THE NATURE LIBRARY 



By JOHN BURROUGHS 



I DO NOT propose in these introductory remarks to this 

 Nature Library to discuss the merits or the character of the sepa- 

 rate volumes further than to say that they are all by competent 

 hands and, so far as I can judge, entirely reliable. While accu- 

 rate and scientific, I have found them very readable. The treat- 

 ment is popular without being sensational. 



This library is free from the scientific dry rot on the one 

 hand and from the florid and misleading romanticism of much 

 recent nature writing on the other. It is a safe guide to the 

 world of animal and plant life that lies about us. And that is all 

 the wise reader wants. He should want to explore this world 

 for himself. Indeed, nature-study, as it appeals to us in books, 

 fails of its chief end if it does not send us to nature itself. What 

 we want is not the mere facts about the flowers or the animals — 

 we want through them to add to the resources of our lives; and 

 I know of nothing better calculated to do this than the study of 

 nature at first hand. To add to the resources of one's life — think 

 how much that means! To add to those things that make us 

 more at home in the world; that help guard us against ennui 

 and stagnation; that invest the country with new interest and 

 enticement; that make every walk in the fields or woods an 

 excursion into a land of unexhausted treasures; that make the 

 returning seasons fill us with expectation and delight; that make 

 every rod of ground like the page of a book in which new and 

 strange things may be read; in short, those things that help keep 

 us fresh and sane and young, and make us immune to the strife 

 and fever of the world. 



The main thing is to feel an interest in Nature — an interest 

 that leads to a loving unconscious study of her. Not entirely a 

 scientific interest, but a human interest as well ; science upon the 

 one hand and an appreciation of the mystery, the beauty, and 

 the bounty of life upon the other. The child feels a human inter- 



