THE NATURE-WRITER 115 



must be a nature-writer; yet this is not describ- 

 ing him scientifically by any means. 



Until recent years the nature-writer had been 

 hardly more than a variant of some long-estab- 

 lished species — of the philosopher in Aristotle; 

 of the moralizer in Theobaldus ; of the scholar 

 and biographer in Walton; of the traveler in 

 Josselyn ; of the poet in Burns. But that was in 

 the feudal past. Since then the land of letters has 

 been redistributed ; the literary field, like every 

 other field, has been cut into intensified and 

 highly specialized patches — the short story for 

 you, the muck-rake essay for me, or magazine 

 verse, or wild animal biography. The paragraph 

 of outdoor description in Scott becomes the 

 modern nature-sketch ; the " Lines to a Limping 

 Hare " in Burns run into a wild animal romance 

 of about the length of "The Last of the Mohi- 

 cans " ; the occasional letter of Gilbert White's 

 grows into an annual nature-volume, this year's 

 being entitled "Buzz-Buzz and Old Man Bar- 

 berry; or, The Thrilling Young Ladyhood of a 

 Better-Class Bluebottle Fly." The story that fol- 

 lows is how she never would have escaped the 

 net of Old Man Barberry had she been a butter- 



