X 



A PINCH OF SALT 



PROBABLY I have become unusually cautious 

 of late about accepting offhand all I read in 

 print on subjects of natural history. I take much of 

 it with a liberal pinch of salt. Newspaper reading 

 tends to make one cautious and who does not 

 read newspapers in these days ? One of my critics 

 says, apropos of certain recent strictures of mine 

 upon some current nature writers, that I discredit 

 whatever I have not myself seen; that I belong to 

 that class of observers &quot;whose view-point is nar 

 rowed to the limit of their own personal experience.&quot; 

 This were a grievous fault if it were true, so much 

 we have to take upon trust in natural history as well 

 as in other history, and in life in general. &quot;Mr. 

 Burroughs might have remembered,&quot; says another 

 critic discussing the same subject, &quot;that nobody 

 has seen quite so many things as everybody.&quot; How 

 true ! If I have ever been guilty of denying the truth 

 of what everybody has seen, my critic has just 

 ground for complaint. I was conscious, in the paper 

 referred to, 1 of denying only the truth of certain 



1 Atlantic Monthly, March, 1903. 

 173 



