She Bay of the Band 
genuineness of this interest in the out-of-doors. It 
may be a fad just now to adopt abandoned farms, to 
attend parlor lectures on birds, and to possess a how- 
to-know library. Itis pathetic to see “ nature study” 
taught by schoolma’ams who never did and who never 
will climb a rail fence; it is sad, to speak softly, to 
have the makers of certain animal books preface the 
stories with a declaration of their absolute truth ; it is 
passing sad that the unnatural natural history, the 
impossible out-of-doors, of some of the recent nature 
books, should have been created. But fibs and failures 
and impossibilities aside, there still remains the thing 
itself, — the widespread turning to nature, and the 
deep, vital need to turn. 
The note of sincerity is clear, however, in most of 
our nature writers; the faith is real in most of our 
nature teachers ; and the love, — who can doubt the 
love of the tens of thousands of those whose feet feel 
the earth nowadays, whose lives share in the exist- 
ence of some pond or wood or field? And who can 
doubt the rest, the health, the sanity, and the satisfac- 
tion that these get from the companionship of their 
field or wood or pond ? 
There is no way of accounting for the movement 
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