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Most young people find botany a dull study. So it is, as taught from the text-books in the schools; but study it yourself in the fields and woods, and you will find it a source of perennial delight.

John Burroughs

Not so the oven-bird, or the other birds that walk, as the cow-bunting, or the quail, or the crow. They move the head forward with the movement of the feet.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Bird Bunt Cow Feet Forward Movement Oven Quall Walk
There is something very human in this apparent mirth and mockery of the squirrels. It seems to be a sort of ironical laughter, and implies self-conscious pride and exultation in the laughter.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Apparent Conscious Execution Human Ironical Laugh Pride Self Something Sort Squirrels
The beautiful vagabonds, endowed with every grace, masters of all climes, and knowing no bounds.
JOHN BURROUGHS

All Beautiful Bound Clime Endowed Every Grace Know Master Vagabond
We talk of communing with Nature, but ’tis with ourselves we commune.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Communing Nature Ourselves Talk We
The city, a place to which one goes to do business, is a place where men overreach each other in the fight for money. But it is not a place in which one can live.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Business Can City Each Fight Live Money One Other Overreach Place
England is like the margin of a spring-run: near its source, always green, always cool, always moist, comparatively free from frost in winter and from drought in summer.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Always Comparitively Country Drought Green Margin Near Run Source Spring Summer Winter
Why, we have invented the whole machinery of the supernatural, with its unseen spirits and powers, good and bad, to account for things, because we found the universal everyday nature too cheap, too common, too vulgar.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Cheap Common Everyday Invent Machinery Nature Universal Vulgar
Fear, love, and hunger were the agents that developed the wits of the lower animals, as they were, of course, the prime factors in developing the intelligence of man.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Agent Animal Course Develop Fear Hunger Intelligence Love Lower Man
If America wishes to preserve her native birds, we must help supply what civilization has taken from them.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Civilization Country Help Keep Must Preserve Supply Wish
The homing instinct in birds and animals is one of their most remarkable traits: their strong local attachments and their skill in finding their way back when removed to a distance.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Animal Attachment Back Bird Distance Find Home Instinct Remove Strong Treat
Robin is one of the most native and democratic of our birds; he is one of the family, and seems much nearer to us than those rare, exotic visitants, as the orchard starling or rose-breasted grossbeak, with their distant, high-bred ways.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Breasted Bred Democratic Distant Family Grossbeak High Native Orchard Rose Starling Ways
He is a reversion to an earlier type, the type of the bard, the skald, the poet-seer.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Brad Earlier People Poet Reversion Salad Seer Type
Living in the city is a discordant thing, an unnatural thing.
JOHN BURROUGHS

City Discordant Live Thing Unnatural
The Infinite cannot be measured. The plan of Nature is so immense, but she has no plan, no scheme, but to go on and on forever. What is size, what is time, distance, to the Infinite?
JOHN BURROUGHS

Cannot Forever Go Immense Infinite Measure Nature Plan Scheme
Every species of tree-squirrel seems to be capable of a sort of rudimentary flying, at least of making itself into a parachute, so as to ease or break a fall or a leap from a great height.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Break Doubtless Ease Fall Fly Great Height Make Reason Rudimentary Squirrel
I have suffered no great losses, or defeats, or illness, or accidents, and have undergone no great struggles or privations; I have had no grouch. I have not wanted the earth.
JOHN BURROUGHS

Accident Defeat Earth Great Grouch Illness Loss Privation Struggle Suffer Undergone Want

Most young people find botany a dull study. So it is, as taught from the text-books in the schools; but study it yourself in the fields and woods, and you will find it a source of perennial delight.

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Most young people find botany a dull study. So it is, as taught from the text-books in the schools; but study it yourself in the fields and woods, and you will find it a source of perennial delight.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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