The Fall of the Year

NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS

Go yourself frequently into the fields and woods, or into the city parks, or along the water front – anywhere so that you can touch nature directly, and look and listen for yourselves. Don’t try to teach what you do not know, and there is nothing in this book that you cannot know, for the lesson to be taught in each chapter is a spiritual lesson, not a number of bare facts. This spiritual lesson you must first learn before you can teach it – must feel, I should say; and a single thoughtful excursion alone into the autumn fields will give you possession of it. And what is the lesson in this chapter? Just this: that the strong growths of summer, the ripening of seeds and fruits, the languid lazy spirit, and the pensive signs of coming autumn are all the manifold preparations of nature for a fresh outburst of life with the coming of spring.

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The clock of the year strikes one: When, in the daytime, the clock strikes one, the hour of noon is past; the afternoon begins. On the 21st of June the clock of the year strikes twelve – noon! By late July the clock strikes one – the noon hour is past! Summer is gone; autumn – the afternoon of the year – begins.

going “creepy-creep”: In the quiet of some July day in fields or woods, listen to the stirring of the insects and other small wood creatures. All summer long they are going about their business, but in the midst of stronger noises we are almost deaf to their world of little sounds.

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begins to shift: Why is the oak’s shadow likely to be “round” at noon? What causes the shadow to “shift”; or move? In which direction would it move?

falls a yellow leaf from a slender birch near by … small flock of robins from a pine … swallows were gathering upon the telegraph wires: Next summer, note the exact date on which you first see signs of autumn – the first falling of the leaves, the first gathering of birds for their southern trip. Most of the migrating birds go in flocks for the sake of companionship and protection.

chewink (named from his call, chē-wink´; accent on second, not on first, syllable, as in some dictionaries) or ground robin, or towhee or joree; one of the finch family. You will know him by his saying “chewink” and by his vigorous scratching among the dead leaves, and by his red-brown body and black head and neck.

vireo (vīr´-ē-ō): the red-eyed vireo, the commonest of the vireo family; often called “Preacher”; builds the little hanging nest from a small fork on a bush or tree so low often that you can look into it.

fiery notes of the scarlet tanager (tăn´-a-jẽr): His notes are loud and strong, and he is dressed in fiery red clothes and sings on the fieriest of July days.

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resonant song of the indigo bunting: or indigo-bird, one of the finch family. He sings from the very tip of a tree as if to get up close under the dome of the sky. Indeed, his notes seem to strike against it and ring down to us; for there is a peculiar ringing quality to them, as if he were singing to you from inside a great copper kettle.

scarlet tanager by some accident: The tanager arrives among the last of the birds in the spring, and builds late; but, if you find a nest in July or August, it is pretty certain to be a second nest, the first having been destroyed somehow – a too frequent occurrence with all birds.

half-fledged cuckoos: The cuckoo also is a very late builder. I have more than once found its eggs in July.

red wood-lily: Do you know the wood-lily, or the “wild orange-red lily” as some call it (Lilium philadelphicum)? It is found from New England to North Carolina and west to Missouri, but only on hot, dry, sandy ground, whereas the turk’s-cap and the wild yellow lily are found only where the ground is rich and moist.

low mouldy moss: Bring to school a flake, as large as your hand, of the kind of lichen you think this may be. Some call it “reindeer moss.”

sweet-fern: Put a handful of sweet-fern (Myrica asplenifolia) in your pocket, a leaf or two in your book; and whenever you pass it in the fields, pull it through your fingers for the odor. Sweet gale and bayberry are its two sweet relatives.

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milkweed, boneset, peppermint, turtle-head, joe-pye-weed, jewel-weed, smartweed, and budding goldenrod: Go down to the nearest meadow stream and gather for school as many of these flowers as you can find. Examine their seeds.

wind is a sower going forth to sow: Besides the winds what other seed-scatterers do you know? They are many and very interesting.

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“Over the fields where the daisies grow…”

From “Thistledown” in a volume of poems called “Summer-Fallow,” by Charles Buxton Going.

seed-souls of thistles and daisies and fall dandelions seeking new bodies for themselves in the warm soil of Mother Earth: On your country walks, watch to see where such seeds have been caught, or have fallen. They will be washed down into the earth by rain and snow. If you can mark the place, go again next spring to see for yourself if they have risen in “new bodies” from the earth.

sweet pepper-bush: The sweet pepper-bush is also called white alder and clethra.

chickadees: Stand stock-still upon meeting a flock of chickadees and see how curious they become to know you. You may know the chickadee by its tiny size, its gray coat, black cap and throat, its saying “chick-a-dee,” and its plaintive call of “phœbe” in three distinct syllables.

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clock strikes twelve: As we have thought of midsummer as the hour from twelve to one in the day, so the dead of winter seems by comparison the twelve o’clock of midnight.

shimmering of the spiders’ silky balloons: It is the curious habit of many of the spiders to travel, especially in the fall, by throwing skeins of silky web into the air, which the breezes catch and carry up, while the spiders, like balloonists, hang in their web ropes below and sail away.

I have chosen the fox in this chapter to illustrate this very interesting and striking fact that wild animals, birds and beasts, thrive in the neighborhood of man if given the least protection; for if the fox holds his own (as surely he does) in the very gates of one of the largest cities in the United States, how easy it should be for us to preserve for generations yet the birds and smaller animals! I might have written a very earnest chapter on the need for every pupil’s joining the Audubon Society and the Animal Rescue League; but young pupils, no less than their elders, hate to be preached to. So I have recounted a series of short narratives, trusting to the suggestions of the chapter, and to the quiet comment of the teacher to do the good work. Every pupil a protector of wild life is the moral.

There are two species of foxes in the eastern states – the gray fox, common from New Jersey southward, and the larger red fox, so frequent here in New England and northward, popularly known at Reynard. Far up under the Arctic circle lives the little white or Arctic fox, so valuable for its fur; and in California still another species known as the coast fox. The so-called silver or blue, or black, or cross fox, is only the red fox with a blackish or bluish coat.

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Mullein Hill: the name of the author’s country home in Hingham, Massachusetts. The house is built on the top of a wooded ridge looking down upon the tops of the orchard trees and away over miles of meadow and woodland to the Blue Hills, and at night to the lights that flash in Boston Harbor. Years before the house was built the ridge was known as Mullein Hill because of the number and size of the mulleins (Verbascum Thapsus) that grew upon its sides and top.

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mowing-field: a New England term for a field kept permanently in grass for hay.

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grubby acres: referring to the grubs of various beetles found in the soil and under the leaves of its woodland.

BB: the name of shot about the size of sweet pea seed.

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Pigeon Henny’s coop: a pet name for one of the hens that looked very much like a pigeon.

shells: loaded cartridges used in a breech-loading gun.

bead drew dead: when the little metal ball on the end of the gun-barrel, used to aim by, showed that the gun was pointing directly at the fox.

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the mind in the wild animal world: how the animals may really feel when being chased, namely, not frightened to death, as we commonly think, but perhaps cool and collected, taking the chase as a matter of course, even enjoying it.

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The Chase: The sound of the hunting is likened to a chorus of singing voices; the changing sounds, as when the pack emerges from thick woods into open meadow, being likened to the various measures of the musical score; the whole musical composition or chorus being called The Chase.

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dead heat: a race between two or more horses or boats where two of the racers come out even, neither winning.

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Flood: Why spelled with a capital? What flood is meant?

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hard-pressed fox had narrowly won his way: In spite of the author’s attempt to shoot the fox that was stealing his chickens do you think the author would be glad if there were no foxes in his woods? How do they add interest to his out of doors? What other things besides chickens do they eat? Might it not be that their destruction of woodchucks (for they eat woodchucks) and mice and muskrats quite balances their killing of poultry? (The author thinks so.)

The thought in this chapter is evident, namely, that love for the out of doors is dependent upon knowledge of the out of doors. The more we know and the better we understand, the more perfect and marvelous nature seems and the more lovely. The toadfish looks loathly, but upon closer study he becomes very interesting, even admirable – one of the very foundations of real love. So, as a teacher and as a lover of nature, be careful never to use the words “ugly” or “nasty” or “loathly”; never shrink from a toad; never make a wry face at a worm; never show that you are having a nervous fit at a snake; for it all argues a lack of knowledge and understanding. All life, from Man to the Amœba, is one long series of links in a golden chain, one succession of wonderful life-histories, each vastly important, all making up the divinely beautiful world of life which our lives crown, but of which we are only a part, and, perhaps, no more important a part than the toadfish.

The toadfish of this story is Batrachus tau, sometimes called oyster-fish or sapo. The fishing-frog or angler is by some called toadfish, as is also the swell-fish or common puffer of the Atlantic Coast.

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Buzzards Bay: Where is Buzzards Bay? Do you know Whittier’s beautiful poem, The Prayer of Agassiz, which begins: —

Where is Penikese? What waters are those “sapphire seas,” and what was Agassiz doing there?

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Davy Jones: Who is Davy Jones? Look him up under Jones, Davy, in your dictionary of Proper Names. Get into the “looking up” habit. Never let anything in your reading, that you do not understand, go unlooked up.

Old Man of the Sea: Look him up too. Are he and Davy Jones any relation?

It was really a fish: What names do you think of that might fit this fish?

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coarsely marbled with a darker hue: What is the meaning of marbled?

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covered with water: The author means that the rock is not always covered with water, not the hole under the rock. Of course the hole is always built so that it is full of water, else the fish would perish at low tide.

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love the out of doors with all your mind: Do you know what is meant by loving the out of doors with your mind? Just this: that while you feel (with your heart) the beauty of a star, at the same time you know (with your mind) that that particular star, let us say, is the Pole Star, the guide to the sailors on the seas; that it is also only one of a vast multitude of stars each one of which has its place in the heavens, its circuit or path through the skies, its part in the whole orderly universe – a thought so vast and wonderful that we cannot comprehend it. All this it means to love with our minds. Without minds a star to us is only a point of light, as to Peter Bell

Does the toadfish become anything more than a mere toadfish in a shoe before the end of the chapter?

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in the toadfish’s shoe: What does the author mean by asking you to put yourself in the toadfish’s shoe? Only this: to try, even with the humblest of creatures, to share sympathetically their lives with them. The best way to do this with man as well as with toadfish is to learn about their lives.

There are several practical uses to which you can put this chapter, and the similar chapters, VII and XII: they can be made the purpose for field excursions with the class. Such excursions might be quite impossible for many a teacher in school hours; and we know how the exacting duties overcrowd the after-school hours; but one field excursion each season of the year, no matter how precious your time, would do more for you and your class than many books about nature read inside your four plastered walls. Better the books than nothing; but take the book and go with your pupils into the real out of doors.

Again, you can make these chapters a kind of nature test, asking each pupil to try to see each of the things suggested here; or, if these do not chance to be the sights characteristic of the autumn in your region, then such sights as are characteristic. So the chapter can serve as a kind of field guide to the pupil, and a kind of test of his knowledge of nature.

Again, you can make each item mentioned here the subject for a short composition direct from the pupil’s experience – the only kind of subject for him to write upon. Or make each item (say, No. IV, the Ballooning Spiders) the beginning for a short course of study or collateral reading for the individual pupil particularly interested in spiders!

The real point of this story (but first of all it is a story and should not be spoiled with any moral) is the thought in the lines: —

“There were thousands of persons who could have gold eggs if they cared. But eagles’ eggs! Money could not buy such a sight as this.” Which means, that the simple joys of the out of doors, and the possession of youth and health, are better than any joys that money can create, and more precious possessions than all the money in the world can buy. One can get all the thrilling sensations of height by standing up in a quaking eagle’s nest sixty feet from the ground, that one can possibly get from the top of the Eiffel Tower or on the peak of Mount Washington, or from a flying-machine among the clouds. And then who among the rich of the world ever saw eagles’ eggs in a nest, or had eagles dig him with their talons? To be alive to all the wonder of the life, to all the beauty of the world about us, is the very secret of living. An eagle’s nest to climb into is as good as a flying-machine.

Take occasion, too, at the end of the story to say how much better, how much more interesting, an act it was to leave the eggs to hatch than to rob the nest and thus destroy two young eagles. Some years later, for instance, two young eagles were taken from a neighboring nest and were sent to the Zoölogical Gardens at Philadelphia, where they may still be living for thousands of visitors each year to see. Who knows but that one of the parents of these two captive birds may have been in the eggs laid back by the boy in that nest?

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Maurice River Cove: Where is Maurice River Cove? What is the Cove famous for?

great eagle’s nest: Look up the habits of the bald eagle in some natural history. Is he a very great enemy to man? If a pair of the noble birds lived in your neighborhood would you want their nest destroyed and the birds shot? Do you know the story of “Old Abe”? Look that up also.

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scream of a wild cat: The wild cat is still to be found throughout the United States wherever the country is very wild and wooded. Its cry or scream is an indescribable thrill that shoots cold all over you, freezing fast in the roots of your hair.

mud-hens: The mud-hen or American coot, a dark bluish slate-colored bird of the marshes about the size of a large bantam, with an ivory-white bill and peculiar lobed toes, instead of webbed like a duck’s.

eyrie: What does the word mean? Are there any other ways of spelling it?

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size of a small haystack: This is no exaggeration. From one nest of a fish hawk (and this nest was probably built first by a fish hawk) that blew down from the top of an old house chimney in the Maurice River Marshes, the author knew six one-horse cartloads of loose sticks to be taken.

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such a sight as this: Have you ever seen a sunset more gorgeous than any artist could paint and any rich man could buy? Ever had a smell of trailing arbutus that no perfumer could equal, that all the money in the world could not create? Old Midas had a golden touch and turned his daughter into gold. Was he not more than willing to be the poorest man in his kingdom if only he might be rid of the fatal touch, be a natural man again and have his loving little daughter a natural child again? To be your natural selves, and to enjoy your beautiful natural world is better than to be anything else, or to have anything else, in the world.

We hear so much of the drudgery of farm life, of its dreariness, and meagre living that this chapter, aside from its picture of cheer and plenty, should be made the text for a good deal of comment upon the many other phases of farm life that make for the fullest kind of existence; namely, the independence of the farmer; the vast and interesting variety of his work; his personal contact with domestic animals, his fruit-trees, garden, and fields of grain; his intimate acquaintance with the weather; his great resourcefulness in meeting insect plagues, blights, and droughts; his out-of-door life that makes him strong and long-lived, etc., etc.

If you are a country teacher it is one of your great missions to show the boys that they should stay upon the farm, or rather that the farm is a good place to stay on for life; if you are a city teacher it should be your mission to head many a boy countryward for life with the understanding that it requires more sound sense and resourcefulness to make a successful farmer than it does to make a bank president.

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end of the outdoors: The fall plowing, even the digging of the ditches – all the work in the soil is about over by Thanksgiving when the ground begins to freeze.

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crib-house: Where the writer lived as a boy the corn was husked and left in the ear and stored in long, narrow houses built of beveled slats spaced about half an inch apart to allow the wind free play, but like the thin slats of a shutter so arranged that the rain ran down and, except in a driving wind, did not wet the grain.

“spring-house”: Spring-houses took the place of modern ice-chests, being little cupboard-like houses well ventilated and screened, built near the farmhouse and usually over a spring of water that kept the milk and other contents cool.

battened: Is this a “land” term or a “sea” term? What does it mean? Look it up and report.

the swallows: These were the barn swallows – the beautiful swallows with the long, finely-forked tail. You will always know them on the wing by the brown breast and fine forked tail.

worm-fence: A worm-fence is built of rails laid one on top of the other, running zigzag, each corner held together by two upright stakes, set in the ground and crossed just above the next-to-the-top rail. The top rail is laid in the crotch of the two stakes.

turn-o’-lane: name of a very excellent old-fashioned apple that got its name from the fact that the original tree of the kind grew at a turn of the lane – the writer does not know whose lane.

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double-hived: It is customary to cover beehives with newspapers, then slip an outside box down over papers and all to keep the swarm from the cutting cold winds of winter. Bees are frequently brought into the cellar for the winter in northern latitudes.

put on an extra coat, and turned their collars up about their ears: What does the writer mean?

changed their roost from the ridge-pole: Turkeys roost high; but the ridge-pole of the crib-house used to be too cold in the dead of winter, so they would change to the more protected apple-tree, still roosting high, however.

pearmain: name of a “summer” apple in New Jersey; of a winter apple in this section of Massachusetts.

garden of box: the box bush.

bleeding-hearts: an old-fashioned flower; a low shrub with pendent blossoms shaped like a heart.

creeper: the Virginia creeper, or woodbine.

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“template” stove: from template or templet, a strip of sheet iron used in boiler-making. A simple long stove made of a single piece of sheet iron, bent like an inverted U, and riveted to a cast iron bottom. It had a single door in the front; and burnt pieces of wood about two feet long. Often called “tenplate” stove.

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seven of us alone: seven brothers and sisters in the writer’s family.

flats: Describe the outside appearance of a city “flat,” and also the inside if you have ever been in a flat. Is it like a farmhouse?

kitchenette: What kind of a kitchen is a kitchenette?

neither a farm nor a city home: By which the writer means a farm in the ordinary sense of land cultivated for a living. His is a home only, with several acres around it, largely in woods and grass.

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“Bucksy”: the invented name of a little Indian hero about whom the writer tells stories to his little boys.

Suggestions as to the practical uses to which this chapter can be put may be gathered from the notes to chapter IV and chapter XII, each of which is similar to this one.

This chapter and the next (chapter IX) should be taken together as a single study of the provision of nature against the severity of winter’s cold, chapter VIII being a detailed account of one creature’s preparations, while chapter IX follows, showing how the foresight and care obtain even among the plants and trees. The two chapters together should give the pupils a glad thought for winter, should utterly change their conventional language and feeling for it as a time of death. And instead of lamenting the season as a necessary evil, you must show them that it is to be welcomed as a period of sleep for nature from which she will waken in all the freshness of a springtime such as is nowhere to be had outside of the temperate zone. “It is not always May,” wails the poet; but ask them: Who wants it always May? We want the variety, the contrasts of our four seasons, and as to winter, let the North Wind blow at will, redden our cheeks, quicken our step, put purpose into our wills and – it won’t starve us; for we, too, like the muskrat, are provided for.