaws and is devoured. ”

“ THE mounting of birds and the small animals of the field and forest is an art which is possessed by few people, yet which is not difficult and which especially appeals to the lover of nature. It is an art which it is well worth while popularizing, for it can be made the vehicle for the expression of a great deal of beauty, while preserving and making use, in the interests of scientific study, of materials which otherwise would be irretrievably lost. ”

“ Without wishing to conflict with the opinions of those so much more learned on the subject than ourselves, we would ask, would it not be much more reasonable to suppose, without positive proof, that the origin of the domestic dog can be referred to numerous aboriginal species, crossing with the wild varieties—as we know our dogs will frequently do, including the wolf, jackal, and the fox, if we like, climate assisting, and man aiding by judicious intermixing and breeding—until the present high standard of this useful animal has been reached? ”

“ Bewick's wren, Mr. Torrey says, "greatly prefers the town to woods and meadows," and even the winter wrenkin, dear little saucy brownie that he is, vouchsafes us a glimpse of himself now and then in the city. As for the bigger kinsfolk, the mocking-bird and catbird, they love the shrubbery of our lawns, and gardens, and sing close at hand. Nor are the thrushes, shy as they are in the breeding season, hard to discover during the migrations. A Swainson's thrush will sit for an hour or so, almost within touch, his big liquid eyes regarding his human neighbors placidly. ”

“ Those that love the tree tops are seen all the better by human inhabitants of upper stories, and some of our most charming bird-books give us the experiences of a busy woman in a New York flat, or of another in a Chicago back yard, and of more than one invalid, watching these free, joyous lives with unenvious delight. ”

“ These readily become focal in any mind, but chiefly in the mind that has never been trained away from the senses by abstract thinking. No child can pay attention to anything else when a bird flies in at the window. The bird and its act, its motive, its fellows, its appearance, its nest, its young, and a thousand other notions rush to the focus of his mind, no matter how diligently he may strive to keep them down. ”

“ Just as the eye is continually tempted to wander, making one object after another its focal one, so the mind is bound to travel unless it has been trained to turn from the thing to its relations and related things and from them back to the main thing again. That is the only way to pay attention. You cannot pay attention to one physical thing for more than an instant. But you can hold a chain of connected things running through the mind, but the things are continually modified by their relations and the absolutely same thing is never again in the mind. ”

“ The instructor who has not the time nor the tact and invention needed to open the minds of his pupils first and then arrange matters so that self-directed activity will follow, will have a great deal of hard work before him if he hopes to compete with those who have found the secret of the mind's growth and act upon it intelligently. Such teaching cannot produce the results which are now being acquired in our best schools.
A whole system of education could be arranged with bird life as material for arousing and fixing the interest of the learner. ”

“ It is an inherent quality, the soul of life leading us back to nature, the All-mother. We have hung up pictures and maps of a poor quality before the class for years, and then lectured away at them ad infinitum and ad nauseam, thinking, because we understood, that the child also understood. ”

“ It is noticeable that we have in America far more well-bred setters than pointers, and greater attention seems to have been paid in the last few years in procuring the former blood than the latter. This arises from the fact that the setter is the greater favorite of the two, and justly the choice of the sportsman when he desires a dog that will unflinchingly stand the rough-and-tumble nature of our shooting. ”

“ It does not see the picture, the object itself is there, nature has entered the school room.
So we learn that bird study, aided by color photographs, is psychologically the most valuable means to the attainment of school ends. It is attractive to the young mind because it furnishes material which rises most readily to the focal point in the mind. It relieves teacher and pupil of the strain attendant upon work where it is difficult to get the class to "pay attention." It is chiefly adapted to growing minds. ”

“ The calls of birds express, bird-fashion, every feeling that the heart of man knows—surprise, fear, joy, hope, love, hate, and sorrow. If we could only contrive to think bird-thoughts, as perhaps an Audubon may have done, or a Wilson, we might understand these strange signals and cries, often uttered by invisible speakers from a world above ours. ”

“ Diesterweg said: "If you speak about a calf in the school room, bring it in and show it." This principle is still true to-day. All things in nature, as far as possible, should be present in propria persona. Where not possible, we must try to approach that ideal by bringing the very best, and natural pictures of the objects, that is colored ones, and the vivid imagination of the child does the rest. ”

“ But the reading is in your mind much as it used to be when your teacher said to you, "Now I want to see you keep your eyes on your book for fifteen minutes without looking off."
The mind grows at first by use of the senses. The sight is the main instrument of youthful mental growth. Things which can be seen or visually remembered are most appropriate subjects for juvenile thinking. You cannot well converse with children upon the pleasures of hope, the uses of adversity, nor any of the forms of mind stuff that are called abstractions. ”

“ IF IT is a very good thing to hang attractive pictures on the walls of the home, then it is doubly so thus to ornament the walls of the schoolroom. "In the emptiest room," says Ruskin, "the mind wanders most, for it gets restless like a bird for want of a perch, and casts about for any possible means of getting out and away. Bare walls are not a proper part of the means of education; blank plaster about and above them is not suggestive to pupils." The landscape makes a bright opening through the dead wall like a window ”

“ When you are reading the words of the page the words may be in your mind, but the focal point may be occupied at the time by wondering how the baby learned to climb so young and guessing whether you ought to catch her or run the risk of her falling, and if she should fall how much she would be injured, what the people would think of you for sitting there and letting her fall, why babies have to fall so much, whether they really learn much about slipping or center of gravity by falls so early in life, and a thousand other items in child study. ”

“ A VALUED pet of ours is the whippoorwill or Antrostomus vociferus. When most of the other songsters have tucked their heads under their wings our whippoorwill wakes up to the business of the night.
First, he darts about catching insects and moths for his babies' breakfast—for this is their breakfast time—or if his babies are not hatched he takes the insects to the faithful mother-bird on the nest. After this is done he thinks his business cares are over, and he feels free to enjoy himself. ”

“ When winter comes the other ants are fed by these honey-bearers, which give put the stored-up honey from their mouths drop by drop.
There is an interesting class of underground insects which, in their early stages, hide in especially dug pits and lie in wait for their prey, but which, when full grown, live above ground. Such are the ant-lions and the tiger-beetles. The young ant-lion is a heavy-bodied, clumsy-looking creature, with very long and sharp jaws, which digs for itself a funnel-shaped pit in loose, dry sand, using its flat head and jaws as a spade in digging. ”

“ Instead of repressing in the mind what is naturally inclined to become focal, education is now finding out the value of permitting these things to come naturally into the mind and so operating upon them that mental growth ensues with little or no friction, and without asking the learner to flagellate himself continually that he may have knowledge to use in that distant and half-believed-in time when he shall be a man. ”

“ But it is not alone the beauty of shells that renders them interesting. Conchology, which treats of shells, is as a science at least as old as the days of Aristotle, the study of which was resumed, along with that of the other sciences, when the dark ages had passed away. Since the beginning of the nineteenth century it has given place to a more extended and comprehensive study of molluscous animals, the presence or absence of a shell having been found not to constitute one of the most important characteristics which distinguish different classes of mollusks. ”

“ The swan of North America is considerably larger than that of the old world. The first species is the trumpeter, so-called, of which the bill is wholly black, and the second (Cygnus columbianus, or americanus) has the colored patches on the bill of less extent and deepening almost into scarlet.
Fossil remains of more than one species of swan have been found.
Our picture presents this stately bird swimming among water lilies, a sight that may be seen in summer in some of our American parks, notably the Central Park of New York City. Chicago and Cincinnati have some fine specimens. ”

“ This liveliness and readiness are not so manifest where mounted specimens are used, because the element of death becomes focal at the first instant, is displaced with difficulty, and continually recurs with sickening frequency during the exercise. The acts associated with the capture and death of the bird are too dangerously strong to be avoided. They should by no means be suggested.
Mr. Aima B. Morton puts it in this way: Why do children like colored pictures to abstraction? Because the child is father to the man. And what do we love more than tone and color, music and pictures? ”

“ Volumes have been written about the wonderful habits of ants, of their community life, of the division of labor among them, of their slave-making customs, of their courage, patriotism, and indefatigable industry, of their highly developed instinct, which, in fact, becomes real intelligence; so that almost everyone knows the main facts about these wonderful little insects, and we can spend our time to better advantage on those underground creatures about which there is less general information. ”

“ Modern research has found that pleasant sensation opens the mind and that attention is easily concentrated where inclination also leads. Whatever is discovered by the pupil while thoroughly aroused is of most lasting value. The ideas which school men have for centuries been trying to beat into the minds of children by senseless and dull repetition have been found to be easy of acquisition and in many instances matters almost of intuition if they may first be brought into the consciousness in a natural manner. ”