Thomas NuttallTHOMAS NUTTALL
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.
From Walden,by courtesy of Houghton Mifflin Company View of Walden Pond from Emerson's CliffFrom "Walden," by courtesy of Houghton Mifflin CompanyVIEW OF WALDEN POND FROM EMERSON'S CLIFFWalden Pond the cabin site is indicated by the cairn of stonesFrom "Walden," by courtesy of Houghton Mifflin CompanyWALDEN PONDThe cabin site is indicated by the cairn of stones
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.
Thoreau's Cabin at Walden from a drawing by Charles CopelandFrom "Walden," by courtesy of Houghton Mifflin CompanyTHOREAU'S CABIN AT WALDENFrom a drawing by Charles Copeland
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. Herbertlives 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.
Furniture used in the Walden House, made by ThoreauFrom "Walden," by courtesy of Houghton Mifflin CompanyFURNITURE USED IN THE WALDEN HOUSE, MADE BYTHOREAU
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.
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.
Henry D. Thoreau
Photographed by George R. King John Muir and a pine tree friendPhotograph by George R. KingJOHN MUIR AND A PINE TREE FRIEND
Among these New Englanders one stands preeminent to our view—Henry D. Thoreau, whom Channing so happily called the poet-naturalist. In him the observationof 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.
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-fullthey 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."
Copyright by Underwood and Underwood, N.Y. John Muir and John Burroughs Called 'John o' Mountains' and 'John o' Birds' by their friendsCopyright by Underwood & Underwood, N.Y.JOHN MUIR AND JOHN BURROUGHSCalled "John o' Mountains" and "John o' Birds" bytheir 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, withthe 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.
The house of John Muir in CaliforniaTHE HOUSE OF JOHN MUIR—in CaliforniaThe Muir vineyards and orchards near Martinez, CaliforniaTHE MUIR VINEYARDS AND ORCHARDSNear 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 andfields: "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
Theodore Roosevelt in Yosemite National ParkCopyright by Underwood & Underwood, N.Y.THEODORE ROOSEVELTIn Yosemite National Park. Yosemite Falls in thebackground. In a career rich in endeavor and full ofachievement, America's great citizen spent his firstyears and his last years as a naturalist
Dr. William T. HornadayDR. WILLIAM T. HORNADAYDirector of the New York ZoologicalPark since 1896, and author of manybooks and articles on natural history
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 fromThe 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.
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 tofield-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.
Luther BurbankPhotograph by Press Illustrating Service Inc.LUTHER BURBANKExamining a flowering shrub under a microscopein his garden in Santa Rosa, California.He is called "unique in his knowledgeof Nature, and his manipulation andinterpretation of her forces." The renownedDutch botanist, Dr. Hugo de Vries, namedBurbank "the greatest breeder of plants theworld has ever known." This most beneficentof naturalists, whose potato, stoneless plum,spineless cactus and ever-bearing strawberryhave aided beyond all estimateCalifornia industry, was born in Lancaster,Massachusetts, March 7, 1849
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."
Dan BeardDAN BEARDNational Scout Commander of the Boy Scouts ofAmerica, 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
Bradford TorreyBRADFORD TORREYOrnithologist and author;editor of Thoreau's worksDr. Elliott CouesDR. ELLIOTT COUESAn eminent naturalist distinguishedfor his researches inornithology
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.
Ernest IngersollERNEST INGERSOLLNaturalist, editor and author
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 asguide-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.
Olive Thorne MillerOLIVE THORNE MILLEROne of the first American womento write about Nature
Women Nature Writers
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.
Walter Prichard EatonWALTER PRICHARD EATONWriter on Nature subjects
Scholar Naturalists
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.
Florence Merriam BaileyFLORENCE MERRIAM BAILEYAuthor of "Birds Through anOpera Glass," "Handbook ofBirds of Western United States,"et cetera. Mrs. Bailey is thewife of Vernon Bailey, the well-knownbiologist and explorerMrs. Mabel Osgood WrightMRS. MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHTAuthor of "Citizen Bird" (withDr. Coues), "Gray Lady and theBirds," and similar books
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.
⁂ Information concerning the above books may be had on application to the Editor of The Mentor.
THE OPEN LETTER
THE OPEN LETTER
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.
Henry D. ThoreauHENRY D. THOREAUThoreau's Flute, Spyglass and his copy of Wilson's OrnithologyCourtesy of Houghton Mifflin & Co. Publishers of Thoreau's Works.THOREAU'S FLUTE, SPYGLASS, AND HIS COPY OFWILSON'S "ORNITHOLOGY"
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.
W.D. Moffat, Editor
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.
Thoreau at Walden PondIlove 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.
Thoreau at Walden Pond
Ilove 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.
Ilove 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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