NEW GLEANINGS IN OLD FIELDS 



I. LIVE NATURAL HISTORY 



RECENTLY, while reading Thoreau's Journal, 

 I wondered why his natural history notes, with 

 which the Journal abounds, interested me so little. 

 On reflection I saw that it was because he contented 

 himself with making only a bare statement of the 

 fact he did not relate it to anything else or inter- 

 pret its meaning. There is a great deal of bald, dry, 

 natural history of this kind in his Journal which he 

 never wove together into a living texture. 



When he simply tells me, " I see a downy wood- 

 pecker tapping on an apple-tree and hear when I 

 have passed his sharp, metallic note," he has not 

 interested me in the woodpecker. He must string 

 the bird on his thoughts in some way; he must re- 

 late him to my life or experience. The facts of nat- 

 ural history become interesting the moment they 

 become facts of human history. All the ways of the 

 wild creatures in getting on in the world interest us, 

 because we have our ways of getting on in the world. 

 All their economies, antagonisms, failures, devices, 

 appeal to us for the same reason. 



Thoreau's description of the battle of the ants in 

 "Walden" is intensely interesting because it is so 

 27 



