Hunting Lore. 453 



course, for us Americans, Burroughs has a peculiar charm 

 that he cannot have for others, no matter how much they, 

 too, may like him ; for what he writes of is our own, and 

 he calls to our minds memories and associations that are 

 very dear. His books make us homesick when we read 

 them in foreign lands ; for they spring from our soil as 

 truly as Snowbound or The Biglow Papers? 



As a woodland writer, Thoreau comes second only to 

 Burroughs. 



For natural history in the narrower sense there are 

 still no better books than Audubon and Bachman's Mam- 

 mals and Audubon's Birds. There are also good works 

 by men like Coues and Bendire ; and if Hart Merriam, 

 of the Smithsonian, will only do for the mammals of the 

 United States what he has already done for those of the 

 Adirondacks, we shall have the best book of its kind in 

 existence. Nor, among less technical writings, should 

 one overlook such essays as those of Maurice Thompson 

 and Olive Thorne Miller. 



There have been many American hunting-books ; but 

 too often they have been very worthless, even when the 

 writers possessed the necessary first-hand knowledge, and 

 the rare capacity of seeing the truth. Few of the old- 



J I am under many obligations to the writings of Mr. Burroughs (though there 

 are one or two of his theories from which I should dissent) ; and there is a piece of 

 indebtedness in this very volume of which I have only just become aware. In my 

 chapter on the prong-buck there is a paragraph which will at once suggest to any lover 

 of Burroughs some sentences in his essay on " Birds and Poets." I did not notice the 

 resemblance until happening to reread the essay after my own chapter was written, 

 and at the time I had no idea that I was borrowing from anybody, the more so as I 

 was thinking purely of western wilderness life and western wilderness game, with 

 which I knew Mr. Burroughs had never been familiar. T have concluded to leave the 

 paragraph in with this acknowledgment. 



