out quickly from its hiding place and if the fly
is making a violent struggle for life will soon spin a ribbon-like web
around it which will hold it secure, just as we might attempt to
secure a prisoner or wild animal that was trying to make its escape,
by binding it with ropes. A spider makes a very interesting pet and
the surest way to overcome the fear that many people have of spiders
is to know more about them.

There is no need to read big books or listen to dry lectures to study
nature. In any square foot that you may pick out at random in your
lawn you will find something interesting if you will look for it. Some
tiny bug will be crawling around in its little world, not aimlessly
but with some definite purpose in view. To this insect the blades of
grass are almost like mighty trees and the imprint of your heel in the
ground may seem like a valley between mountains. To get an adequate
idea of the myriads of insects that people the fields, we should
select a summer day just as the sun is about to set. The reflection of
its waning rays on their wings will show countless thousands of flying
creatures in places where, if we did not take the trouble to observe,
we might think there were none.

There is one very important side to nature that must not be
overlooked. It consists in knowing that we shall find a thousand
things that we cannot explain to one that we fully understand.
Education of any kind consists more in knowing when to say "I don't
know and no one else knows either" than to attempt a foolish
explanation of an unexplainable thing.

If you ask "why a cat has whiskers," or why and how they make a
purring noise when they are pleased and wag their tails when they are
angry, while a dog wags his to show pleasure, the wisest man cannot
answer your question. A teacher once asked a boy about a cat's
whiskers and he said they were to keep her from trying to get her body
through a hole that would not admit her head without touching her
whiskers.

No one can explain satisfactorily why the sap runs up in a tree and by
some chemical process carries from the earth the right elements to
make leaves, blossoms or fruit. Nature study is not "why?" It is
"how." We all learn in everyday life how a hen will take care of a
brood of chicks or how a bee will go from blossom to blossom to sip
honey. Would it not also be interesting to see how a little bug the
size of a pin head will burrow into the stem of an oak leaf and how