PREFACE 



Y ideal vacation is one that affords health- 

 ful pleasure not only for the time being 

 but for the remainder of the year that 

 furnishes something to which I can turn for recrea- 

 tion and enjoyment after the working day is over. 

 An outing of this sort is a twofold luxury, and can 

 perhaps best be had in fields and woods that are 

 far from the distracting influences of the city. It 

 is here in the simple life of camping-vacations, where 

 the work of housekeeping is reduced to the essentials, 

 that I have learned the art of doing for myself what 

 I had previously supposed absolutely necessary to 

 have others do for me. A month of this sort of life 

 stimulates my muscles and gives me an appetite that 

 a boy might envy. And rest! when Mother Nature 

 has her own way and presides over my sleep, then 

 indeed I rest until I feel like a new being. 



For years I have spent my vacations in this ideal 

 way, photographing and studying our friends in fur 



and feathers, in their native haunts. I enter into 



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