_liquid amber:_ The balsamic juice of the sweet gum tree, sometimes called "bilsted" (_Liquidambar styraciflua_), a large, beautiful swamp tree found from Connecticut to Florida and west to Texas.
_half-human tracks:_ Because the coon is a relative of the bears and has a long hind foot that leaves a track much like that of a small baby.
_tupelo:_ See note on _gum swamp_, page 141.
_chicken or frost grapes_: _Vitis cordifolia_: the smallest, sourest, best (boy standards) of all our wild grapes. They ripen _after_ the frost and feed the boys and birds when all other such fruits have gone from the woods.
_Smooth winterberry_: is really another ilex, _Ilex lævigata_, a larger bush than _Ilex verticillata_, the black alder or winterberry.
_Fox sparrows:_ See the frontispiece. The largest, most beautiful of our sparrows. Nests in the Far North. A migrant to New England and the Southern States.
_The crows were winging over toward their great roost:_ Don't fail this winter to spend, if not Christmas Day, then one of your Christmas vacation days, in the woods, from morning until the crows go over to their roost. You will never forget that day.
Read to the pupils Emerson's poem "The Titmouse," dwelling on the lines,--
"Here was this atom in full breath, Hurling defiance at vast death," etc.
letting the students learn by heart the chickadee's little song,--
"Live out of doors In the great woods, on prairie floors," etc.
Poem and chapter ought mutually to help each other. Read the chapter slowly, explaining clearly as you go on, making it finally plain that this mere "atom" of life is greater than all the winter death, no matter how "vast."
"_The Lilac_": My lilac bush with its suet has become a kind of hotel, or inn, or boarding-house, for the chickadees.
_Phoe-ee-bee!_: more often the spring call than the winter call of Chickadee. It is to be distinguished from the "phoe'be" call of the phoebe, the flycatcher, by its greater softness and purity, and by its very distinct _middle syllable_, as if Chickadee said "Phoe'--ee--bee." Phoebe's note is two-syllabled.
_protective coloration_: a favorite term with Darwin and many later naturalists to describe the wonderful harmony in the colors of animals, insects, etc., and their natural surroundings, the animal's color blending so perfectly into the color of its surroundings as to be a protection to the creature.