(NY), (Century Co.), (1922). Rachel Carson's first published piece of nature writing, about going "birds'-nesting"; published when she was just 15 years old. Carson had already had four pieces published in St. Nicholas (three about WWI and one about Admiral Dewey and the Spanish-American War), beginning in 1918. She had received her first payment for a fifth piece, which the magazine used for publicity. This piece, about venturing into the hills of Pennsylvania with her dog "for a day of our favorite sport with a lunch-box, a canteen, a note-book, and a camera," marks the start of the career of arguably the most influential nature writer of the 20th century. More than 300 words about a day spent in the presence of the Maryland yellow-throat, the bob-white, the oriole, the cuckoo, the hummingbird, the oven-bird, the wood-thrush, and the vesper sparrow. In the 1940s and 1950s, Carson would win acclaim for her writings about the eastern seashore, but it was the final work of her life, Silent Spring, warning about the dangers of pesticides on the natural world, and published 40 years after she first wrote of the joys of birdsong, that precipitated the modern environmental movement. Some chipping to covers and spine; shallow insect damage to top edge; a good copy in wrappers. [#033329] SOLD