Bring home with you the big brown silky cocoons of cecropia--the
largest cocoon you will find, lashed all along its length to its twig,
and usually near the ground. Look on the black cherry, the barberry,
sassafras, and roadside and garden trees for the harder, whiter cocoon
of the promethea moth. This hangs by its tip, because the caterpillar
has begun his house by using the leaf, spinning it into the cocoon as
part of its walls, much as does the wretched “brown-tail.” The gray
cocoons, or rather nests, of this “brown-tail” moth you must bring
home to burn, for they are one of our greatest pests. You will find
them full of tiny caterpillars as you tear them open.
Bring home your collection and, with the help of such a book as “Moths
and Butterflies” by Mary C. Dickerson, identify them and hang them up
for their “coming out” in the spring.
V
If you live in the city, you ought to go up frequently to your roof
and watch for the birds that fly over. If in one of our many cities
near the water, you will have a chance that those in the country
seldom have, of seeing the seabirds--the white herring gulls (the
young gulls are brown, and look like a different species), as they
pass over whistling plaintively, and others of the wild seafowl, that
merely to hear and see in the smoky air of the city, is almost as
refreshing as an ocean voyage. Then there are the parks and public
gardens--never without their birds and, at the fall migrating time,
often sheltering the very rarest of visitors.
VI
In order to give point and purpose to one of these autumn outings, you
should take your basket, or botanizing can, and scour the woods and
fields for autumn berries. No bunch of flowers in June could be
lovelier than the bunch of autumn berries that you can gather from
thicket and wayside to carry home. And then, in order to enjoy the
trip all over again, read James Buckham’s exquisite story, “A Quest
for Fall Berries,” in his book, “Where Town and Country Meet.”
VII
Take your botany can on a trip toward the end of November and see how
many blossoming flowers you can bring home from the woods. Wild
flowers _after_ Thanksgiving in any northern state? Make the search,
on all the southern slopes and in all the sheltered corners and see
for yourselves. When you get back, you will want to read Mr. Bradford
Torrey’s account of the flowers that he found blossoming out of doors
in New England in the month of November. But who is Mr. Bradford
Torrey? and where can you find this account of his November walk? You
do not know? Well, then there is something more for you to do this
fall.
VIII
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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