PREFACE.
In presenting a third volume of the Nature Readers to the children of our land, and to their parents and teachers, I feel it both a duty and a delight to thank those who have so cordially and sympathetically welcomed a new departure in School-Book Literature.
I have not sought to model these Readers upon any pattern previously set, but to make them the outcome of what I have learned, by observation, of the receptive and retentive powers of children.
I desired to impart useful and needful knowledge, in a fashion which should not be burdensome, and which should strongly impress young minds.
I have had no hobby of book-making, nor of style to follow. My one idea has been to benefit the child, and to that end I have directed my whole effort.
I sing an old song when I say, that we are a nervous race, and our children are more intensely nervous than their parents. The antidote for this nervousness, and its consequent train of disasters, is to be found in the open air, in healthful out-of-door exercise, in the serene calm of nature, in the peaceful joys which the investigation of nature affords us.
If we can open wide the gates of “the fairy-land of science,”—if we can bring the child near to the heart of nature,—if we can absorb his hours of leisure, and many of his hours of brain-work, in the study of nature out of doors, we shall have done much toward making him robust in body, sound in mind, cheerful of disposition, and useful in the future.
THE AUTHOR