Author of "Wild Life Near Home" WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY BRUCE HORSFALL NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. Copyright, 1901, by The Century Co. Published November, 1903 3101 Printed in U. S. A. TO THE TWO LITTLE WATCHERS AT HOME...

Leading superintendents of schools and teachers have been pointing out that in "Wild Life Near Home," by Dallas Lore Sharp, there is much valuable supplementary reading for schools, and no less an authority than Mr. John Burroughs, in his recent article in the "Atlantic Monthly" entitled "Real and Sham Natural History," made the statement that "of all the nature books of recent years, I look upon Mr. Sharp's as the best." The present volume will be found to contain carefully selected chapters fr

The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold. A storm had been raging from the northeast all day. Toward evening the wind strengthened to a gale, and the fine, icy snow swirled and drifted over the frozen fields. I lay a long time listening to the wild symphony of the winds, thankful for the roof over my head, and wondering how the hungry, homeless creatures out of doors would pass the night. Where do the birds sleep such nights as this? Where in this bitter cold, this darkness and storm, will they

It was a cold, desolate January day. Scarcely a sprig of green showed in the wide landscape, except where the pines stood in a long blur against the gray sky. There was not a sign that anything living remained in the snow-buried fields, nor in the empty woods, shivering and looking all the more uncovered and cold under their mantle of snow, until a solitary crow flapped heavily over toward the pines in search of an early bed for the night. The bird reminded me that I, too, should be turning towa

One November afternoon I found Uncle Jethro back of the woodshed, drawing a chalk-mark along the barrel of his old musket, from the hammer to the sight. "What are you doing that for, Uncle Jeth?" I asked. "What fo'? Fo' mus'rats, boy." "Muskrats! Do you think they'll walk up and toe that mark, while you knock 'em over with a stick?" "G'way fum yhere! What I take yo' possumin' des dozen winters fo', en yo' dunno how to sight a gun in de moon yit? I's gwine mus'rattin' by de moon to-night, en I wo

I The electric cars run past my door, with a switch almost in front of the house. I can hear a car rumbling in the woods on the west, and another pounding through the valley on the east, till, shrieking, groaning, crunching, crashing, they dash into view, pause a moment on the switch, and thunder on to east and west till out of hearing. Then, for thirty minutes, a silence settles as deep as it lay here a century ago. Dogs bark; an anvil rings; wagons rattle by; and children shout about the cross

There are many lovers of the out-of-doors who court her in her robes of roses and in her blithe and happy hours of bird-song only. Now a lover that never sees her barefoot in the meadow, that never hears her commonplace chatter at the frog-pond, that never finds her in her lowly, humdrum life among the toads and snakes, has little genuine love for his mistress. To know the pixy when one sees it, to call the long Latin name of the ragweed, to exclaim over the bobolink's song, to go into ecstasies

In your woods walks did you ever notice a little furrow or tunnel through the underbrush, a tiny roadway in the briers and huckleberry-bushes? Did you ever try to follow this path to its beginning or end, wondering who traveled it? You have, doubtless. But the woods must be wild and the undergrowth thick and you must be as much at home among the trees as you are in your own dooryard, else this slight mark will make no impression upon you. But enter any wild tract of wood or high swamp along the

I Take it the year round, the deadest trees in the woods are the livest and fullest of fruit—for the naturalist. Dr. Holmes had a passion for big trees; the camera-carriers hunt up historic trees; boys with deep pockets take to fruit-trees: but dead trees, since I developed a curiosity for dark holes, have yielded me the most and largest crops. An ardor for decayed trees is not from any perversity of nature. There is nothing unreasonable in it, as in—bibliomania, for instance. I discover a gaunt