Characteristic Replies to Mr. Burroughs 
naturalist, nor has he learned, from modern laboratory 
methods, not to cover with some general term like 
“instinct” a field of activities which promises large 
results to the really scientific investigation. 
It is not so very many years since 
he took James Russel! Lowell to task, 
in Scribner's Monthly, for representing 
dandelions and buttercups as blooming 
together, and his tone was quite as posi- 
tive and as self-assured as in his recent 
‘critique. Yet the poet was the better 
pathralet of the two, for he knew about the species 
known as the “ early buttercups,” while Mr. Burroughs, 
with surprising provincialism, seemed to suppose that 
the term “buttercups”’ was limited to Raxunculus acris, 
a summer-blooming species. Mr. Burroughs seems to 
ignore the limitations of negative testimony, and even 
his admirers must admit that his contemptuous and 
sweeping denial of the conclusions of other observers 
who differ with him, and especially his insinuations as 
to their accuracy and veracity, are neither scientific 
nor, to put it mildly, exactly nice. 
From The New England Journal of Education, 
June 18, 1903 
R. LONG has promptly and completely won a 
place in the hearts of the people. Wild animals, 
among whom he lived by the month, loved and 
trusted him, but no more than the 
humans for whom he wrote. From 
Thoreau to Burroughs there has been 
no man quite so lovable to wild ani- / 
mals and to men at the same time / 
as William J. Long. His experiences 
are well-nigh as fascinating in their 
way as were the songs of Jenny Lind. 
But Mr. Long and his admirers had a rude awaken- 
ing. There has been nothing quite so startling, almost 
8 
