STRAIGHT SEEING AND TfflNKING 



he does it, the better we shall like him. We can get 

 our statistics elsewhere. From him we want pic- 

 tures, action, incident, and the portrait of the living 

 animal. But we want it all truthfully done. The 

 life history of any of our wild creatures, the daily 

 and hourly course of its life, all its traits and pe- 

 culiarities, all its adventures and ways of getting 

 on in the world, are of keen interest to every nature 

 student, but if these things are misrepresented, 

 what then ? There are readers, I believe, who say 

 they don't care whether the thing is true or not ; 

 at any rate it is interesting, and that is enough. 

 What can one say to such readers ? Only that they 

 should not complain if they are stuck with paste 

 diamonds, or pinchbeck gold, or shoddy cloth, or 

 counterfeit bills. 



The truth of animal life is more interesting than 

 any fiction about it. Can there be any doubt, for 

 instance, that if one knew just how the fur seals 

 find their way back from the vast wilderness of the 

 Pacific Ocean, where there is, apparently, nothing 

 for the eye, or the ear, or the nose to seize upon in 

 guiding them, to the little island in Bering Sea that 

 is their breeding haunt in spring — can there be 

 any doubt, I say, that such knowledge would be 

 vastly more interesting than anything our natural 

 history romancers could invent about it ? But it is 

 the way of our romancers to draw upon their in- 

 vention when their observation fails them. Thus 

 107 



