To love nature and her mysteries does not necessarily mean to be some kind of a queer creature running around with a butterfly net or an insect box.  A true naturalist is simply a man or boy who keeps his eyes and ears open.  He will soon find that nature is ready to tell him many secrets.  After a time, the smell of the woods, the chirp of a cricket and the rustling of the wind in the pines become his pleasures.

The reason that people do not as a rule know more about nature is simply because their minds are too full of other things.  They fail to cultivate the power of accurate observation, which is the most important thing of all.  A practical start in nature study is to go out some dewy morning and study the first spider web you come across, noting how wonderfully this little creature makes a net to catch its food just as we make nets to catch fish, how the web is braced with tiny guy ropes to keep the wind from blowing it away in a way similar to the method an engineer would use in securing a derrick or a tall chimney.  When a fly or bug happens to become entangled in its meshes, the spider will dart out quickly from its hiding place and if the fly is making a violent struggle for life will soon spin a ribbon-like web around it which will hold it secure, just as we might attempt to secure a prisoner or wild animal that was trying to make its escape, by binding it with ropes.  A spider makes a very interesting pet and the surest way to overcome the fear that many people have of spiders is to know more about them.

There is no need to read big books or listen to dry lectures to study nature.  In any square foot that you may pick out at random in your lawn you will find something interesting if you will look for it.  Some tiny bug will be crawling around in its little world, not aimlessly but with some definite purpose in view.  To this insect the blades of grass are almost like mighty trees and the imprint of your heel in the ground may seem like a valley between mountains.  To get an adequate idea of the myriads of insects that people the fields, we should select a summer day just as the sun is about to set.  The reflection of its waning rays on their wings will show countless thousands of flying creatures in places where, if we did not take the trouble to observe, we might think there were none.

There is one very important side to nature that must not be overlooked.  It consists in knowing that we shall find a thousand things that we cannot explain to one that we fully understand.  Education of any kind consists more in knowing when to say “I don’t know and no one else knows either” than to attempt a foolish explanation of an unexplainable thing.

If you ask “why a cat has whiskers,” or why and how they make a purring noise when they are pleased and wag their tails when they are angry, while a dog wags his to show pleasure, the wisest man cannot answer your question.  A teacher once asked a boy about a cat’s whiskers and he said they were to keep her from trying to get her body through a hole that would not admit her head without touching her whiskers.