Description
School of The Woods
On The Way To School
Many years ago the writer saw, for the second time, a mother otter teach her unsuspecting little ones to swim by carrying them on her back into the water, as if for a frolic, and there diving from under them before they realized what she was about. As they struggled wildly in the unknown element, she rose near them and began to help and encourage them on their erratic way back to the bank. When they reached it, at last, they scrambled out, whimpered, shook themselves, looked at the river fearfully, then glided into their den. Later they reappeared cautiously; but no amount of gentle persuasion on the mother’s part could induce them to try for themselves another plunge into the water; nor, spite of her coaxing and playful rolling about in the dry leaves, would they climb again upon her back that day, as I had seen them and other young otters do, twenty times before, without hesitation.
Now to me, as I went home through the twilight woods thinking it all over, the most suggestive thing in the whole curious incident was this: that I had been taught to swim myself in exactly the same way by a bigger boy—with less of help and more of hilarity on his part, and a great deal more of splashing and sputtering on mine, than marked the progress of the young otters.
That interesting little comedy by the quiet river, one of the thousands that pass every day unnoticed in the summer woods, first opened my eyes to the fact that all wild creatures must learn most of what they know as we do; and to learn they must be taught. I have had that fact in mind in gathering together from my old notebooks and summer journals these sketches of animal life, which group themselves naturally about one central idea, namely, the large place which early education holds in the life of every creature.
That animal education is like our own, and so depends chiefly upon teaching, may p
Product ID: 9781776774524
Sku: 9781776774524
