JOHN BURROUGHS 155 



Burroughs who taught us to ask), *' Is the record 

 true? Is the writing honest?" 



In these eleven volumes by Mr. Burroughs 

 there are many observations, and it is more than 

 likely that some of them may be wrong, but it 

 is not possible that any of them could be mixed 

 with observations that Mr. Burroughs knows 

 he never made. If Mr. Burroughs has written a 

 line of sham natural history, which line is it *? In 

 a preface to "Wake-Robin," the author says his 

 readers have sometimes complained that they da 

 not see the things which he sees in the woods ; but 

 I doubt if there ever was a reader who suspected 

 Mr. Burroughs of not seeing the things. 



His reply to these complaints is significant, 

 being in no manner a defense, but an exquisite 

 explanation, instead, of the difference between the 

 nature which anybody may see in the woods and 

 the nature that every individual writer, because he 

 is a writer, and an individual, must put into his 

 book : a difference like that between the sweet- 

 water gathered by the bee from the flowers and 

 the drop of acid-stung honey deposited by the 

 bee in the comb. The sweet-water undergoes a 

 chemical change in being brought to the hive, as 



