Great Outdoors Month: Comstock's Handbook of Nature Study

The month of June is Great Outdoors Month, among other things. To me, that connotes the American Dream, pioneers, westward migration in the United States, Little House on the Prairie, Misty of Chincoteague, and the Handbook of Nature Study which informed parts of my childhood. While the American Dream is waning in popularity (here's an example of a horizon-broadening college experience that reflects that), nature study is alive and well in Charlotte Mason circles. Come along with me on a reread through the Handbook. 

Situating the Handbook in a Historical Timeline

Writing, revising, and publishing a textbook of any size can take time. Factoring in the time to research, draft, get feedback, complete revision, typeset, index, and print a book of the Handbook's size, I would not be surprised if it took 2-3 years. Given that timeline, what was happening when Anna was starting and finishing the book?

In 1909:

• Selma Lager was the first woman to receive the literature Nobel Prize
• The NAACP was founded

In 1910:

• The most common form of dementia received its name, Alzheimer('s) disease
• Type 2 diabetes was identified to be based on deficiency of a single chemical, here named insulin
• Boy Scouts of America was founded
• Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) died
• Several strikes, including the Chicago Garment Workers

In 1911:

• Frank Lloyd Wright began construction on his Wisconsin summer home
• Ronald Reagan was born
• Baseball was in full swing (pun intended)

Why was the Handbook Written?

Anna Botsford Comstock, while at Cornell University, wrote the Handbook to help haggard teachers especially in New York State and eventually elsewhere. As the initial section emphasizes, nature study is to serve multiple purposes in a school or farm context—physical health, mental refreshment, increased curiosity, and immediate awareness of the natural objects and organisms that one can see with at most a magnifying glass or binoculars. 

As Comstock emphasized, nature study benefits not only the students but also the teachers. We don't age out of needing to go outside regularly. Nor do we age out of needing to learn about the world around us. (I am passionate about improving the physical and mental health of older adults, so that aspect is near to my heart.)

Is the Handbook Still Useful?

It certainly is! As the 1986 foreword states, the majority of organisms and phenomena described are still around, and easy to find in most areas of the United States. The few that have gone extinct still have entries for historical value. This book is designed for elementary and middle school-level educators and so includes interesting macroscopically observable facts as well as guiding questions about each species or genus with its own entry. From the Foreword:

 "This book is for the most part as valid and helpful today as it was when first written in 1911. After all, dandelions, toads, robins, and constellations have changed little since then! And modern society's concern with the quality of life and the impact of people on soil, water, and wildlife makes this book even more relevant."

Part I - The Teaching of Nature-Study

Parts I already knew or that have been longtime favorites:

• I've owned this book since I was at least in high school (I neglected to check the date on the gift receipt when re-reading it for this post before Child chewed up said receipt), so I had glanced through various entries.
• I knew it had originally been published in 1911 with copyright renewed periodically by divisions of Cornell University Press.
• Favorite features include full- and partial-page plate pictures. These may already have been in the first edition, fleshing out the book to 859 pages plus index.

Parts that were new or particularly interesting to me:

• The Handbook has gone through over 24 editions!
• "Ecology is merely formalized nature study" (p. ix, 1939 preface).
• The preface also noted that "teachers are as a whole untrained in the subject" of nature study (p. xiii).
• Relevant especially for homeschoolers, nature study has distinct intersections with other subjects, including language, drawing, geography, history, arithmetic, gardening, and agriculture.
• Each section starts with "how-to" and general concepts, followed by specific entries for individual species and genera.

I am looking forward to using this book with Child and any potential future siblings.

Part II - Animals

This section has subsections for birds, fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, insects, and invertebrates.

Parts I already knew or that have been longtime favorites:

• The section on game birds, particularly the ones common in my area--wild turkey and ring-necked pheasants. By this point in the year, I may have seen more turkey vultures than turkey.
• The entry on goldfish in the fish section. My siblings went through a brief goldfish-raising phase, and yours truly developed budding biology skills by dissecting each one after it became an ex-goldfish.
• The entry on  spring peepers (Pickering's Hyla or Hyla crucifer). I've seen and heard my share of these tiny frogs, but didn't know their characteristic back marking is a St. Andrew's cross.
• The entry on garter snakes in the reptiles section. One tends to either love or hate snakes; I fall into the former category.
• The entry on wood turtles (Clemmys insculpta), which are longtime neighbors in the river near my house.
• The entry on cotton-tail rabbits in the mammals section. Peter Rabbit and siblings were an apt characterization of this species' temperament.
• The entry (specifically the pictures) on the cat. Even though it was in black and white, the picture of a tabby captivated Child and elicited a full minute of joyous "Ditty! Ditty!"
• The entry on horses. Like most girls in my age range, I went through a pronounced horse phase and still wouldn't mind the opportunity to ride, if it comes up.
• The entry on monarch butterflies in the insects section. I had the privilege of tagging several migrating monarchs in undergrad along with capturing and inspecting several tagalong praying mantises.
• The entry on the black cricket. Crickets were a favorite to observe in my childhood, and notoriously difficult to catch for brief inspection.
• The entry on mosquitoes. These insects enjoy my blood type, unfortunately.
• The full-page display of Florida and East Coast shells. I think every child should have a collection of something growing up, whether that be seashells or something else. Twenty-five kinds are depicted.

Parts that were new or particularly interesting to me:

• Introductory section on how birds fly. I had known something about this, but the practical physics of the explanation is satisfying to mentally translate into technical terms in my own head. Analogies include a handheld fan, jumping down with an open umbrella, pressing down on a vaulting pole, a web, and a rudder.
• Bird songs notated!

• The entry on stickleback (Eucalia inconstans) in the fish section. I've caught many types of fish, but not sticklebacks. "Lilliputian" and "sagacious" are two delicious adjectives that Comstock used to describe this fish species.
• The entry on newts in the amphibians section. I haven't seen too many of these, but the first reference that jumps to mind is, of course, Monty Python.
• The full-page spread on other kinds of snakes, including ribbon, rubber boa, rough green (Opheodrys aestivus, local to me), timber rattler, desert gopher, ring-necked, and the sidewinder.
• Directions for making a tin-can trap for humanely catching small mammals.
• Directions for optimizing cows' milk production by varying the nutritional content of their diet, setting up a clean dairy barn and washing the udders, and preserving milk appropriately (including raw milk consumption from one's own cows or cows whose owner one knows well).
• The diagram showing the structure of a typical index, including scientific and colloquial names for the head and parts (including a surprisingly complex mouth), thorax with sections, and abdomen with components.

• The hummingbird/sphinx moths. I would like to see or hear these some evening--I do know there are hummingbirds in the neighborhood.
• Directions for making one's own ant-nest--the Lubbock nest is designed to lie flat with a "moat" around where the ants are housed.
• Depictions of different spiderweb shapes--funnel, orb, triangle, and irregular.

Part III - Plants

This section has subsections for wildflowers, weeds including first aid for poison ivy, garden flowers, cultivated crop plants, trees, and flowerless plants.

Parts I already knew or that have been longtime favorites:

• Milkweed, common variety, is taking root beautifully in an increasing portion of my back yard each year.
• Goldenrod has grown profligately for decades in the forest preserve near my childhood home, and its simple beauty never ceased to amaze me.
• Thistles are also an unfortunately profligate resident of my yard . . . at least pulling the different kinds gets me and Child outdoor time.
• Burdocks are another resident species I failed to recognize until too late last season, so this year I resume my mission to eradicate them.
• Daffodils grow very briefly and in a small area in my yard--more in my mother's--but they always bring cheer to early spring.
• Bleeding hearts take up more and more space in my yard each year, so that I can offer cuttings to anyone who wants them.
• Wild strawberries, raspberries, and fox grapes grow less than a mile from my house. I'm looking forward to sampling whatever the birds leave.
• Oak trees provide pressable leaves and acorns that as a young child I thoroughly enjoyed picking up and playing creatively with.
• Growing up, my childhood included a Chinese elm in the back yard and weeping willows nearby.
• Botany class in college included an expedition to pick mushrooms. A memorable quote from the professor: "Then you can say, 'No, you idiot! That's a basidiocarp!'"
• Likewise, bracket fungi were and still are a fairly commonly encountered part of my life.
• As a biology major, I studied bacteria in some detail. I am impressed that Comstock includes these profligate microorganisms in her book, given the lack of access to microscopes by schoolchildren in her day.

Parts that were new or particularly interesting to me:

• Dutchman's breeches, which I had heard of before but never thought to see, actually are growing in my back yard this year!
• I had not known that clover could be cultivated for forage!
• The American elm (Ulmus americana) is extinct in some areas and endangered in many others, but was very common in Comstock's time.
• I grew moss gardens in a jar from time to time, but have not yet encountered hair-cap moss (a.k.a. pigeon wheat). These varieties are much taller than the typical moss.

Part IV - Earth and Sky

This section has subsections for brooks, rocks/minerals, soil, magnet, climate/weather, water forms, and sky.

Parts I already knew or that have been longtime favorites:

• Igneous rocks, especially granite, were deposited by glaciers and older volcanoes in areas where I have lived and visited.
• A useful chart on typical worldwide wind directions serves to reinforce the fact of the earth's rotation about its north-south axis.
• Likewise, a constellation chart shows where the most common star groups may be observed, at which latitude, throughout the year.

Parts that were new or particularly interesting to me:

• Quartz is apparently in the top 10(ish) most common rocks in the world.
• There is also a full-page spread on fossils, not discussing ages but merely noting their deposition in any "former age."
• Guest essays on soil conservation, including strip-cropping, are also included.

Hopefully, you can see why I originally titled this blog The Renaissance Biologist. What creatures are most common in your gardening zone?