624 



SCIENCE. 



[X. S. Vol. XIX. \o. 485. 



gether. This I am not prepared to believe, 

 especially in the light of the tone of his own 

 writings, which seem to me to show that he 

 possesses neither the temperament nor the 

 training essential to a disinterested observer. 

 I have no proof, with the single exception 

 noted below, that any individual statement of 

 Mr. Long's is untrue; but an experience in 

 the New Brunswick wilderness at least as 

 great as Mr. Long-'s has given me such a 

 knowledge of the difficulties of observing wild 

 animals in their native haunts that I can not 

 believe that any man has had all of the re- 

 markable experiences reported by Mr. Long. 

 Furthermore, the one case in which I happen 

 to know personally the evidence on which Mr. 

 Long bases a statement does not allow me to 

 entertain a high regard for his accuracy. In 

 his book ' School of the Woods ' he claims to 

 have seen fish hawks catch and wound fish 

 which they then dropped back into the water 

 in order to teach their young to dive for them. 

 This statement is criticized by Mr. Burroughs 

 in his article on ' Real and Sham Natural 

 History' in the Atlantic Monthly for March, 

 1903, and in his reply to this article in the 

 -North American Review for May, Mr. Long 

 reaffirms it, and adds : ' Mr. Mauran Furbish, 

 ■who probably knows more of the New Bruns- 

 wick wilderness than any other man, has told 

 me since my book was written that he had seen 

 the same thing.' Thinking I knew the inci- 

 dent on which this statement was based, I 

 wrote Mr. Furbish, who has been my com- 

 panion in two journeys into the wilderness of 

 New Brunswick, asking what statement he 

 had made to Mr. Long. He replied that he had 

 simply told Mr. Long of our finding one day 

 a wounded gaspereau floating at the foot of a 

 lake and that Mr. Long ' had furnished all 

 the romance and the reason for their being 

 there.' This incident, I believe, gives the 

 clue to the character of much of Mr. Long's 

 work. He does not deliberately invent, but 

 some trifling basis of fact happening to flt in 

 with some theory developed by his sympathies 

 is accepted by him as confirming his surmises, 

 which he thereupon considers and publishes 

 as proven. Mr. Long's books undoubtedly 

 •contain a great deal of valuable fact, but this 



is so mixed with matter that can not possibly 

 be accepted simply on Mr. Long's statement, 

 that it makes his works practically valueless 

 for any scientific purpose. 



Mr. Roberts, I believe, nowhere makes any 

 claim that the natural history basis for his 

 animal writings rests on personal knowledge, 

 but that is the impression left with the reader, 

 and Mr. Roberts takes no steps to set him 

 right. Those who know Mr. Roberts are aware 

 that his literary work for several years past 

 has not permitted him to make those journeys 

 into wild New Brunswick essential to the 

 study of its animal life, and that his few 

 earlier trips had not this object in view and 

 were not of a character to permit it. His 

 knowledge of New Brunswick animals has 

 been gained chiefly in the public libraries, 

 museums and menageries of New York City; 

 his material is hence mostly second hand, and 

 it is unfair to his readers that they should 

 be given the impression that these works are 

 founded on a personal knowledge of the ani- 

 mals described. If Mr. Roberts would but 

 state in the preface to his books that his 

 studies are not based upon personal observa- 

 tion of their subjects, but are as accurate as 

 he can make them from other sources of in- 

 formation, he would not only be dealing hon- 

 estly with his readers but he would, in my 

 opinion, greatly enhance the value of his 

 really remarkable imaginative works. 



So opposite are the standpoints from which 

 the scientific and the literary man view animal 

 life, and so entirely indifferent are they to 

 one another's standards, that the two are not 

 only nearly impossible to one person, but they 

 are well nigh mutually exclusive. The charm 

 of the study to the man of science is the tri- 

 umph of demonstrating the truth. . He makes 

 this his sole standard as it is his sole reward. 

 Slowly, patiently, laboriously, indifPerent to 

 popular opinion as to popular applause, he 

 makes his resistless advances, testing and 

 proving each step before a second is made. 

 He naturally has little regard, therefore, for 

 showy leaps from scanty fact to sensational 

 generalization, and he has no respect at all 

 for a pretence of scientific knowledge not 

 based upon an honest fotmdation. The lit- 



