A book of the seasons, each page of which should be written in its own season and out of doors, or in its own locality, wherever it may be. — thoreau CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA THE TORCH PRESS NINETEEN HUNDRED NINE Copyright 1909 by Fred J. Lazell...

Like the two preceding little volumes of this series, this book seeks to show something of what Iowa has to offer to the man who loves the out-of-doors. There is nothing very unusual in it. The trees and the flowers, the birds and the small wild animals which it mentions and describes are such as may be seen in the Iowa fields and woods by anyone who cares enough about them to walk amid their haunts. The illustrations are such as the ordinary nature lover may "take" for himself with his pocket k

Tiny rabbits venture out from the tall grasses and look on life with timid eyes. Bees and butterflies are busy with the day's work. Life with its beauty and its joy is everywhere abundant. Living things swim in and upon the brook, insects run and leap among the grasses, winged creatures are in the shrubs, the trees, the air, active, eager, beautiful life is everywhere. The heart thrills with the beauty, the joy, the zest, the abundance of it, expands to a capacity for the amplitude of it. Human

Ceaselessly up and down the old road passes the pageant of the year, never two days the same, especially at this season. In the middle of the road is a dirt wagon-track, on either side of which is a broad belt of grass, flowers, shrubs and small trees till you come to the fence. Beyond one fence the thick woods has a heavy undergrowth; over the other is a well-wooded pasture. On the south side, between the road and the fence there is a little brook, sometimes with a high, mossy and timbered bank

Around the fence-post, where the versi-colored fungus grows, the moon-seed winds its stems, like strands of twine. Its broad leaves are set like tilted mirrors to catch and reflect the light. Trailing among the grass the pea-vine lifts itself so that its blossoms next month shall attract the bees. The wild hop is reaching over the bushes for the branches of the low-growing elm from which to hang its fruit clusters. Circling up the trunk and the spreading branches of the elm, the Virginia creeper

Goldfinches ride on the billows of the air, now folding their pinions and shooting silently downward into the trough of the sea, then opening their wings and beating their way upwards, singing meanwhile. Going over the woods they fly twenty to thirty feet above the tops of the tallest trees, but when they reach the meadow lands they drop to about the same height above the surface of the ground. Only a few of them are nesting yet. The tall thistle by the roadside is nearly ten feet high, but its

When morning broke, little wisps of mist, like curls of white smoke, were drifting on the surface of the river as it journeyed through the canyon of cliffs and trees, dark as the walls of night, toward the valley where the widening sea of day was slowly changing from gray to rosy gold. Caught in a cove where the water was still these little wisps gathered together and crept in folds up the face of the cliff, as if they fain would climb to the very top where the red cedars ran like a row of battl

Happy is the man who has made a companion of some fine old tree standing near his home, type of the tree which he loved in his boyhood, perchance the very same huge white oak. He learns to go to it as he would to his friend, to let the old tree share his sorrows and his joys. Others may be heedless of its charm, ignorant of its power to help, but for him it always has a welcome and a ministry of beauty. He learns to visit it often, to talk to it in his thoughts. Some dreamy summer morning he mus

Now a woodchuck, fat from a summer's feeding, climbs heavily to a tree stump and seats himself to pass the morning in his favorite avocation of doing nothing. He worked during the night or the very early morning, for fresh dirt lay at the entrance to his hole. Evidently he had been enlarging it for the winter. Like a Plato at his philosophies he sits now, slowly moving his head from side to side, as if steeping his senses in the beauty of the world around him so that all the dreams of his long w

From a hole in the side of a fallen log the chipmunk peeps warily, comes out quickly, but whisks back again in fancied fright. Soon he returns and sits on the log awhile, barking his bird-like "chip, chip," and flirting his tail with each note. Then he sets about gathering the old oak leaves which were piled near the log by the winds last March and have lain undisturbed through the summer. Grabbing two or three in his mouth, he pushes them into his pouches with his paws and is gone into his hole

And oh, the color-splendor of these August days! Here at the top of the cliff, the orange-flowered milkweed still flames in beauty, mingled with the pink and lavender bergamot and the varied yellows of the sunflowers and the rosin weeds. Down nearer the water's edge where the shelves of the cliff are layered with soil, the virgin's bower twines clusters of creamy white. On the grassy shore where the river begins to leave the rocks the brilliant blue lobelia is breaking into blossom, contrasted w

Great fluffy masses of pink purple at the top of large-leaved stems are the blossoms of the Joe Pye Weed, and smaller clusters of royal purple in the grassy places are the efflorescence of the iron weed. A stretch of grassy ground, which slopes down to the river's brink, is gemmed with the thick purple clusters of the milkwort, which shines among the grass as the early blossoms of the clover used to do when the summer was young. Here and there the little bag-like blossoms of the gerardia, or fox

Sometimes the creek almost sinks from sight in a bed of hot sand; it leaves only a narrow runlet of water idling along the foot of the high bank and pausing in each deep pool at the feet of the overhanging trees to cool and refresh itself for its onward journey. To these quiet pools goes the fisherman with his minnow seine and a stick. He knows that in the water among the roots of the old tree lie shiners and soap minnows, creek chubs and soft-shelled "crawdads," the kind that make good bait for

In the cool days of September, when walking is a fine art, I love to accompany the lower portion of the old creek down to the river, following the little path made by farmer boys and fishermen. The two posts at the fence by the roadside, set just far enough apart for a man to squeeze himself through, are the gates to a land elysian. When I pass through them I am a thousand miles from the city with its toil and pain, its strife and sorrow. Worldly cares drop from my back as I stand upon the brink

It is worth while to spend a little time with the friendly golden-rod which spreads all over upland and lowland almost as generous as the sunshine. To many of us one stalk of golden-rod looks much like another, but a very little study will readily enable us to distinguish between the different species and will add wonderfully to its interest and charm. There is the tall, smooth stemmed golden-rod, with saw toothed leaves, except near the base and ample pyramids of medium-sized clusters of blosso