INTRODUCTION 



N offering to my readers the Chapters on Nat- 

 ural History found in the present volume, it is 

 not with the intention of placing before them 

 anything having the form of a systematic 

 treatise upon the subject, but rather a series 

 of nature stories selected at random by their 

 author. During the past ten or twelve years 

 or more 1 have contributed to the various 

 popular-science magazines of this country 

 accounts and descriptions of many of our bet- 

 ter-known mammals, birds, reptiles, flsh, and 

 insects, and it is from these that the present 

 chapters have been largely borrowed. In 

 nearly every case, however, they have been extensively revised, 

 augmented, and in a few instances new illustrations added to 

 them. A few of these chapters appear now for the first time, 

 never having been published elsewhere. Judging from what my 

 many correspondents have kindly written me in years gone by, I 

 feel safe in saying that my labors along these lines have been 

 met with marked favor, and it is my earnest hope that there has 

 been no falling off of this interest, and that gathered together in 

 this their present shape these brief life-histories of many of our 

 birds and animals will be received even with greater apprecia- 

 tion. 



Technical descriptions have been largely disallowed place in 

 these pages, as in this age of science the literature in such fields 

 is very rich and ample, while but few really popular works upon 

 natural history are being written. This further inclines me to 

 believe that these chapters will be favorably regarded, especially 

 by those who love to ramble in our fields and forests, ex- 

 plore along the banks of our streams and shores, and delight in 

 reading about the forms in nature that they meet with there 

 every day. I trust, too, that these accounts will stimulate 

 others, and better pens than mine, to add still more to our knowl- 

 edge of the habits of our United States animals, particularly 

 those usually considered to be abundant and well known. Often 

 these are the very ones that have been neglected, and the inti- 



