The Delawarean., 1900-05-26
BIRD STUDY IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
BY Mamie L. Warren, a Teacher In
the Schools of Sheffield, Mass.

When all nature is putting ON her most
gorgeous dress TO cheer us after the
long cold winter, we teachers take ad-
vantage of every opportunity to teach
the children, entrusted to our care,
Nature Study.
We spend hours developing and
demonstrating the way the bean, corn
and seed of all kinds germinate, sprout,
PUT out leaves and flowers, and the for
nation of the new fruit.
How the warm sun of the early
spring puts new life into the sap of the
trees, how it starts on its journey of
life giving to the topmost branch and
twig of the tall elm tree, how this caus-
es the tiny buds that have slept in their
brown cradles all winter, to grow, from
which come the leaves, flowers and
fruit.
We bring in these same buds and let
the pupils actually see them grow into
leaves and flowers.
We show them all the freaks of ma
ture we ever saw, heard of or read
about, such as the growing of tuberous
plants, after the middle has been re-
moved and the space filled with water,
then hung in the sun.
The filling of a sponge with fax or
other kinds of seed, the causing o. the
Wandering Jew to grow in a jar of
water, and if we were in he middle
south we would have a swee. potato
suspended over a dish Of water in a
sunny window, so that we might watch
the growth of the long graceful run
ners, we tell of the growth of The para
sites, mistletoe, the gold vine on the
potato plants, the insect eating plants,
the orchards, and so ON and on, an al
most ineXhaustible list of them.
Some of you hardly walt for the
meadows and low lands to become
really safe before you have so
thoroughly interested your pupils in
the wild flowers that they are spending
every spare minute searching for the
rare and curious blossoms that our
New England meadows, woods and
roadsides fairly TEEN with and, unless
you are an expert botanist, puzzling
all your ingenuity to manufacture
names for the same.
How diligently you read, study and
improvise to make all these interest
ing as language and drawing lessons
The braver of us will even go so far
as to have an aquira and vivaria and
give our tenderest care to snakes, fish,
turtles, toads, tadpoles, worms, whole
families of caterpillars, or any speci-
men of animal life we can capture and
coax to live within the walls or
grounds of our schools.
We read every work we. can find on
the subject and find c. F. Hodge on the
Common Toad Bydens Nature Study
by Months, The Cornell Leaflets,
Dana's How to Tell the Wild Flowers,
Bergen's, Elements of Botany and
Comstock's Insect Life, much more in
teresting than when Knighthood was
in Flower" Via Crucus"-or Red
Pottaje.'
But after all this there is still one
subject. so many of us never know,
see, or hear-"The Birds" II may be
the fault of our early education that
we have no ear for music, eye for color,
however, this may be. we find so few,
so very few teachers using these
charming friends as another branch of
their extended nature study, the flow
ers please our eye, but we must look
for them, they crafty our sense of
smell, but they must be very near us,
their bright colors cheer and brighten,
but they must be planted and cared for,
while the birds, who come long before
the flowers, this with the fact that
they are really alive, move, see, hear
and need no care except Gods, enhance
their value to the child. The flowers
we must see, while if we were blind
and helpless, we could enjoy the bird
life, if we had been taught their in
dividual song and call.
There are persons who go through
life without hearing the babbling of a
brook, the low, sad song of the wind,
or the glad, happy rollicking story the
birds have to tell each one of us, if we
are but taught to listen.
You lovers of birds will be surprised
how few people have any knowledge
on the subject-in my school last spring
asked my pupils to write me a list
of all the birds they knew by name or
call, and to describe both the bird and
its song. OF the twenty pupils but one
knew more than five, yet these same
children had always lived in the coun-
try. This was the first of March, and
when school closed in June, they were
pretty we'll acquainted with thirty-two.
1 know that our educational papers
try to impress it upon us that we are
to teach but three or four, but find
if we arouse the right sort of interes,
the pupil will teach himself with but d