350 



THE GUIDE TO NATURE. 



crept about on hands and knees, fol- 

 lowing the toad and trying to find out 

 what the queer thing did eat. An- 

 other recollection, which goes back 

 almost to babyhood, is of throwing 

 himself upon a big hawk which had 



A CHICKADEE EATING FROM DR. LONG'S 



HAN 1 ). 



In the Woods of the Far North. 



pounced upon a chicken behind the 

 grape arbor, and of getting well 

 scratched and thumped in trying to 

 drag the hawk into the house. As soon 

 as he could walk alone he rambled off 

 into the nearby woods, where rabbits 

 and partridges and squirrels were a 

 source of infinite wonder. He kept 

 pets, of course, — chickens, owls, crows, 

 coons, foxes, — but soon gave them up 

 because, as he says, a caged animal is 

 the most unnatural thing on earth. At 

 twelve years he spent a glorious 

 summer in the woods tenting in a 

 pine grove on the shore of Miramichi 

 Pond. From all of which it may be 

 inferred that he was, and still is, a 

 country boy. As he says himself, he 

 still lives on the same road on which 



he was born (the old Boston Turn- 

 pike), only he is now two hundred 

 miles away, and altogether too near 

 to what Xew Yorkers call civilization. 



As the boy grew up and became ac- 

 quainted with every bird and animal 

 of the Massachusetts woods, the great 

 North was calling him, as he tells us in 

 "Northern Trails" in a significant 

 chapter called "In Quest of Waptonk 

 the Wild". At seventeen he found 

 himself alone, one terribly stormy day 

 in midwinter, at the far edge of civili- 

 zation in northern New Brunswick. 

 He had never before seen the big 

 woods or a snowshoe, but that after- 

 noon he tramped fourteen miles 

 through dense forests, with a pack on 

 his back and five feet of snow under 

 his snowshoes, landing long after dark 

 in a lumber camp on the Renous River. 

 Next morning at daylight he was fol- 

 lowing a caribou trail, and within an 

 hour was hiding in a fir thicket watch- 

 ing a herd of the big animals resting in 

 the snow. The last incident is most 

 characteristic as showing his love of 

 the big woods and of animal life, 

 which has been almost a passion ever 

 since he can remember. And the love 

 shows itself in all his writings. 



Another curious characteristic of the 

 man is that until he was thirty years 

 did he refused to write of nature, and 

 he even protests against doing so now- 

 adays, because, as he explains it, he 

 sees and feels so much more than 

 one can ever express. His first article 

 was sent to a magazine at the earnest 

 solicitation of a friend who had heard 

 him speak to some young people on 

 "The Unknown Habits of Our Com- 

 mon Wild Birds and Animals". The 

 magazine immediately called for more, 

 and he w r as practically forced into 

 writing. He has done his writing as a 

 part, according to his own words, of 

 the joy of life. "I have a theory," he 

 says, "that a man never does his best 

 work unless he has the spirit of play in 

 him." His work has been play and 

 recreation for 25 years. 



(Continued in next Number.) 



