Birds in Winter

The
“LOOK ABOUT YOU”
Nature Study Books

BY
THOMAS W. HOARE
TEACHER OF NATURE STUDY
to the Falkirk School Board and Stirlingshire County Council

BOOK III.

LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK
16 HENRIETTA STREET, W.C.
AND EDINBURGH

Printed by M‘Farlane & Erskine, Edinburgh.

PREFACE.

This little book should be used as a simple guide tothe practical study of Nature rather than as a mere reader.

Every lesson herein set down has, during the author’smany years’ experience in teaching Nature Study, beentaught by observation and practice again and again; andeach time with satisfactory result. The materialsrequired for most of the lessons—whether they be obtainedfrom the naturalist-dealer or from the nearest hedge,ditch, or pond—are within everybody’s reach.

There is nothing that appeals to the heart of theordinary child like living things, be they animal orvegetable, and there is no branch of education at thepresent day that bears, in the young mind, such excellentfruit as the study of the simple, living things around us.

Your child is nothing if not curious. He wants tounderstand everything that lives and moves and has itsbeing in his bright little world.

Nature Study involves so many ingenious little deductions,that the reasoning powers are almost constantlyemployed, and intelligence grows proportionately. Thechild’s powers of observation are stimulated, and hismemory is cultivated in the way most pleasing to hisinquiring nature. By dissecting seeds, bulbs, buds, andflowers, his hand is trained, and methods expeditiousand exact are inculcated. By drawing his specimens,no matter how roughly or rapidly, his eye is trainedmore thoroughly than any amount of enforced copyingof stiff, uninteresting models of prisms, cones, etc., evercould train it.

The love of flowers and animals is one of the mostcommendable traits in the disposition of the wonderingchild, and ought to be encouraged above all others.

It is the author’s fondest and most sanguine hope thatthe working out of the exercises, of which this bookletis mainly composed, may prove much more of a joy thana task, and that the practical knowledge gained therebymay tempt his little readers to study further the greatbook of Nature, whose broad pages are ever open to us,and whose silent answers to our manifold questions arenever very difficult to read.

T. W. H.

CONTENTS

LESSON PAGE

I. Birds in Winter 7

II. Seed-Eaters and Insect-Eaters 12

III. Buds 16

IV. ...