CHAPTER VIII

TO THE TEACHER

Set the pupils to watching for evidences of mother-love among the lower creatures, where we do not think of finding it; stir them to look for unreported acts, and the hidden, less easily observed ways. Such a suggestion might be the turning of a new page for them in the book of nature.

FOR THE PUPIL

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_Cud_: the ball of grass or hay that the cow keeps bringing up from her first stomach to be chewed and swallowed, going then into the second stomach, where it is digested.

_stanchions_: the iron or wooden fastening about the cow’s neck in the stall.

_mother-principle_: the instinct or unconscious impulse of all living things to reproduce their kind.

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_spores_: the name of the seed dust of the ferns.

_the hunter family_: these are the spiders that build no nets or webs for snaring their prey, but hunt their prey over the ground.

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_Toadfish_: See the chapter in the “Fall of the Year” called “In the Toadfish’s Shoe.”

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_Surinam toads_: pronounced sōō-rī-näm´.

_Mother-passion ... in the life of reptiles_: many readers, seeing this statement in the “Atlantic Monthly,” where the essay first appeared, have written me of how when they were _boys_ they saw snakes swallow their young--or at least killed the old snakes with young in them! Isn’t that mother-love among the reptiles? But every time the story has been about garter snakes or moccasins or some other ovoviviparous snake; that is, a snake that does not lay eggs, but keeps them within her body till they hatch, then _gives birth_ to the young. I have never seen a snake swallow its young; though big snakes do _eat_ little ones whenever they can get them.