Here you may read a short chapter for May pastimes and customs.

Since you have read about John Paul Jones in your history book, This Country of Ours, and have asked about John Paul Jones, here is some information:

The US Navy's biography of John Paul Jones

"I have not yet begun to fight!"

250th Anniversary of John Paul Jones' birth

Excerpt from Jones' journal

Jones' report of the Bonhomme Richard and the Serapis

Bonhomme Richard or Bon Homme Richard (pronounced "BOHN-uhm REE-shard"), the French equivalent of "Goodman Richard," in honor of Ben Franklin, the US Ambassador to France at the time. The name Bonhomme Richard is derived from the pen name of Benjamin Franklin, the author of "Poor Richard's Almanack".

You may read Elsie Dinsmore here.

Young gentlemen will most likely not enjoy this book as much as young ladies.

You can read short chapters on March pastimes and customs here and April pastimes and customs here.

Here is a short chapter on nature study from an online book called Outdoor Sports and Games.

If you like, you may read the whole book.

As we are studying Henry Purcell this term, I thought you might like to see a drawing of him.

Please leave a comment and tell me what you think of this drawing.

Classification is the arrangement of objects, ideas, or information into groups, the members of which have one or more characteristics in common.

Classification makes things easier to find, identify, and study.

Scientific classification groups all plants and animals on the basis of certain characteristics they have in common.

Scientific classification uses Latin and Greek words to give each animal and plant two names (similar to a first and last name) that identify the animal or plant.

The system we use to classify living things was developed by the Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778), who separated animals and plants according to certain physical similarities and gave identifying names to each species.

Linnaeus's system classified plants and animals on seven levels, using Latin and Greek words.

For example, here is how a brown squirrel is classified:

• Kingdom (Animalia, or “animal”)
• Phylum (Chordata, or “has a backbone”)
• Class (Mammalia, or “has a backbone and nurses its young”)
• Order (Rodentia, or “has a backbone, nurses its young, and has long, sharp front teeth)
• Family (Scuridae, or “has a backbone, nurses its young, has long, sharp front teeth, and has a bushy tail)
• Genus (Tamiasciurus, or “has a backbone, nurses its young, has long, sharp front teeth, has a bushy tail, and climbs trees)
• Species (hudsonicus, or “has a backbone, nurses its young, has long, sharp front teeth, has a bushy tail, and has brown fur on its back and white fur on its underparts)

It is not necessary to go through the entire seven-level classification system to identify a plant or animal. Just two names—the genus and species names—are sufficient. Thus, the scientific name for the brown squirrel is Tamiasciurus hudsonicus. Because two names are used, the system is known as the binomial(two names) system of nomenclature (naming).

Here is a very nice website you may visit. It is called Florida Nature and it has many photos of plants and animals in our state. The photos are sorted using scientific classification.

Clockwise from top left: Amaryllis bud, Cone-headed Grasshopper, Rain Lily, and Pink Persuasion hedge rose.

Cone-headed Grasshopper:

Family: Tettigoniidae, Long-horned Grasshoppers and Katydids

Description: The Cone-headed Grasshopper is a member of the Long-horned Grasshopper family (family Tettigoniidae). These large insects, 1/2-3" (14-75 mm) long, have extremely long antennae and 4-segmented tarsi. Males have flat, round hearing organs called tympana located at the base of the front tibiae. Females have flat, swordlike ovipositors. Long-horned grasshoppers range from dark brown to greenish hues. Many members of this large family are known for their songs. Most live in forest trees and shrubs, where they feed on leaves. A few species prey on insects. Eggs are inserted into plant tissues, where they usually overwinter.

Rain Lily:

Atamasco Lily (Zephyranthes atamasco)

This flower springs from an onion-like bulb to a height of about fifteen inches. It has several narrow, linear basal leaves about one-half inch wide and ten to fifteen inches long.

The single-flowered fleshy stalk is without leaves except for a bract subtending the flower. The lily-like blossom, about three inches long, changes from pure white to pink as it ages.

Native to the Southeast, it grows in wet roadside ditches and wet woods, blooming in March and April. The leaves and especially the bulbs of this common species are poisonous when eaten.

Transplant Atamasco lilies when the plants begin to go dormant, into soil that is rich in humus and moist during the growing season. The edge of a wooded area that gets a few hours of direct light is a good location.

Today, H sent me the link for this article at the National Review Online. It's quite interesting for history buffs.

"At the dawn of a new century, a newly elected United States president was forced to confront a grave threat to the nation — an escalating series of unprovoked attacks on Americans by Muslim terrorists. Worse still, these Islamic partisans operated under the protection and sponsorship of rogue Arab states ruled by ruthless and cunning dictators.

Sluggish in recognizing the full nature of the threat, America entered the war well after the enemy’s call to arms. Poorly planned and feebly executed, the American effort proceeded badly and at great expense — resulting in a hastily negotiated peace and an equally hasty declaration of victory.

As timely and familiar as these events may seem, they occurred more than two centuries ago. The president was Thomas Jefferson, and the terrorists were the Barbary pirate."

There's more at the website.