of 



the pioneers and colonists to study but the out-of- 

 doors ? and what else was half as wonderful ? They 

 came from an old urban world into this new country 

 world, where all was strange, unnamed, and unex- 

 plored. Their chief business was observing nature, 

 not as dull savages, nor as children born to a dead 

 familiarity with their surroundings, but as interested 

 men and women, with a need and a desire to know. 

 Their coming was the real beginning of our nature 

 movement ; their observing has developed into our 

 nature study habit. 



Our nature literature also began with them. There 

 is scarcely a journal, a diary, or a set of letters of 

 this early time in which we do not find that careful 

 seeing, and often that imaginative interpretation, so 

 characteristic of the present day. Even the modern 

 animal romancer is represented among these early 

 writers in John Josselyn and his delicious book, 

 " New England's Rarities Discovered." 



It was not until the time of Emerson and Bryant 

 and Thoreau, however, that our interest in nature 

 became general and grew into something deeper 

 than mere curiosity. There had been naturalists such 

 as Audubon (he was a poet, also), but they went 



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