A Letter from Mr. Long 
with Maurice Thompson, a gentleman, a scholar, and 
a rare naturalist. But to pass over that in which the 
personal element entered too strongly and in which 
knowledge on one side found itself opposed to dog- 
matism on the other, I recall his cutting criticism of 
Lowell and Bryant in Scribner's Monthly 
(December, 1879). For instance —and this 
is but one of many points —he criticised 
Lowell for having buttercups and dande- 
lions bloom freely together, a thing to be 
seen in a hundred meadows. As it turned 
out he had never seen and did not even 
know the species of buttercup that grows 
here. In the Adlantic Monthly (March, 
1880), Thomas Wentworth Higginson showed the 
extreme inaccuracy and arrogance of this whole 
CRILICISIN...°< 
The black bear of Florida differs widely in habits 
from his brother of the Mississippi cane swamps, and still 
more widely in habits and disposition from the animal 
of the Canada wilderness. The panther of Colorado 
is afraid of the smallest of dogs; the panther of north- 
ern New Hampshire and the Adirondacks will kill the 
biggest of them without provocation. The salmon of 
the east coast tastes no food for months after entering 
fresh water; the salmon of the west coast is a vora- 
cious feeder. For thirty years I have heard the robin’s 
song — every note and variation of it. Yet last sum- 
mer in the Maine woods Mr. Pearl Young, a well-known 
guide, and myself spent an hour trying 
to find a rare wild singer that neither 
of us had ever heard before; and 
when we found him he was a common 
robin. 
Mr. Burroughs denies that a porcu- 
pine ever rolls himself into a ball. 
That may possibly be true of the 
porcupines that he has seen. Here the porcupine has 
no longer any natural enemies that he is afraid of, 
and there is no need of the habit. In the wilderness 
I have found them when I had to poke them witha 
stick, so closely were they rolled, before I was sure 
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