€S}t Ba^ of t^t &a\xi> 



to Thoreau, Emerson, and Burroughs, who can find 

 nature, as well as birds and trees, who can think and 

 feel as well as wonder and look. Before we can think 

 and feel we must get over our wondering, and we 

 must get entirely used to looking. This we are slowly 

 doing, — slowly, I say, for it is the monstrous, the 

 marvelous, the unreal that most of us still go out 

 into the wilderness for to see, — bears and wolves, 

 foxes, eagles, orioles, salmon, mustangs, porcupines 

 of extraordinary parts and powers. 



There came to my desk, tied up with the same 

 string, not long since, three nature books of a sort 

 to make Thoreau turn over in his grave, — accounts 

 of beasts and birds such as old Thetbaldus gave us in 

 his *' Physiologus," that pious and marvelous bestiary 

 of the dark ages. These three volumes that I refer 

 to are modern and about American animals, but they, 

 too, might have been written during the dark ages. 

 All three have the same solemn preface, declaring 

 the absolute truth of the observations that follow (as 

 if we might doubt .?), and piously pointing out their 

 high moral purpose ; all three likewise start out with 

 the same wonderful story, — an animal biography : 

 one, of a slum cat, born in a cracker box. Among the 



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