Nature Books

The publishers take pleasure in offering to the public, in their Home-Reading Series, some books relating to the farm and other aspects of country life as the center of interest, written by Colonel Francis W. Parker, the President of the famous Cook County Normal School, in Chicago. For many years the teachers of the common schools of the country have been benefited by the inventions of Colonel Parker... more...

PREFACE This little book is but another chapter in the shy 'wild life of the fields and woods' of which "Ways of Wood Folk" and "Wilderness Ways" were the beginning. It is given gladly in answer to the call for more from those who have read the previous volumes, and whose letters are full of the spirit of kindness and appreciation. Many questions have come of late with these... more...

PREFACE Ever since my camping life with the aborigines of Queensland, many years ago, it has been my desire to explore New Guinea, the promised land of all who are fond of nature and ambitious to discover fresh secrets. In furtherance of this purpose their Majesties, the King and Queen of Norway, the Norwegian Geographical Society, the Royal Geographical Society of London, and Koninklijk Nederlandsch... more...

INTRODUCTION. Gilbert White was born in the village of Selborne on the 18th of July, in the year 1720.  His father was a gentleman of good means, with a house at Selborne and some acres of land.  Gilbert had his school training at Basingstoke, from Thomas Warton, the father of the poet of that name, who was born at Basingstoke in 1728, six years younger than his brother Joseph, who had been born at... more...

WHAT species of mammals occur on the "coastal island", barrier beach, of Tamaulipas? Are the closest relatives of these mammals on Padre and Mustang islands of Texas, instead of on the mainland of Tamaulipas, or are the mammals on the barrier beach distinct from all others? These were questions that Dr. von Wedel of Oklahoma City and I asked ourselves in March of 1950 when we were in southern... more...

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.Nature chose the spring of the year for the time of John Burroughs's birth. A little before the day when the wake-robin shows itself, that the observer might be on hand for the sight, he was born in Roxbury, Delaware County, New York, on the western borders of the Catskill Mountains; the precise date was April 3, 1837. Until 1863 he remained in the country about his native... more...

CHAPTER I. "Bless me, I do believe I have been asleep!" said a squirrel, one fine morning in early spring, when the delicious warmth of the sun had reached him in his winter retreat, and roused the lazy little fellow from a two months' nap. The truth is, that he and his family had fallen asleep at the first setting in of the cold weather, and had passed the dismal winter in a state of... more...

INTRODUCTION Somethirty years ago, while out on one of his landlooking trips in the woods of Northern Michigan, my father came upon a little lake which seemed to him the loveliest that he had ever seen, though he had visited many in the course of his explorations. The wild ponds are very apt to be shallow and muddy, with low, marshy shores; but this one was deep and clear, and its high banks were... more...

SQUIRRELS Walking through the early October woods one day, I came upon a place where the ground was thickly strewn with very large unopened chestnut burrs. On examination I found that every burr had been cut square off with about an inch of the stem adhering, and not one had been left on the tree. It was not accident, then, but design. Whose design? A squirrel’s. The fruit was the finest I had ever... more...

A Story of Some Maples This is not a botanical disquisition; it is not a complete account of all the members of the important tree family of maples. I am not a botanist, nor a true scientific observer, but only a plain tree-lover, and I have been watching some trees bloom and bud and grow and fruit for a few years, using a camera now and then to record what I see—and much more than I see, usually! In... more...