THE RELIGION OF NATUBE 



some of its more gullible victims will become ex- 

 tinct first. 



To return, however, to the animal fairy story; 

 most of our popular traditions about wild life are 

 really of this class. The other day I was taken to 

 task by an old lady for informing a correspondent 

 that the wren is not the female robin. The old 

 lady had been taught at school that the wren was 

 the female robin, and she had loved the birds all 

 her life under that impression. No doubt the old 

 saying, " The robin and the wren are God's cock 

 and hen," coupled with the fact that young robins 

 are mottled and brownish, like wrens, was at the 

 bottom of the error ; but you cannot expect people 

 to take a scientific view of nature, when their 

 minds are biased by the well-intentioned nonsense 

 of the nursery. 



And the worst of it is that the fairy story about 

 animals endowing them with a complete set of 

 human emotions and touching language to express 

 them in has become exceedingly popular of late. 

 It pays better than any other kind of nature- 

 writing; because parents, having delightful recol- 

 lections of the pleasure which they derived in 

 nursery days from stories of Cock Robin and 

 Jenny Wren, and so on, are never tired of buying 

 such gift-books for the young. 



In America the state of things is worse. There 



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