Ernest Ingersoll

“ 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! ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 9 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 7 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Doubleday ("Neltje Blanchan") , and Mrs. 11 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 EATON
Writer on Nature subjects Scholar Naturalists
I have said almost nothing about the investigators and teachers of natural science in the United States and Canada. ”