(ttlownttnf 



nal solitude. He could write a Natural History of the 

 Maurice River Marshes. 



These are not rare cases. The nature books, the 

 nature magazines, the nature teachers, are directing 

 us all to the out-of-doors. I subscribe to a farm jour- 

 nal (club rates, twenty-five cents a year !) in which an 

 entire page is devoted to " nature studies," while the 

 whole paper is remarkably fresh and odorous of 

 the real fields. In the city, on my way to and from 

 the station, I pass three large bookstores, and from 

 March until July each of these shops has a big window 

 given over almost continuously to "nature books." I 

 have before me from one of these shops a little cata- 

 logue of nature books "a select list " for 1907, 

 containing 233 titles, varying in kind all the way from 

 " The Tramp's Handbook " to one (to a dozen) on the 

 very stable subject of "The Farmstead." These are 

 all distinctively "nature books," books with an appeal 

 to sentiment as well as to sense, and very unlike the 

 earlier desiccated, unimaginative treatises. 



There are a multitude of other signs that show as 

 clearly as the nature books how full and strong is 

 this tide that sets toward the open fields and woods. 

 There are as many and as good evidences, too, of the 



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