Put the question to your scholars individually: Who is your messenger of spring? Make the reading of this book not an end in itself, but only a means toward getting the pupils out of doors. Never let the reading stop with the end of the chapter, any more than you would let your garden stop with the buying of the seeds. And how eager and restless a healthy child is for the fields and woods with the coming of spring! Do not let your opportunity slip. Go with them after reading this chapter (re-reading if you can the first chapter in "The Fall of the Year") out to some meadow stream where they can see the fallen stalks and brown matted growths of the autumn through which the new spring shoots are pushing, green with vigor and promise. The seal of winter has been broken; the pledge of autumn has been kept; the life of a new summer has started up from the grave of the summer past. Here by the stream under your feet is the whole cycle of the seasons—the dead stalks, the empty seed-vessels, the starting life.

Let the children watch for the returning birds and report to you; have them bring in the opening flowers, giving them credit (on the blackboard) for each new flower found; go with them (so that they will not bring the eggs to you) to see the new nests discovered, teaching them by every possible means the folly and cruelty of robbing birds' nests, of taking life; while at the same time you show them the beauty of life, its sacredness, and manifold interests.

Chapter II

Read Kipling's story in "The Second Jungle Book" called "The Spring Running." Both Jungle Books ought to be in your school library. Spring is felt on the ocean as well as over the land; life is all of one piece; the thrill we feel at the touch of spring is felt after his manner and degree by bird and beast and by the fish of the sea. Go back to the last paragraph of Chapter I for the thought. Here I have expanded that thought of the tides of life rising. See the picture of the herring on their deep sea run in the last chapter of the author's "Wild Life Near Home." Let the chapter suggest to the pupils the mysterious powers of the minds of the lower animals.

Chapter III

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.

Chapter IV

See the suggestions for the corresponding chapter in "The Fall of the Year," the first volume in this series. Lest you may not have that book at hand, let me repeat here the gist of what I said there: that you make this chapter the purpose of one or more field excursions with the class—in order to see with your own eyes the characteristic sights of spring as recorded here; secondly, that you use this, and Chapters VI and X, as school tests of the pupils' knowledge and observation of his own fields and woods; and thirdly, let the items mentioned here be used as possible subjects for the pupils' further study as themes for compositions, or independent investigations out of school hours. The finest fruit the teacher can show is a school full of children personally interested in things. And what better things than live things out of doors?

Chapter V

I might have used a star, or the sun, or the sea to teach the lesson involved here, instead of the crow and his three broken feathers. But these three feathers will do for your pupils as the falling apple did for Sir Isaac Newton. The point of the chapter is: that the feathers like the stars must round out their courses; that this universe is a universe of law, of order, and of reason, even to the wing feathers of a crow. Try to show your pupils the beauty and wonder of order and law (not easy to do) as well as the beauty and wonder of shapes and colors and sounds, etc.

Chapter VII

I called this chapter when I first wrote it "The Friendship of Nature"—a much used title, but entirely suggestive of the thought and the lesson in the story here. This was first written about six years ago, and to-day, May 12, 1912, that pair of phœbes, or another pair, have their nest out under the pig-pen roof as they have had every year since I have known the pen. Repeat and expand the thought as I have put it into the mouth of Nature in the first paragraph—"We will share them [the acres] together." Instill into your pupils' minds the large meaning of obedience to Nature's laws and love for her and all her own. Show them also how ready Nature is (and all the birds and animals and flowers) to be friendly; and how even a city door-yard may hold enough live wild things for a small zoo. This chapter might well be made use of by the city teacher to stir her pupils to see what interesting live things their city or neighborhood has, although the woods and open fields are miles away.

Chapter VIII

In "Winter" I put a chapter called "The Missing Tooth," showing the dark and bitter side of the life of the wild things; here I have taken that thought as most people think of it (see Burroughs's essay, "A Life of Fear" in "Riverby") and in the light of typical examples tried to show that wild life is not fear, but peace and joy. The kernel of the chapter is found in the words: "The level of wild life, the soul of all nature, is a great serenity." Let the pupils watch and report instances of fear (easy to see) and in the same animals instances of peace and joy.

Chapter XI

The point of the story is the enthusiasm of the naturalists for their work—work that to the uncaring and unknowing seemed not even worth while. But all who do great things do them with all their might. No one can stop to count the cost whose soul is bent on great things.

Chapter XII

In this story I have tried to settle the difficult question of debit and credit between me and the out-of-doors. Shall we exterminate the red squirrels, the hawks, owls, etc., is a question that is not so easily answered as one might think. The fact is we do not want to exterminate any of our native forms of life—we need them all, and owe them more, each of them, for the good they do us, than they owe us for the little harm they may do us. Read this over with the children with its moral and economic lesson in view. Send to the National Association of Audubon Societies, New York City, for their free leaflets upon this matter. The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, Harrisburg, Pa., has a bulletin upon this same subject which will be sent free upon application.

Chapter XIII

If you have read through "The Fall of the Year" and "Winter" and to this chapter in "The Spring of the Year," you will know that the upshot of these thrice thirteen readings has been to take you and your children into the woods; you will know that the last paragraph of this last chapter is the aim and purpose and key of all three books. You must go into the woods, you must lead your children to go, deep and far and frequently. The Three R's first—but after them, before dancing, or cooking, or sewing, or manual training, or anything, send your children out into the open, where they belong. The school can give them nothing better than the Three R's, and can only fail in trying to give them more, except it give them the freedom of the fields. Help Nature, the old nurse, to take your children on her knee.

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