CHAPTER III

TO THE TEACHER

You will try to get three suggestions out of this chapter for your pupils: First, that an old tree with holes may prove to be the most _fruitful_ and interesting tree in the neighborhood, that is to say, nothing out of doors is so far fallen to pieces, dead, and worthless as to be passed by in our nature study. (Read to them “Second Crops” in the author’s “A Watcher in the Woods.”) Secondly: the humble tree-toad is well worth the most careful watching, for no one yet has told us all of his life-story. Thirdly: one of the benefits of this simple, sincere love of the out-of-doors will come to us as rest, both in mind and body, as contentment, too, and clearer understanding of what things are worth while.

FOR THE PUPIL

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_burlap petticoat_: a strip of burlap about six inches wide tied with a string and folded over about the trunks of the trees under which the night-feeding gypsy moth caterpillars hide by day. The burlaps are lifted and the worms killed.

_a peddler’s stall_: In the days of the author’s boyhood peddlers sold almost everything that the country people could want.

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_grim-beaked baron_: the little owl of the tree.

_keep_: an older name for castle; sometimes for the dungeon.

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_for him to call the summer rain_: alluding to his evening and his cloudy-day call as a sign of coming rain.

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_castings_: the disgorged lumps of hair and bones of the small animals eaten by the owls.

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_Altair and Arcturus_: prominent stars in the northern hemisphere.