Characteristic Replies to Mr. Burroughs 
From Our Animal Friends, August, 1903 
Sa Pe 
HEN Mr. John Burroughs writes of something 
that he knows, Mr. Burroughs writes instruct- 
ively and delightfully, —so charmingly indeed 
that it is a thousand pities he should ever write about 
things of which he knows a good deal less than he 
fancies. Mr. Burroughs is a gentleman who started 
life under heavy educational dis- 
advantages which it has been his 
great merit to overcome to a con- 
siderable extent. He has acquired, 
for example, a correct and even 
graceful style of writing English, 
though it is not free from curious 
solecisms; but when he sets him- 
self up as a critical appraiser of 
“literary values,” his judgments 
are worth just as much and just 
as little as those of any other man 
of like attainments. Just so, when 
Mr. John Burroughs tells what he 
himself has seen in his observa- 
tions of nature, he easily commands the attention of 
his readers, and no one thinks of doubting his veracity ; 
but when Mr. Burroughs undertakes to ridicule the 
observations of other men not less veracious than 
himself, and gives no better reason for his rude denials 
than that John Burroughs does not happen to have 
seen the same things, then the reasoning of John Bur- 
roughs is ridiculous and his attacks on other men are 
indecent.... 
...It is only fair, however, to quote what Mr. Bur- 
roughs himself says on this point: “If it be urged 
that I discredit Mr. Long’s stories simply because I 
myself have never seen or known the like, I say no; 
that is not the reason. I can believe many things I 
have never seen or known. I discredit them because 
they are so widely at variance with all we know”— 
that is, all that Mr. Burroughs knows — “of the wild 
creatures and their ways. I discredit them as I do any 
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