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Title: The Mentor: American Naturalists, Vol. 7, Num. 9, Serial No. 181, June 15, 1919

Author: Ernest Ingersoll

Release date: August 2, 2014 [eBook #46482]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Katie Hernandez and the
        Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MENTOR: AMERICAN NATURALISTS, VOL. 7, NUM. 9, SERIAL NO. 181, JUNE 15, 1919 ***




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  LEARN ONE THING
  EVERY DAY

  JUNE 15 1919      SERIAL NO. 181

  THE
  MENTOR

  AMERICAN
  NATURALISTS

  By ERNEST INGERSOLL

  DEPARTMENT OF      VOLUME 7
  SCIENCE            NUMBER 9

  TWENTY CENTS A COPY




NATURE AND THE POET


There are those who look at Nature from the standpoint of conventional
and artificial life--from parlor windows and through gilt-edged
poems--the sentimentalists. At the other extreme are those who do not
look at Nature at all, but are a grown part of her, and look away from
her toward the other class--the backwoodsmen and pioneers, and all rude
and simple persons. Then there are those in whom the two are united or
merged--the great poets and artists. In them the sentimentalist is
corrected and cured, and the hairy and taciturn frontiersman has had
experience to some purpose. The true poet knows more about Nature than
the naturalist because he carries her open secret in his heart. Eckerman
could instruct Goethe in ornithology, but could not Goethe instruct
Eckerman in the meaning and mystery of the bird?

       *       *       *       *       *

It is the soul the poet interprets, not Nature. There is nothing in
Nature but what the beholder supplies. Does the sculptor interpret the
marble or his own ideal? Is the music in the instrument, or in the soul
of the performer? Nature is a dead clod until you have breathed upon it
with your own genius. You commence with your own soul, not with woods
and waters; they furnish the conditions, and are what you make them. Did
Shelley interpret the song of the skylark, or Keats that of the
nightingale? They interpreted their own wild, yearning hearts. You
cannot find what the poets find in the woods until you take the poet's
heart to the woods. He sees Nature through a colored glass, sees it
truthfully, but with an indescribable charm added, the aureole of the
spirit. A tree, a cloud, a sunset, have no hidden meaning that the art
of the poet is to unlock for us. Every poet shall interpret them
differently, and interpret them rightly, because the soul is infinite.
Nature is all things to men. The "light that never was on sea or land"
is what the poet gives us, and is what we mean by the poetic
interpretation of Nature.

       *       *       *       *       *

The poet does not so much read in Nature's book--though he does this
too--as write his own thoughts there; Nature is the page and he the
type, and she takes the impression he gives. Of course the poet uses the
truths of Nature also, and he establishes his right to them by bringing
them home to us with a new and peculiar force--a quickening or kindling
force. What science gives is melted in the fervent heat of the poet's
passion, and comes back supplemented by his quality and genius. He gives
more than he takes, always.

    JOHN BURROUGHS.

       *       *       *       *       *


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    JUNE 15th, 1919      VOLUME 7      NUMBER 9

Entered as second-class matter, March 10, 1913, at the postoffice at New
York, N.Y., under the act of March 8, 1879; Copyright, 1919, by The
Mentor Association, Inc.

[Illustration: FROM A PAINTING BY JOHN WOODHOUSE AUDUBON AND VICTOR
GIFFORD AUDUBON.

IN THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY, NEW YORK

JOHN J. AUDUBON

    BY COURTESY OF THE MUSEUM]




    _AMERICAN NATURALISTS_       _John James Audubon_


ONE


"Audubon," says a recent biographer, Dr. Francis Hobart Herrick, "did
one thing in particular, that of making known to the world the birds of
his adopted land, and did it so well that his name will be held in
everlasting remembrance." The father of the future naturalist was a
French seafaring man and merchant-adventurer. While engaged in the sugar
trade he frequently visited the port of Aux Cayes, in the island then
called Santo Domingo, but now known as Haiti. As a dealer in West Indian
commodities, Captain Audubon became a man of fortune. The son born to
him and a lady of French origin at Aux Cayes, in 1785 (not in Louisiana
in 1780, as some writers give it), was christened Jean Jacques Fougère.
On being taken by his father to Nantes, France, when he was four years
old, the little boy was received into the household of Madame Audubon,
his step-mother, and given the name of his father, Jean Audubon.

Even at this early period of his life young Audubon forsook his classes
at school to roam the woods searching for birds' nests. In his early
teens he began to make drawings of birds that appeared near his home on
the west coast of France. For a short time he studied in Paris under the
famous artist, Jacques Louis David. At eighteen, Audubon was sent to
America to learn the English language and the business methods of the
New World. The tall, handsome boy found much happiness in discovering
the wild denizens of his father's farm, "Mill Grove,"--a small estate
near Philadelphia purchased by Captain Audubon during a visit to the
United States. Here Audubon first had opportunity to study American bird
life. He was a Nature lover, and he was also a gay young dandy, "notable
for the elegance of his figure and the beauty of his features." When he
met the charming Lucy Bakewell, whose father owned an adjoining estate,
he immediately loved and courted her. It was she who became the guiding
spirit of his life, who inspired him and, with material assistance,
aided him to achieve his ambitions. Though engaged in business, the
youth's heart was in the woods and fields. His method of posing lifeless
subjects was unique, and his drawings were expertly done and very
natural.

In 1808, Audubon married Lucy Bakewell and took her to live in the
frontier settlement of Louisville, Kentucky. There a son was born. With
a wife and child to support, Audubon continued his career as a merchant,
and for several years owned and operated a store and mill at Henderson,
Kentucky. In 1819 he failed in business, saving only a few personal
possessions, including his drawings and his gun. As taxidermist, teacher
and artist he earned a scant living during several disheartening years.
His wife took a position as governess, and later became mistress of a
private school in the South. The impelling motive of the naturalist's
life was now the publication of his "Ornithology," for which he
continued to make drawings under the most adverse conditions. Often he
was reduced to painting signs and giving music and dancing lessons. To
earn a passage on a boat during an exploring tour he would sometimes
offer to do crayon portraits of the captain and passengers.

Audubon's genius as a portrayer of birds was in time recognized by
America's foremost artists. When he exhibited his work in England and
Scotland in 1826, he was elected to membership in eminent societies. He
resolved to publish his drawings under the title, "The Birds of
America," all to be "engraved on copper, to the size of life, and
colored after the originals." The work was eventually issued (1838) in
eighty-seven parts, which contained four hundred and thirty-five plates
depicting more than a thousand individual birds, besides trees, flowers
and animals native to the continent of North America. In America the
price of the parts complete was one thousand dollars. Today a perfect
set is valued at four times the cost of the original. Many famous men
and institutions were numbered among Audubon's subscribers to his
various works on birds and mammals. Sometimes accompanied by his sons,
he traveled from Labrador to Florida and from Maine almost as far west
as the Rockies, in his search for bird and animal models.

In 1842, Audubon took possession of a fine house he had built on an
estate overlooking the Hudson, near what is now 155th Street, New York.
Nine years later, "America's pioneer naturalist and animal painter" died
here, surrounded by his devoted family. The house he erected remains in
a fair state of preservation on a secluded plot of ground below
Riverside Drive, and part of the land owned by him has been given the
name, Audubon Park. His body rests on the hill above his home, in
Trinity Cemetery, amid friendly trees that gave shade to the likely spot
during his life time.

Audubon Societies exist in many parts of America. The National
Association of Audubon Societies for the Protection of Wild Birds and
Animals is an active monument to the work and ideals of the great
naturalist.

     PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
     ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 7, No. 9, SERIAL No. 181
     COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.

[Illustration: FROM A BUST BY W.E. COUPER.

IN THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY, NEW YORK

J. LOUIS RODOLPHE AGASSIZ

    BY COURTESY OF THE MUSEUM]




    _AMERICAN NATURALISTS_      _J. Louis Rodolphe Agassiz_


TWO


In a picturesque parsonage on the shore of the Swiss Lake of Morat,
there was born on May 28, 1807, a child who was baptized Jean Louis
Rodolphe Agassiz. His mother recognized early in his life the peculiar
attraction of her son to Nature's creatures. His intuitive understanding
of animals and fishes she carefully nurtured. With his younger brother,
Auguste, the small Louis delighted to catch the finny inhabitants of
Lake Morat by dexterous methods of his own invention. He was taught
until he was ten by his father, a clergyman, and his mother, a woman of
excellent taste and education. At fourteen, when he was graduated from a
boys' school at Bienne, he defined his aims in this mature fashion: "I
wish to advance in the sciences. I have resolved, as far as I am allowed
to do so, to become a man of letters." In later years he wrote, "At that
age, namely, about fifteen, I spent most of the time I could spare from
classical and mathematical studies in hunting the neighboring woods and
meadows for birds, insects, and land and fresh-water shells. My room
became a little menagerie, while the stone basin under the fountain in
our yard was my reservoir for all the fishes I could catch."

At his eager request, Louis was permitted to spend two years at the
College of Lausanne, Switzerland, where he pursued with enthusiasm the
study of Nature. He afterwards attended the University of Zurich and the
University of Heidelberg. At the latter famous seat of learning the
young Swiss naturalist, who intended to become a physician, pursued the
study of anatomy, and passed hours collecting, arranging and analyzing
plant and mineral specimens. At the age of twenty he became a student at
the University of Munich, where he found of the highest interest the
study of the natural history of the fresh-water fishes of Europe, while
continuing his courses in medicine. The first work that gave his name
distinction was a description, written in Latin, of a collection of
Brazilian fishes that had been brought back from South America by the
noted scientists, Martius and Spix. His profits consisted of only a few
copies of the book, but the results were gratifying, as his work brought
him to the favorable notice of Cuvier (coo-vee-ay), the renowned French
naturalist, who consulted the descriptions of Agassiz in writing his own
"History of Fishes."

In 1830, Agassiz went to Paris, where he enlisted the friendly help of
Cuvier and the great Alexander Humboldt. It was his habit to work
fifteen hours a day at the Museum of Natural History. He had only a
small allowance from his father, and he was often hampered by poverty.

Returning from Paris, Agassiz lectured on natural history subjects in
his native country. His exceptional ability attracted the interest of
scientific men throughout Europe and he received many honors and
complimentary invitations. In 1833 he married the sister of his intimate
friend, Alexander Braun, the botanist. The art of his wife in drawing
and coloring illustrations for his volumes on fishes was of the greatest
assistance to him. In the years that immediately followed his marriage,
Agassiz became interested in glacial research and was an important
member of extended summer explorations in the Alps. His theories
relating to the structure of glaciers were incorporated in a book
entitled "_Système Glaciare_."

Having for some time desired to continue his researches in the United
States, it was with delight that he received in 1846 an invitation to
give a course of lectures in Boston. As a lecturer he met with such
brilliant success that he was subsequently appointed professor of
natural history at Harvard. From this time until his death in 1873,
Professor Agassiz was identified with the cause of science in the United
States. His work as a teacher was supplemented by repeated excursions to
various parts of the continent with the object of studying forests,
geological formations and zoology. Though he had views that were then in
opposition to popular opinion, it has been said that, "everywhere and
foremost a teacher, no educational influence of his time was so great as
that exerted by him."

The splendid Museum of Comparative Zoology at Cambridge, Massachusetts,
is a lasting memorial to the ardor and devotion of Louis Agassiz. A son,
who bore his name, did much to perpetuate the aims of this institution,
besides being a distinguished investigator on his own account.

A few years after his arrival in America, his wife having died,
Professor Agassiz married Elizabeth Cabot Carey, a writer and teacher.
She accompanied the Agassiz expedition to Brazil in 1865, and was also a
member of the Hasler deep-sea dredging expedition in 1871-1872.

The last enterprise fathered by Agassiz was the summer school of natural
history that he established on the coast of Massachusetts a few months
before his death, at the age of sixty-six. His resting-place in Mount
Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, is marked by a boulder from the Swiss
glacier of the Aar where he pursued his first studies in glacial
science, and the pine trees about it were taken from Swiss soil. Thus,
writes Mrs. Agassiz, "the land of his birth and the land of his adoption
are united in his grave."

[Illustration: FROM THE ROUSE CRAYON PORTRAIT MADE IN 1834.

NOW IN THE CONCORD PUBLIC LIBRARY

HENRY DAVID THOREAU

    FROM THE WALDEN EDITION OF THOREAU'S WRITINGS.

BY COURTESY OF HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY]




    _AMERICAN NATURALISTS_        _Henry David Thoreau_


THREE


The grandfather of America's first renowned native-born naturalist
emigrated from the Island of Jersey before the American Revolution. In
Boston he married a Scotchwoman. His son John also married a lady of
Scotch descent, and engaged in the industry of pencil-making in Concord,
Massachusetts. There Henry Thoreau was born in the month of July, 1817.
His mother, a staunch, keen, observant woman "with a great love of
nature," used to take her children into the woods and show them the
wonders and beauties of wild life. Even as a small boy Henry had
opinions and expressed them with independence, he was honest--"straight
as a furrow"--sensible, good-tempered and industrious.

The Thoreau family made willing sacrifices so that Henry, the second
son, could enter Harvard when he was sixteen. When he was graduated he
taught for awhile in Concord and on Staten Island, but found the
occupation uncongenial, and soon took to less scholarly ways of making a
living. Nimbly he turned from one trade to another. He did surveying, or
built a neighbor's fence, planted a garden, or worked with his father in
the pencil shop. He was thorough and efficient in all that he did, but,
whatever the means of livelihood, he pursued it with the single purpose
of securing just enough money to support his frugal needs while he went
off on woodland excursions, communing, studying, writing. Simple thrifty
neighbors regarded Thoreau as a visionary and reproached him for his
lack of the practical virtues that they held in esteem. They called him
lazy. Thoreau (he pronounced it "thorough"), however, was not wasting
time. He kept a daily journal, from which several characteristic and
delightfully refreshing volumes were later compiled.

When still a young man, Thoreau resolved to seek a retreat in the woods
where he could live undisturbed in his enjoyment of the "indescribable
innocence and beneficence of Nature." Emerson, a close friend in whose
house he had lived for a time, granted him the use of some land near
Walden Pond, about a mile and a half from Concord. Thoreau cleared the
woodland site himself and erected a small shelter, at whose "raising" a
number of notable literary men were present. Beginning with the summer
of 1845, this philosopher with the "thin, penetrating, big-nosed face,"
the deep-set eyes and spare, long-limbed figure, this naturalist who
used neither trap nor gun, lived in his hut, remaining for about two
years. He planted enough ground to give him food, and often received his
friends, who sincerely loved him for his unique qualities of mind and
soul.

At Walden Thoreau compiled and wrote two of his best-known books--"A
Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers" and "Walden, or Life in the
Woods." The latter has gone into many editions in several languages.

Thoreau avowed, "I went to the woods because I wished to live
deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life." So he lived, a
happy stoic, beside his little lake. "A lake," said he, "is the
landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is the earth's
eye, looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own
nature.... It is a mirror which no stone can crack, whose quicksilver
will never wear off, whose gilding Nature continually repairs; no
storms, no dust, can dim its surface ever fresh, ... swept by the sun's
hazy brush." In the solitude of his days the lake-dweller found himself
"no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a pasture, or a
bean leaf, or sorrel, or a bumble-bee. I am no more lonely than the mill
brook, or a weathercock, or the north star, or the south wind, or the
first spider in a new house." He describes with affection "the old
settler and original proprietor who is reported to have dug Walden Pond,
and stoned it, and fringed it with pine woods"; and that "elderly dame"
who lived in his neighborhood, "invisible to most persons, in whose
odorous herb garden I love to stroll some times, gathering samples and
listening to her fables; for she has a genius of unequaled fertility.
Her memory runs back farther than mythology, and she can tell me the
original of every fable, and on what fact everyone is founded, for the
incidents occurred when she was young. A ruddy and lusty old dame, who
delights in all weathers and seasons, and is likely to outlive all her
children yet."

Thoreau's vigorous, contented years came to a close in 1862, when he was
only forty-five. He sleeps in the burying-ground of his well-loved
Concord, from which he rarely strayed far during his lifetime. Said his
friend, William Ellery Channing, "His love of wildness was real. This
child of an old civilization, this Norman boy with the blue eyes and
brown hair, held the Indian's creed, and believed in the essential worth
and integrity of plant and animal. This was a religion; to us mythical.
So far a recluse as never to seek popular ends, he was yet gifted with
the ability and courage to be a captain of men. Heroism he possessed in
its highest sense,--the will to use his means to his ends, and these the
best."

[Illustration: FROM THE JOHN MUIR MEMORIAL NUMBER OF THE SIERRA CLUB
BULLETIN

JOHN MUIR

    W.F. DASSONVILLE, PHOTOGRAPHER]




    _AMERICAN NATURALISTS_       _John Muir_


FOUR


In John Muir's own story of his boyhood and youth he declares, "When I
was a boy in Scotland I was fond of everything that was wild, and all my
life I've been growing fonder and fonder of wild places and wild
creatures." Muir was born at Dunbar, on the stormy coast of Scotland,
April 21, 1838. From his grandfather he learned his letters, before he
was three years old, with the aid of shop signs. His was an adventurous
boyhood, punctuated by riotous school fights, hunts for skylark's nests
and fox holes, scrambles among the crags of Dunbar Castle, games of
running, jumping and wrestling, and repeated chastisements by a father
who believed in the efficacy of the rod, and used it to emphasize his
disapproval of "shore and field wanderings." A grammar-school reader
gave the Scotch lad his first knowledge of the birds and trees of
America. Eagerly he read descriptions of the fish hawk and the bald
eagle by Alexander Wilson, the Scotch naturalist, and Audubon's
wonderful story of the passenger pigeon.

When John Muir was eleven years old he crossed the Atlantic in a
sailing-vessel with his father, a sister and a brother. In Wisconsin the
father set about preparing a home for the wife and children waiting in
Scotland. The future "patriarch of the mountains" spent joyous hours
exploring pastures new--looking for songbirds' nests, game haunts and
wildflower gardens. At night, when the household slept, he would creep
out of bed, though weary after long hours of labor in the fields, and
read his treasured books, or work on his inventions. For a few months he
worked as assistant to an inventor in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin.
Longing to resume the education interrupted when he was eleven years
old, the youth returned to Madison, where, despite almost insurmountable
handicaps, he was able to take a four-year course in the new State
University. In vacation time he worked on a farm, cradling four acres of
grain a day, then sitting up till midnight to analyze and classify
plants native to the region. At the end of four years the embryo
naturalist, geologist, explorer, philosopher and protector of Nature
left his Alma Mater. In his own words, he was "only leaving one
university for another, the Wisconsin University for the University of
the Wilderness."

As a young man Muir traveled to the Pacific Coast. There he met Dr. John
Strenzel, a Polish revolutionist who had escaped from Siberia, and had
gained fame as "the first experimental horticulturist in California
after the Mission Fathers." The young Scotch scientist was taken to a
hill-top opposite San Francisco to see the Strenzel orchards. On this
hill he wooed the darkly beautiful Benicia Strenzel, and here he made
her his wife, and lived with her and their children and grandchildren;
and here above Suisun Bay, lie John and Benicia Muir in a corner of the
orchard where the trees shed their blooms in the springtime.

Dr. Strenzel gave his ranch to his daughter and her husband when they
were married. Muir cultivated the fruit trees, the grape vines and grain
fields with such skill and diligence that he reaped a goodly fortune. He
drove hard Scotch bargains with marketmen--this great-hearted lover of
Mother Nature. But the money he earned was for his family, not himself.
Says one who knew him well, "He wanted little that money can buy." Of
his friend Edward H. Harriman Muir once remarked, "He's not as rich as I
am. He has a hundred millions. I have all I want."

While his crops were ripening, this dramatist of the out-of-doors would
take himself to the mountains, abide on the flowery uplands, study the
ways of birds and squirrels, of Big Trees and cataracts and glaciers. In
1879 he went to Alaska. During his explorations he discovered Glacier
Bay and the immense ice field now known to the world as Muir Glacier.
For several years he made his summer home in the Yosemite Valley,
acquainting himself with its botanical and geological features and
making notes for future books. An appeal issued in his name in 1890 led
to the creation of the Yosemite Valley and surrounding forests as a
national reserve. Muir has been called the pioneer of our system of
national parks. In the cause of science he traveled to Siberia, South
America, Africa and India. "Tall, lean, craggy,"--a great tree of a man
himself, he knew the forests of the world.

John Muir, "grandest character in Nature literature," died at the age of
seventy-six on the day before Christmas, 1914. He was the author of
several rare volumes of essays and reminiscences, most of which were
published after he had reached the age of seventy. "To read Muir," says
a critic of American literature, "is to be with a tempestuous soul whose
units are storms and mountain ranges and mighty glacial moraines, who
cries 'Come with me along the glaciers and see God making landscapes!'"
Yet, "Look at that little muggins of a fir cone!" the interpreter of
titanic symbols would exclaim, lovingly stroking a brown trophy of his
beloved woods. Said a companion of Muir's during a scientific
expedition, "Flakes of snow and crumbs of granite were to him real
life." His study of the Water Ouzel is called the "finest bird biography
in existence." He loved also to tell of the Douglas squirrel, "whose
musical, piney gossip," wrote he, "is savory to the ear as balsam to the
palate."

[Illustration: FROM A BUST BY C.S. PIETRO

IN THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY, NEW YORK

JOHN BURROUGHS

    BY COURTESY OF THE MUSEUM]




    _AMERICAN NATURALISTS_        _John Burroughs_


FIVE


From his maternal grandfather, who was American-born but of Irish
ancestry, John Burroughs avers he gets his "dreamy, lazy, shirking
ways." That Burroughs, the poet of bee and bird, of flower and tree, has
dreamed to good account, all who read and love him know. He got his
first taste for out-door diversions in the company of his aged
grandparent, as together they fished the streams of Delaware County, New
York,--the old man mingling tales of soldier days at Valley Forge with
stories about snakes and birds.

Burroughs was born in Roxbury, New York, April 3, 1837. In after years
he wrote, "April is my natal month, and I am born again into new-delight
at each return of it." His father was a school teacher turned farmer.
Burroughs' mother had little schooling, but, he says, "I owe to my
mother my temperament, my love of Nature, my brooding, introspective
habit of mind--all those things which in a literary man help to give
atmosphere to his work. The Celtic element, which I get mostly from her
side, has no doubt played an important part in my life. My idealism, my
romantic tendencies, are largely her gift."

Young John was usually engaged outside of school hours doing chores in
field and garden, but he was never too busy to raise his head at the
note of a "brown thrasher," or stop to inquire into the ways of a wild
flower nodding in his path. He went hunting, but he used to come back
with little game. He was too intent on watching the behavior of fox and
pigeon to aim his gun. He says in Dr. Barrus' intimate biography, "Our
Friend John Burroughs," "I knew pretty well the ways of wild bees and
hornets when I was only a small lad. What, or who, as I grew up, gave my
mind its final push in this direction would not be easy to name. It is
quite certain that I got it through literature, and more especially
through the works of Audubon." He acknowledges, also, the influence of
Thoreau, and of Emerson, "who kindled the love of Nature in me."

By doing farm work and by teaching Burroughs saved enough money to enter
an institute not far from his home. He returned from his first visit to
New York "with an empty pocket and an empty stomach, but with a bagful
of books." All his money had been spent at second-hand book-stalls. For
several years he taught school, marrying a pupil, Ursula North, in the
meantime. He was twenty-six when, engaged in teaching near West Point,
he "chanced upon the works of Audubon" in the library of the Military
Academy. He relates, "It was like bringing together fire and powder. I
was ripe for the adventure; I had leisure, I was in a good bird country,
and I had Audubon to stimulate me. How eagerly and joyously I took up
the study! It gave to my walks a new delight; it made me look upon every
grove and wood as a new storehouse of possible treasures." His earliest
contribution to Nature literature, a paper entitled "The Return of the
Birds," was completed when he was a clerk in the office of the
Comptroller of the Currency, in Washington. He held this position for
ten years. In his spare moments he studied birds and wrote about them,
finding that "he had only to unpack the memories of the farm boy to get
at the main things about the common ones." The love of the great Nature
essayist for his native countryside pervades much that he has given us.
"Take the farm boy out of my books, and you have robbed them of
something that is vital and fundamental," he avows. From the beginning
he liked to write about rustic things--"sugar-making, cows, haying,
stone walls."

Journeys to England, to the West Indies, to Alaska with the Harriman
Expedition, to the Grand Canyon and the Yosemite, which he explored with
his friend John Muir, to the Yellowstone (he visited the National Park
in 1903 as the chosen companion of President Theodore Roosevelt),
widened the sphere of John Burroughs' happy bird and flower
hunting-grounds. But he still loves best the scenes of his boyhood, and
he often returns in summer to the Catskills to revive memories, and
write, and muse on the beauties of the Delaware County hills and vales.
His home above the Hudson, at Riverby, West Park, where he has lived for
nearly half a century, and Slabsides, his tree-shaded chestnut-barked
work cabin on a nearby hill, are places of pilgrimage for children,
poets, wise men. "Nature lovers?" said a visitor. "Yes, and John
Burroughs lovers, too."

"The whole gospel of my books," wrote the sage of Slabsides, most
distinguished of living American naturalists, "is 'Stay at home; see the
wonderful and the beautiful in the simple things all about you; make the
most of the common and the near at hand.'" Herein we have the keynote of
the enduring charm that distinguishes all the Burroughs books about
bursting buds, birds, butterflies, leaves, and the seasons' graces. Said
Walt Whitman of a letter written to him by Mr. Burroughs, "It is a June
letter, worthy of June; written in John's best out-door mood. I sit
here, helpless as I am, and breathe it in like fresh air."

[Illustration: FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY PIRIE MACDONALD NEW YORK

ERNEST THOMPSON SETON

    COURTESY OF THE WOODCRAFT LEAGUE]




    _AMERICAN NATURALISTS_            _Ernest Thompson Seton_


SIX


Ernest Thompson Seton, Nature illustrator and writer, was born in South
Shields, England, in the year 1860. At five years of age his parents
moved to Canada and established a home in the backwoods. He was educated
in the public schools and the Collegiate Institute of Toronto, and later
attended the Royal Academy in London. On the plains of Manitoba, Canada,
he studied natural history, and became so efficient that he was
appointed official naturalist to the Government of Manitoba. Between the
years 1886 and 1891 he published two books on the mammals and birds of
the northern province.

Following a period of art study in Paris, Mr. Seton became one of the
illustrators of the Century Dictionary. Besides illustrating many books
about birds and animals and writing the text, he has contributed
numerous articles to leading magazines, and has delivered more than
three thousand lectures on natural history subjects. Practically all of
this author's books are contributions to natural history. His "Life
Histories of Northern Animals" is a popular treatise on a scientific
basis, of which Theodore Roosevelt said, "I regard your work as one of
the most valuable contributions any naturalist has made to the life
histories of American mammals."

The writer made his first popular appeal in "Wild Animals I Have Known,"
which ran through ten editions in one year and has now an established
place in animal literature. Mr. Seton is a man of many sides and
sympathies. Probably no one person has had a more profound influence on
the boys of America than he, for he has taught the philosophy of
out-door life and has been a pioneer in such work. Someone has used the
term, "Nature Apostle," to express the motive of his activity. He has
made the things of the out-of-doors attractively real to the man in the
street, as well as to the child. Mr. Seton likes the woods. He likes to
make things, to teach and demonstrate Woodcraft with groups of boys. He
comes to town when he must, but he is happiest at "Dewinton," near
Greenwich, Connecticut, where he and his wife have developed an estate
comprising buildings, gardens, woods, a lake and bridges of rare
interest and charm. All is unique. Mr. Seton planned the buildings,
wrote the specifications and superintended the building.

Much that Seton has written has exploited the Indian--the ideal
Indian--as the first American, presenting him in the most attractive
fashion, and setting before the youth of the land the skill of the
Indian in handicrafts and woodcraftsmanship. He has not only popularized
things that have to do with the open air in America: he was the first
man anywhere to organize in practical manner a definite form of out-door
activity for boys. This he did in 1902 when he founded the Woodcraft
Indians. The principles of self-government with adult guidance, of
competition against time and space, were first laid down by him in those
days. Later he became Chief Scout of the Boy Scouts of America. In 1916
he organized the Woodcraft League of America, to carry out the general
ideals of his early work: "Something to know, something to do, something
to enjoy in the woods and always with an eye to character." Chief of the
Woodcraft League, he says, "Woodcraft is lifecraft." This organization
admits boys and girls, men and women, and aims to carry over into old
age the real play spirit on the playgrounds of Mother Nature. As a boy
he hungered for Nature knowledge, but he had no books to guide him, and
he declared that if ever he had the opportunity he would give to
children what he did not have. In the preface of his "Two Little
Savages," he says, "Because I have known the torment of thirst I would
dig a well where others may drink."

Mr. Seton works as hard in building some simple thing for a game for a
boys' camp as in seeking facts about Nature or planning a house. But
above all he likes to personalize the animals, the birds, the trees, the
winds and the seasons with his pen and in his talks about Nature. And
because he loves and understands them he makes them real to others, so
that they love them too. Some of the books that have carried his name
wherever Nature literature has readers are, besides those already
mentioned: "The Biography of a Grizzly," "Lobo, Rag and Vixen," "Lives
of the Hunted," "Drag and Johnny Bear," "Animal Heroes," "Biography of a
Silver Fox," "Rolf in the Woods," and "Wild Animals at Home."




THE MENTOR · DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE

SERIAL NUMBER 181




AMERICAN NATURALISTS

By ERNEST INGERSOLL

     _Author of "Nature's Calendar," "Wild Life of Orchard and Field,"
     "Wild Neighbors," "Art of the Wild," "Animal Competitors," and
     other Nature Books._


[Sidenote: _MENTOR GRAVURES_

JOHN J. AUDUBON

J. LOUIS RODOLPHE AGASSIZ

HENRY DAVID THOREAU

JOHN MUIR

JOHN BURROUGHS

ERNEST THOMPSON SETON]

[Illustration]

[Illustration: Photograph by Press Illustrating Service, Inc.

JOHN BURROUGHS AT THE DOOR OF "SLABSIDES"

His study on the hill above his home at West Park, New York]

In the sense of its attractive description and interpretation, as
distinguished from its coldly scientific study, the literature of
natural history in the United States is a modern development. Americans
were intensely engaged in the earlier years of their history in
practical affairs. A large proportion of them were pioneers who were too
much occupied in subduing the wilderness and its harmful denizens to
civilized purposes to be interested in its beauties. Undoubtedly there
were "Nature lovers" even then. The poetry of James Hillhouse
(1754-1832), and the fact that he set out the trees that brought New
Haven fame as the "Elm City," prove him to have been a Nature lover; but
the class of readers now known by that title is, like the phrase itself,
of very recent growth.

[Endnote: Entered as second-class matter March 10, 1913, at the post
office at New York, N.Y., under the act of March 3, 1879. Copyright,
1919, by The Mentor Association, Inc.]


_Alexander Wilson_

In Philadelphia, under the inspiration of Franklin, American science
first put forth its budding twigs in the peace that followed the
Revolution. Hither tramped the Scottish weaver-poet, Alexander Wilson,
who landed in New York from Paisley in 1794. After many vicissitudes,
he became acquainted with William Bartram, whose botanical garden was
the pride of the town, and who himself had written a book of travel and
observation which may perhaps be regarded as the earliest production in
the field we are to cover in this article. Through him and other local
naturalists, such as Dr. Barton and the Peales, Wilson became fascinated
with the study of birds. Poor as he was, and untrained in drawing, he
formed a resolution to prepare a work describing all birds of North
America known to him, illustrated by colored plates executed by himself.
"I am entranced," he wrote in 1804 to Bartram, with quaint humor, "over
the plumage of a lark, or gazing, like a despairing lover, on the
lineaments of an owl."

[Illustration: Photograph by courtesy of the American Museum of Natural
History, New York

PORTRAIT OF JOHN JAMES AUDUBON

Painted by his son, John Woodhouse Audubon, about 1841]

There is hardly a greater marvel in literary history than the
accomplishment of the task of publishing nine volumes of "The American
Ornithology" between 1806 and 1814, the last one a year after Wilson's
death. As ornithology (the science of birds) it stands surprisingly well
the test of criticism, and otherwise it bears the same classic relation
to our literature that Gilbert White's "Selborne" does to that of
England. Wilson's style is clear and free from affectation of any sort,
his diction simple and pure, illumined by that joy in his subject which
was increased by every new discovery, and sweetened by poetic
appreciation and genial humor. It is extremely fortunate that, at the
beginning of our out-of-door literature, so excellent a model existed
for young writers. Every bird lover will enjoy reading Wilson, and every
would-be essayist ought to study his pages.

[Illustration: Photograph by courtesy of the American Museum of Natural
History, New York

PORTRAIT OF ALEXANDER WILSON

After a painting made by John Watson Gordon from an original picture of
Wilson owned by his sister]


_John J. Audubon_

While Wilson was at work, chance brought John J. Audubon, a lively young
fellow of eighteen, to reside in a village near Philadelphia. Audubon,
the son of a French father and a French Creole mother of San Domingo,
was born at Aux Cayes (owe kei), in that island, April 26, 1785. Well
educated in France, and in easy financial circumstances, he was fond of
gunning and of painting portraits of the game he shot. Though Audubon
and Wilson met, the temperaments of the two were antagonistic, and no
acquaintance followed. It was not until several years later that
Audubon's own ambitious "Birds of America" began to see the light after
a long period of wandering and misfortune, in which nothing but the
faithful support of his talented wife saved the author from failure.

[Illustration: PORTRAIT BUST OF AUDUBON

By W.E. Couper, in the American Museum of Natural History, New York]

[Illustration: HOME OF AUDUBON BUILT IN 1842

Overlooking the Hudson. From a lithograph made in 1865]

[Illustration: THE AUDUBON HOUSE

As it appears to-day, below Riverside Drive, near 155th Street, New
York]

Audubon's monumental work, now brings, in the original edition with the
folio-plates, $3,000 to $4,000 in the book market. It contains far more
material and better plates than Wilson's work, and differs from it
strikingly in a literary way, for Audubon's style is characteristically
French in its liveliness, its interjection of personal incidents, and
its imaginative exaggeration. Audubon's fame as an author is based on
the magnificent plates rather than on the text of his book, which is
rarely quoted by modern ornithologists, most of whose writings are,
however, far less entertaining. Audubon, possessing pleasing social
gifts and special opportunities, obtained a contemporary publicity such
as Wilson never enjoyed.

[Illustration: Photograph by courtesy of the American Museum of Natural
History, New York

LOUIS AGASSIZ

Demonstrating his favorite subject, Radiates (corals, jelly fishes, and
star-fish tribe), before a class of pupils]


_A Group of Early Naturalists_

A third important treatise on our birds was that by Thomas Nuttall, a
quaint character in charge of the Harvard Botanical Garden, and an
original author in botany. Like his predecessors he gathered his facts
by traveling extensively. His two volumes are of great value, and
peculiarly interesting in the matter of birds' songs.

A contemporary of Nuttall's in Philadelphia was Dr. John Godman
(1794-1830), an eminent physician and anatomist, who found time to write
a charming little book, "Rambles of a Naturalist," which was the
earliest example of sketches of that kind issued in this country. He
later prepared an illustrated "Natural History." This was the first
systematic account, with engravings, of all the American mammals then
known, and it contains much enjoyable and instructive reading, with good
pictures.

[Illustration: THOMAS NUTTALL]

Audubon, about 1840, projected a more pretentious work on our mammals
than Godman's, the text of which was to be prepared by Dr. John Bachman
of South Carolina, while Audubon and his son Victor were to draw the
pictures on copper. This plan resulted in the publication, in 1847, of
"Quadrupeds of North America,"--to this day an important and interesting
feature of our scientific libraries.

[Illustration: From "Walden," by courtesy of Houghton Mifflin Company

VIEW OF WALDEN POND FROM EMERSON'S CLIFF]

During a subsequent short period almost the only name to be mentioned is
that of Henry W. Herbert, a highly cultivated man and the author of many
novels and poems; but these are forgotten, while as "Frank Forester,"
the writer of "My Shooting Box," "Field Sports," and other manuals for
young sportsmen, Mr. Herbert lives in the admiring memory of every
reading man who enjoys tramping the autumn woods with gun and dog. His
descriptions of field sports and rural scenes are so elegantly written,
and are so instinct with the inspiration of the meadows and marshes
where he loved to roam, that they have rarely been surpassed.

[Illustration: From "Walden," by courtesy of Houghton Mifflin Company

WALDEN POND

The cabin site is indicated by the cairn of stones]

Theodore Winthrop's "Life in the Open Air," and other books, have a
similar quality; nor must we forget N.P. Willis, T.W. Higginson, Starr
King, and particularly Wilson Flagg, whose "Forest and Field Studies"
came out in 1857. Flagg added later a delightful book, "Birds and
Seasons in New England," and had the singular fortune to popularize for
a familiar sparrow the name "vesper-bird" in place of its earlier and
very commonplace name.

[Illustration: From "Walden," by courtesy of Houghton Mifflin Company

THOREAU'S CABIN AT WALDEN

From a drawing by Charles Copeland]

Wilson Flagg was one of that circle of writers and thinkers who have
made New England, and particularly Concord, so memorable. All of them
felt strongly the influence of their rural surroundings. Emerson
exhibits it--may be said to have lived "close to Nature" in the
sublimest sense of the phrase; one realizes it more distinctly, perhaps,
in his poems, but it is to be felt everywhere in his discourses. The
same is true of Channing, of Hawthorne, Lowell, and the other essayists
and poets in that brilliant company. All loved things out of doors, and
communicated to their readers the gracious inspirations they received.

[Illustration: From "Walden," by courtesy of Houghton Mifflin Company

FURNITURE USED IN THE WALDEN HOUSE, MADE BY THOREAU]


_Henry D. Thoreau_

Among these New Englanders one stands preeminent to our view--Henry D.
Thoreau, whom Channing so happily called the poet-naturalist. In him the
observation of Nature took the foremost place as a life-pursuit; but it
reflected more than the science of Nature alone, though that was there,
too, as it must be to make any out-door book of real and living
interest. Let some, if they choose, belittle "solid information," and
extol "insight"; nevertheless the inner meaning, the imaginative
perception of the value of a fact, cannot be expressed in any useful way
unless the fact itself is truly and accurately stated and understood,
and a reader who trusts altogether to a literary or artistic
presentation of out-door life is likely to get some very distorted
notions.

[Illustration: Photograph by George R. King

JOHN MUIR AND A PINE TREE FRIEND]

Thoreau's books stand at the foundation of what we now call American
out-door literature. It is probable that anybody who reads a single one
will be eager to read the others, but this might not happen if he began,
for instance, with the "Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers." With
"Walden" as an introduction to Thoreau, you get the man really in place,
for this is the story of his camp life on the shore of Walden Pond, and
has the least of those eccentric meditations which elsewhere sometimes
puzzle, if they do not bore, the ordinary reader. "Excursions" is
somewhat more discursive but equally delightful. "I wish to speak a word
for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a
freedom and culture merely civil," he declares; and these essays are
memoranda of the author's wonderful walks--_wonder-full_ they were. "It
was a pleasure and a privilege," wrote Emerson, "to talk with him. He
knew the country like a fox or bird, and passed through it freely by
paths of his own."

[Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N.Y.

JOHN MUIR AND JOHN BURROUGHS

Called "John o' Mountains" and "John o' Birds" by their friends]

Thoreau died in 1862, having published only two books, the "Week" (1849)
and "Walden" (1854). After his death there were printed no less than ten
volumes prepared from his great accumulation of essays in manuscript,
and notes and diaries. The four entitled "Spring," "Summer," "Autumn,"
and "Winter" are mines of treasure to the Nature student. They consist
of dated paragraphs from Thoreau's voluminous journals, the selections
being mainly notes on animals and plants seen about Concord at all
seasons of the year, with the queries and musings that occurred to him
at the moment. They are books to be owned and referred to by the
naturalist rather than to be read for entertainment.

The literary magazines now began to print articles of open-air
observation, most of which, then as now, dealt with bird life. This was
not only because birds are singularly attractive, and the most easily
studied of all animal groups, but largely because the United States has
been very fortunate in the ornithologists that first made American birds
known to the people. Instead of beginning with mere classifiers of dull,
unimaginative mind, we were truly blessed in having such pioneers in our
ornithology as Wilson and Audubon--one a true poet, to whom birds were
emblems of the graces, and the other a painter, whose descriptions are
imbued with color and vivacity.

[Illustration: THE HOUSE OF JOHN MUIR--in California]

[Illustration: THE MUIR VINEYARDS AND ORCHARDS

Near Martinez, California]


_John Burroughs_

Of the new writers of the end of the last century, none has become more
deservedly popular and beloved than John Burroughs, who, on April third,
1919, entered his eighty-third year. Ever since "Wake Robin" was issued
in 1870, he has been giving us a succession of essays, at intervals
crystalized into books, that have seemed like so many windows opening on
ever-new vistas of a world whose delight had hardly been suspected by
the general reader. They deal not only with wild beasts, birds and
flowers, but with the homely facts of rural life; and they tell of
experiences that make us long to take to the woods and the streams, to
track the weasel through the winter snows, surprise the secrets of the
birds and the bees, launch our boat upon river or lake, and drift or
fish, and then rest through the long summer nights upon a couch of
boughs beside a mountain fireplace. The very titles of Burroughs' books
are aromatic with the fragrance of woods and fields: "Locusts and Wild
Honey," "Signs and Seasons," "Winter Sunshine," "Birds and Poets."

As he has advanced in years Mr. Burroughs has become more and more of a
philosopher, discussing deep questions with copious information and
illuminating thought.


_Popular Nature Writers of Today_

To mention even a quarter of the Nature books that have appeared during
the past twenty-five years is impossible in this review. New England
furnished many of note, such as the gracefully written and informative
books of Bradford Torrey, largely reprinted from _The Atlantic Monthly_;
the lively chapters on wild life near home by Dallas Lore Sharp; and the
useful volumes by E.H. Forbush. From New York's presses were issued
dozens of untechnical nature-books written by such well-known men as
W.T. Hornaday, Frank Chapman, F.S. Matthews, W.P. Eaton, Ernest
Ingersoll, and the various authors of the "Nature Library." A special
note must be made of the series from the pen of Dr. C.C. Abbott, who,
like Gilbert White and Thoreau, found on his farm near Trenton, New
Jersey, material for half a dozen or more books, including "Rambles of a
Naturalist About Home," "Upland and Meadow," and "Wasteland Wanderings."
Dr. Henry McCook, a Philadelphia clergyman, wrote in his "Tenants of the
Old Farm" a delightful story of the busy lives of ants and bees. All are
models of the value of close and continuous observation of what is going
on day by day under our eyes, and should be in every library.

[Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N.Y.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

In Yosemite National Park. Yosemite Falls in the background. In a career
rich in endeavor and full of achievement, America's great citizen spent
his first years and his last years as a naturalist]

[Illustration: DR. WILLIAM T. HORNADAY

Director of the New York Zoological Park since 1896, and author of many
books and articles on natural history]

One conspicuous reason for the rapid modern growth of the department of
Nature literature was the facility in illustration effected by the
invention of the half-tone and three-color processes of reproducing
photographs and paintings, accompanied by the steady improvement and
cheapening of the camera in its application to field-study. These
inventions enabled publishers to issue books with accurate and beautiful
pictures at a price previously impossible, so that almost everyone might
possess them.

In 1898 a somewhat startling innovation in Nature books appeared with
the publication of Ernest Thompson Seton's "Wild Animals I Have Known,"
soon followed by others in the same style, such as the "Biography of a
Grizzly," "The Sandhill Stag," et cetera. Mr. Seton is a field
naturalist of experience, and a portrayer of animal life of unique
distinction. His books are embellished with remarkable drawings, but
they are essentially romances that humanize their animal heroes.
"Because of his remarkably keen and quaint sense of humor and his power
to draw and write," says an admirer, "no other animals are as real and
lovable as his."

[Illustration: Photograph by Press Illustrating Service Inc.

LUTHER BURBANK

Examining a flowering shrub under a microscope in his garden in Santa
Rosa, California. He is called "unique in his knowledge of Nature, and
his manipulation and interpretation of her forces." The renowned Dutch
botanist, Dr. Hugo de Vries, named Burbank "the greatest breeder of
plants the world has ever known." This most beneficent of naturalists,
whose potato, stoneless plum, spineless cactus and ever-bearing
strawberry have aided beyond all estimate California industry, was born
in Lancaster, Massachusetts, March 7, 1849]

[Illustration: DAN BEARD

National Scout Commander of the Boy Scouts of America, and beloved by
all sportsmen and naturalists]

Other clever writers have produced animal stories, of which the best are
those by Charles G.D. Roberts, the Canadian author. Imitators appeared
and obtained wide popularity until earnest protests from real
naturalists and educators arose. Some of these writers were pronounced
"Nature fakirs" and were discredited. Mr. Seton has produced in his two
fine volumes, "Northern Mammals," the best treatise in existence on the
natural history of our more northern four-footed beasts. He has also
written a capital book on the scenery, people and zoology of northern
Canada, entitled "The Arctic Prairies"--a good example of the many
highly interesting and instructive books of travel produced within the
past few years by men who may be termed hunter-naturalists, such as the
late Theodore Roosevelt, Frank Chapman, Caspar Whitney, Dwight
Huntington, Mr. and Mrs. C.W. Beebe, Enos Mills, William B. Cabot,
Charles Sheldon; and the authors of reports on various governmental
exploratory expeditions in Alaska and elsewhere, especially Andrew J.
Stone, E. W. Nelson, Lieut. Sugden, the Preble brothers, Wilfred Osgood,
Vernon Bailey, and several Canadian travelers.


_John Muir and Elliott Coues_

[Illustration: BRADFORD TORREY

Ornithologist and author; editor of Thoreau's works]

[Illustration: DR. ELLIOTT COUES

An eminent naturalist distinguished for his researches in ornithology]

One man among these explorers stands out above all others for his loving
appreciation of Nature in her wild state, combined with a remarkable
power of delineation, and a gift of carrying to his readers not only the
facts that engaged his attention, but a share of his delight in his
experiences and of the inner meanings of them. This man is John Muir,
whose narratives of discovery in the Western mountains are an immortal
part of American literature. Never will the present writer forget the
inspiration of a day in the woods with John Muir and John Burroughs!
Different in fields of work, in literary style, and, to a great degree,
diverse in habits of thought and views of life, they were at one, and
beautifully supplementary in their reverential interpretation of Nature.

The widely awakened attention of Americans to animals and plants
inspired a desire to know them more in detail, and this brought out from
specialists a great number of what may be classed as _guide-books_,
descriptive of trees, wildflowers and animals of various kinds. The aids
to bird study are especially notable, many of them, in addition to their
value as reference books, containing much that is readable. None exceeds
in this respect "The Birds of the Northwest," by Dr. Elliott Coues
(1842-1899), who, besides being the foremost scientific ornithologist of
his time, was one of the most brilliant writers America has produced in
the field of prose composition. His "Key" is the text-book of American
ornithology.

[Illustration: ERNEST INGERSOLL

Naturalist, editor and author]


_Women Nature Writers_

[Illustration: OLIVE THORNE MILLER

One of the first American women to write about Nature]

In this group of helpful books are to be found most of the productions
of the women that have turned their literary talents toward out-door
study. Olive Thorne Miller's bird books were early in the field;
Florence Merriam Bailey has guided amateurs to the observation of birds
"through an opera-glass," and has revealed to the East those of the
West, as has Mrs. Wheelock of California. Mrs. Fanny Eckstrom, Mrs.
Mabel Osgood Wright, Mrs. Doubleday ("Neltje Blanchan"), and Mrs.
Porter of "Limberlost" fame are familiar names in this sphere of Nature
lore. To Mrs. Anna B. Comstock we owe the best manual for teachers of
Nature study, and a good little book on insects; Miss Margaret Morley
has instructed us regarding wasps; Miss Soule tells us how to rear
butterflies; Mrs. Dana leads us to the wildflowers,--and so on.


_Scholar Naturalists_

[Illustration: WALTER PRICHARD EATON

Writer on Nature subjects]

[Illustration: FLORENCE MERRIAM BAILEY

Author of "Birds Through an Opera Glass," "Handbook of Birds of Western
United States," et cetera. Mrs. Bailey is the wife of Vernon Bailey, the
well-known biologist and explorer]

[Illustration: MRS. MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT

Author of "Citizen Bird" (with Dr. Coues), "Gray Lady and the Birds,"
and similar books]

I have said almost nothing about the investigators and teachers of
natural science in the United States and Canada. One ought to speak of
those great botanists, John Torrey and Asa Gray, the latter the earliest
champion in the United States of the Darwinian view of organic
evolution. And there is Louis Agassiz (ag'-gah-see), who combined with
the intellectual keenness of the investigator wonderful power of
inspiration as a teacher. He it was that first aroused the educational
leaders of the country to the need of scientific instruction for the
masses. He gathered about him in Cambridge a group of special students
just after the close of the Civil War, almost all of whom became famous
for research and as publicists. His seaside school on Penikese Island,
off the Massachusetts coast, in 1873, was the forerunner of all our
summer-schools.

Spencer F. Baird did much the same service at Washington, founding that
body of men who have made history at the Smithsonian Institution, the
Fisheries Bureau, and other scientific agencies of the Government
prolific in research and in practical benefit to mankind.

To these patient, hard-working men we owe not only precious additions to
original knowledge, but learned instruction. Most of them have been
teachers in our colleges and high schools, leading writers in the best
magazines, lecturers to whom we have listened with profit, and the
authors of our school books and works of reference. Without their
unselfish labors in the search for facts, and the generous gift of their
learning to the public, the pleasant matter of our Nature books would
rest on the same fanciful foundation as did the fables and wonder-tales
of the Middle Ages.


_SUPPLEMENTARY READING_

AUDUBON THE NATURALIST, 2 vols; _by Francis Hobart Herrick_. LOUIS
AGASSIZ, His Life and Correspondence; _by Elizabeth Carey Agassiz_. A
LIFE OF HENRY D. THOREAU; _by F.B. Sanborn_. OUR FRIEND JOHN BURROUGHS;
_by Dr. Clara Barrus_. THE STORY OF MY BOYHOOD AND YOUTH; _by John
Muir_. JOHN MUIR MEMORIAL NUMBER OF THE SIERRA CLUB BULLETIN, vol. X.

[**Asterism] Information concerning the above books may be had on
application to the Editor of The Mentor.




THE OPEN LETTER


[Illustration: HENRY D. THOREAU]

[Illustration: Courtesy of Houghton Mifflin & Co. Publishers of
Thoreau's Works.

THOREAU'S FLUTE, SPYGLASS, AND HIS COPY OF WILSON'S "ORNITHOLOGY"]

Some folks living in and near Concord way back in the '50's used to say
that Thoreau was a thriftless individual who wasted his time in the
woods out at Walden Pond and on the Merrimac River--that he was of
little use in the world and would not stick to any job. The world does
not know who the folks were that said that, and the world doesn't care
very much about them. But the world cares a great deal about Thoreau,
and wants to know all about him.

       *       *       *       *       *

Why? Because he had a message for all of us that love Nature; and, while
he seemed to some of the folks of his time to be nothing but a shiftless
dreamer and a shy recluse, he was looking over the things in Nature with
a very intelligent eye and he was writing down for our benefit a great
deal of valuable information. And, more than that, he was a shrewd
philosopher. He made clear to us that there were two ways of looking at
things--one, ours, of looking at Nature from the outside, and the other,
his, of looking from the midst of Nature outward at us. He set down in
his notes a great many wise things that he had observed in us, viewing
us from the standpoint of the wild woods, and speaking to us as an
inspired denizen of the wilderness might do. Thoreau appraised his busy,
industrious fellow men shrewdly and intelligently--and he appreciated
them in his way; but he did not see why he should find a job among them
and go to work every day, and put his savings in the bank, and be a
citizen in his town, and run for office, or serve in any way in civic
affairs. For that lack in him he was sharply criticized by some people.
Well, it's too bad. I cannot find, however, that John Muir, John
Burroughs, Galen Clark, or any of those wonderful old "Sequoia Men" have
had the temper or the disposition to run for civic office or concern
themselves about whether they were in the line of approved social
advancement in any town or settlement. All they seemed to be concerned
about was whether they were right with God and right with themselves,
and were living the way that their health and reason dictated; whether
they were finding the simple, fundamental truths of human life and
nature, and reconciling them by holding close to the bosom of mother
earth. The social problems of great cities did not interest them
greatly. They knew mountains better than municipalities; they knew a
country's trees and trails better than its treaties; they found their
happiness in the solitude of the woods, their joy in the wilderness:
their incense was the smell of the hemlock and pine and the odor of the
smouldering campfire, not the scent of heated city hotels, theaters or
music halls.

       *       *       *       *       *

And while Thoreau was pronounced long ago an idle dreamer, it now seems
that his life was a very active and productive one, for lo! here are
many books written by one, Henry D. Thoreau, that thousands nowadays
read eagerly and with loving appreciation. And where are the enduring
products of the thrifty and worthy souls that found Thoreau wanting in
his day? What have they done that interests the world now? Only
this--they scolded Thoreau. By virtue of that they are immortalized. We
don't remember their names or how many there were of them. They are
simply recorded in history as having scolded Thoreau. We have no more
concern about them. We have Thoreau.

[Illustration: W.D. Moffat EDITOR]




Thoreau at Walden Pond


I love a broad margin to my life. Sometimes in a summer morning, having
taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till
noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in
undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around or
flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my
west window, or the noise of some traveler's wagon on the distant
highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons
like corn in the night, and those seasons were far better than any work
of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my
life, but so much over and above my usual allowance. I realized what the
Orientals mean by contemplation and the forsaking of works. For the most
part, I minded not how the hours went. The day advanced as if to light
some work of mine; it was morning, and lo, now it is evening, and
nothing memorable is accomplished. Instead of singing like the birds, I
silently smiled at my incessant good fortune. As the sparrow had its
trill, sitting on the hickory before my door, so had I my chuckle or
suppressed warble which he might hear out of my nest. My days were not
days of the week, bearing the stamp of any heathen deity, nor were they
minced into hours and fretted by the ticking of a clock; for I lived
like the Puri Indians, of whom it is said that "for yesterday, to-day,
and to-morrow they have only one word, and they express the variety of
meaning by pointing backward for yesterday, forward for to-morrow, and
overhead for the passing day." This was sheer idleness to my
fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by
their standard, I should not have been found wanting. A man must find
his occasions in himself.




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