I HAPPEN to live in the country, in the midst of lovely scenery, abounding in all the elements of beauty, such as wide-spreading heaths, sheets of water, distant views, and grand old trees and woods.

There are many varieties of birds and insects to be seen, plenty of wild flowers, mosses, and lichens in the lanes, and in my own grounds all kinds of cultivated flowers.

Numbers of young people come to stay with me in the course of the year, and naturally, when I am taking walks with them, and we are admiring trees and flowers, or a sweet-voiced bird begins to sing, questions arise about the names of various plants and songsters. I confess I am often surprised to discover the very limited knowledge of elementary natural history or botany that is possessed by young girls who in other branches of study are intelligent and well-informed. It grieves me to think that the instructive book of Nature is thus disregarded, and its lessons left unlearned, by thousands who would be much happier, and have many more resources to fill up leisure moments, if they knew more about the everyday things which surround them in the country.

Even if it is the lot of many young people to live in towns, still, when they pay visits to their friends at the seaside, or in the country, there are ample opportunities for natural history studies, and by means of books these studies can be carried on when they return home.

I will try and describe one of the subjects which my young visitors always discover to be full of interest, namely, the study of trees.

Such a book as “The Forest Trees of Britain”^[3] will supply the names of all our ordinary trees; and, when taking a ramble in a country lane or garden, if a perfect leaf of each species of tree is gathered, well pressed, and dried between sheets of blotting paper under a heavy weight, there will be found pleasant occupation for some wet day spent indoors in arranging these specimen leaves in a large blank book.

Space should be left to write the English and Latin name of each tree, whence it was imported, and some of its chief uses. If, later on, the autumn-tinted leaf of each species can be obtained, and a coloured drawing made of its catkin flower, then in time a really charming and valuable book will be formed, which a girl will feel pleasure in showing to her young friends, and thus others will be led to fill up their leisure time with instructive pursuits of this kind.

Drying and arranging the leaves is only the first step towards a more intimate knowledge of this subject. The exquisite beauty of autumn-tinted leaves attracts the attention of the most unobservant. One longs to preserve them, and for years I used to try various methods of pressing and drying them with but very partial success. Now, however, I have devised a plan by which their fleeting colours are so exactly imitated that my friends constantly mistake the painted leaf for the real one. As it may afford pleasurable occupation for some of my readers, I will briefly describe the process.

The materials required are but few: a common slate, some fine drawing paper, a cyclostyle^[4] roller, and a bottle of the ink which is sold with it. A small quantity of the ink should be placed on the slate, and the roller passed to and fro until it is slightly and evenly inked. The leaf should then be placed on a flat, hard surface, and the roller passed firmly over it so as to leave a little ink on the under side of the leaf to mark the veins. The leaf should then be reversed, with the ink side downwards, on a piece of drawing paper, and the roller firmly passed over it once or twice. The result will be an exquisite faint imprint of the exact shape of the leaf with all its veins. After a few minutes it will be ready to be tinted in water colours, so as to exactly resemble the various hues in the real leaf. The colours should be very moist, and rather floated into each other, as in this way one can most readily attain the delicate gradations of tone. When finished the leaf should be neatly cut out with fine scissors, carefully following the outline of the notches, which vary so much in different trees, and give character to each species. When such painted leaves are gummed into a blank book the effect will be found to be wonderfully real. The album should be large enough to allow of four or five leaves, each representing a different stage in the coloration—yellow, pink, crimson, and all other tints which belong to each special tree. A page should of course be reserved for each set of specimens, and the English and Latin name, the date, and any other particulars written at the bottom of the page will add to the scientific value of the collection.

The various galls which are found on each species of tree will alone furnish a wide field for study. The ink with which I am now writing is the product of an oak-gall which is imported in large quantities from Asia Minor; many kinds are of great value in dyeing; and the life-history of the numerous gall-flies is most curious and interesting.

Careful drawings of the buds of trees as they open in spring will reveal the delicate plaiting of the tiny leafage within. We can then discern how some leaves are folded lengthways or in half, others curled up spirally or fluted; we shall see how the embryo leaves are protected by more than a dozen scales, often lined with silky down, and then, as in the case of the horse-chestnut, still further guarded from the winter’s cold by an outer coating of resin.

Again, the fruits and seeds of trees would prove an interesting subject. I wonder how many young people know the difference between the English sycamore, which is a true maple, and the sycomore of Palestine, which is a fig-tree; and yet they are totally unlike each other—the first producing a dry seed vessel, and the other an eatable fruit; the sycamore usually having a stem twenty or thirty feet high before it branches, and the sycomore dividing near the ground, so that Zaccheus found no difficulty in climbing its ample stems.

There are some birds which frequent special trees, and are named after them, such as the hawfinch, the whinchat, which is found on its favourite furze-bushes (called whins in Scotland), the pine and fir grosbeak, and the nuthatch. The student should know something of these birds and their habits, as being linked with the trees they frequent.

There are innumerable insects also found upon the leaves and stems of trees. It has been calculated that about two thousand different species of caterpillars and larvÆ of various kinds prey upon the oak alone.

We thus see vistas which open out before the young student, any one of which, when followed up with thoughtful perseverance, will add immensely to the pleasure of walks abroad and quiet hours at home.

As this chapter aims to be a suggestive one, I would mention the possibility of making a dried collection of the trees of Scripture. This may seem at first sight very difficult of attainment, but we often hear of friends going abroad (even if we cannot go ourselves), and a request to gather and dry a spray of olive or carob-tree will hardly be refused, and thus in time, by the help of others, our collection will be formed, and will become of much value to us in teaching our Bible classes, as well as from the associations the book will have with the kind travellers who remembered us when far away.

I greatly treasure my own specimens of oleander gathered on the shores of the Lake of Galilee, the carob-leaves from Bethlehem, sycomore fig from Jericho, pomegranate from Jerusalem, and olive-sprays from the Garden of Gethsemane. Pleasant hours have been spent in reading about each tree, and the passages in Scripture where they are mentioned are invested with a deeper interest from one’s knowledge of many facts connected with each which otherwise would have passed unnoticed.

For instance, the fruit of the carob or locust-tree may have been the food of John the Baptist; it is known to this day by the name of “St. John’s Bread,” and the sweet, nutritious pods are still eaten by the poorer inhabitants of Palestine. It is also more than probable that “the husks that the swine did eat,” mentioned in the parable of the Prodigal Son, were the long curved pods produced by this tree^[5]; and it is also well known that the equal-sized, hard-shelled seeds of the carob were the original “carat” weights of the jeweller.

Thus we see how many interesting facts cluster around the name of a single Scripture tree. If a spray or leaf of any of the kinds mentioned is placed in the centre of a page, with some neatly written texts referring to interesting facts about its history and uses, we shall then have always at hand a delightful book, which will prove useful for many purposes. It will afford plenty of subjects for conversation when we wish to make Sunday afternoon a bright and happy time for some young people, kept indoors, it may be, by wet weather. Many a sick person’s weary hours might be cheered by such a book being lent, and in endless ways it will well repay the trouble of putting it together.

A collection of seedling trees, carefully dried between sheets of blotting paper in a press or under a weight, then fastened into a blank book with strips of gummed paper, with the English and Latin names to each, and a note of the age of the seedling, will form a pleasant memento of our forest rambles, and probably may lead on to further study of the same kind.

Lemon and orange pips will grow readily in damp moss under a glass, and can be transplanted into pots of earth, so that seedling plants are attainable even by those who live in towns. I was much surprised to find that tamarind seeds taken out of the jam would grow very quickly in cocoanut fibre if kept moist and placed near a hall stove. The secret appears to be that although the tamarinds are packed in barrels, and hot sugar is poured over them, yet owing to the thickness of the seed-coat the life principle is not destroyed.

To make our collection complete there should be seedlings of the other great division of plants, namely, those with only one seed-leaf, such as palms, cannas, bulbs, grasses, &c. A few date-stones kept in moist earth, and placed where they will have a slight degree of regular heat, will supply one of these specimens, and Canna seed, Indian corn, and other plants of the kind, grown in the same way, will supply other examples.

Whatever branch of nature-study we select, or whatever collections we may decide to make, the invariable result is that our interest in that special thing becomes immensely deepened; we begin to notice points that never struck us before, our power of observing becomes quickened, we really begin to think we must have been almost blind hitherto not to have been aware of the new and curious things we are daily finding out, we learn that the natural world around us is a storehouse ready to yield endless treasure to those who are willing to seek it, and thus I have often noticed that when once young people can be induced to begin a collection of some sort it is the first step to their becoming true nature-students.

Mothers often long for some simple occupation for the little busy fingers, that get into mischief if unemployed, and what can be more innocent than collecting and pressing wild flowers and leaves, and, when dried, arranging them in a book, so that mother can write the name to each specimen and talk about them, telling the uses to which some plants are applied? In this way children grow up to be ardent botanists, and may learn a great deal about the science without any of its dry details being presented to them in the shape of long unpronounceable terms, until they are old enough to see for themselves the necessity for them.

I have tried to indicate a few of the ways in which young people may study Nature, but the avenues into her domain are endless; let us at least endeavour to traverse such of them as may be within our reach whilst we are young, and so make our lives all the brighter and happier for knowing something of the wonders of this marvellous world in which it has pleased God to place us.