end the
whole night catching mosquitoes. But some one will say "he flies into
your hair and is covered with a certain kind of disgusting vermin."
Did you ever know of a bat flying into any one's hair? And as for the
vermin science tells us that they are really his favourite food so it
is unlikely that he would harbour a colony of them very long.

The subject of snakes is one in which there is more misinformation
than any other common thing. There are only three venomous kinds of
snakes in America. They are the rattlesnake, copperhead and moccasin.
All of them can be distinguished by a deep pit behind the eye, which
gives them the name of "pit vipers." The general impression that puff
adders, pilots, green snakes or water snakes are poisonous is
absolutely wrong, and as for hoop snakes and the snake with a sting in
his tail that all boys have heard about, they are absolutely fairy
tales like "Jack and the Bean Stalk" or "Alice in Wonderland." We have
all heard about black snakes eight or ten feet long that will chase
you and wind themselves around your neck, but of the many hundreds of
black snakes that a well known naturalist has seen he states that he
never saw one that did not do its best to escape if given half a
chance. Why so much misinformation about snakes exists is a mystery.

Nature study has recently been introduced into schools and it is a
very excellent way to have the interesting things pointed out to us
until our eyes are trained to see for ourselves. The usual methods of
nature study may be roughly divided into, 1. Keeping pets. 2. Bird
study. 3. Insect study. 4. Systematic study of flowers and plants. 5.
Wild animal life. The basis of nature study consists in making
collections. A collection that we have made for ourselves of moths or
flowers, for instance, is far more interesting than a stamp or coin
collection where we buy our specimens. If we go afield and collect for
ourselves, the cost is practically nothing and we have the benefit of
being in the air and sunshine.

One kind of collecting is absolutely wrong--that of birds' eggs,
nests or even the birds themselves. Our little feathered songsters are
too few now and most states have very severe penalties for killing or
molesting them. A nature student must not be a lawbreaker.

The outfit for a butterfly or moth collection is very simple and
inexpensive. We shall need an insect net to capture our specimens.
This can be made at home from a piece o