In this story I have tried to settle the difficult question of debit and credit between me and the out-of-doors. Shall we exterminate the red squirrels, the hawks, owls, etc., is a question that is not so easily answered as one might think. The fact is we do not want to exterminate _any_ of our native forms of life--we need them all, and owe them more, each of them, for the good they do us, than they owe us for the little harm they may do us. Read this over with the children with its moral and economic lesson in view. Send to the National Association of Audubon Societies, New York City, for their free leaflets upon this matter. The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, Harrisburg, Pa., has a bulletin upon this same subject which will be sent free upon application. FOR THE PUPIL PAGE 115 _June-bug_: the very common brown beetle whose big white grubs you dig up under the sod and in composts. PAGE 118 _rose-breasted grosbeak_: one of the most beautiful of our birds, and a lovely singer. PAGE 120 _Chickaree_: the common name of the red squirrel. The red squirrel does not need to be destroyed. _tree swallows_: They build in holes in orchard trees, etc.; to be distinguished on the wing from the barn swallows by their white bellies and plain, only slightly forked tails. _chippies_: the little chipping sparrow, or hair-bird. _red-eyed vireos_: the most common of the vireos; see picture of its nest on page 40 of “Winter.” PAGE 121 _cowbird_: the miserable brown-headed blackbird that lays its egg or eggs in smaller birds’ nests and leaves its young to be fed by the unsuspecting foster-mother. As the young cowbird is larger than the rightful young, it gets all the food and causes them to starve. PAGE 122 _Thorn Mountain_: one of the smaller of the White Mountains; it overlooks the village of Jackson, N. H. CHAPTER XIII TO THE TEACHER If you have read through “The Fall of the Year” and “Winter” and to this chapter in “The Spring of the Year,” you will know that the upshot of these thrice thirteen readings has been to take you and your children into the woods; you will know that the last paragraph of this last chapter is the aim and purpose and key of all three books. You must _go_ into the woods, you must lead your children to go, deep and far and frequently. The Three R’s first--but after them, before dancing, or cooking, or sewing, or manual training, or anything, send your children out into the open, where they belong. The school can give them nothing better than the Three R’s, and can only fail in trying to give them more, except it give them the freedom of the fields. Help Nature, the old nurse, to take your children on her knee. FOR THE PUPIL PAGE 128 _Here is the prescription_: Think you can swallow it? Go out and try.