JOHN BURROUGHS 173 



roughs. He goes pencilless into the woods, and 

 waits before writing until his return home, until 

 time has elapsed for the multitudinous details of 

 the trip to blur and blend, leaving only the dom- 

 inant facts and impressions for his pen. Every 

 part of his work is of selected stock, as free from 

 knots and seams and sap-wood as a piece of old- 

 growth pine. There is plan, proportion, integrity 

 to his essays the naturalist living faithfully up 

 to a sensitive literary conscience. 



Mr. Burroughs is a good but not a great 

 naturalist, as Audubon and Gray were great 

 naturalists. His claim (and Audubon's in part) 

 upon us is literary. He has been a watcher in the 

 woods ; has made a few pleasant excursions into 

 the primeval wilderness, leaving his gun at home, 

 and his camera, too, thank Heaven ! He has 

 broken out no new trail, discovered no new ani- 

 mal, no new thing. But he has seen all the old, 

 uncommon things, has seen them oftener, has 

 watched them longer, through more seasons, than 

 any other writer of our out-of-doors ; and though 

 he has discovered no new thing, yet he has made 

 discoveries, volumes of them, contributions 

 largely to our stock of literature, and to our store 



